This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Time
July 3, 2008
Obama now wears a flag pin on his lapel. Every day.
Short of wearing a stars and stripes onesie, the flag lapel pin is the quickest sartorial method for a politician to telegraph his or her patriotism. The origin of the flag lapel pin is murky, though it is by necessity linked the history of the American flag as a commonly used symbol. According to Mark Leepson's Flag: An American Biography, the "near religious reverence many Americans have" for our national symbol dates o
Source: AP
July 3, 2008
- Historian James Heintze can tick off colorful accounts of how the nation has celebrated the Fourth of July over the years: In the 19th century, canons fired, church bells sounded and fireworks exploded.
Indianapolis residents watched in 1911 as two trains purposely collided at full speed, the locomotive personnel bailing out before the crash.
The gray-haired, bespectacled academic has chronicled just about everything there is to know about commemorating the birth of t
Source: NYT
July 3, 2008
The Ainu had lived on Japan’s northernmost island for centuries, calling their home Ainu Mosir, or Land of Human Beings. Here, they had fished, hunted, worshiped nature and established a culture that yielded “Yukar,” an oral poem of Homeric length.
But just as with America’s expansion West, the Japanese pushed north in the late 19th century in the first sign of their imperialist ambitions. Japanese settlers decimated the Ainu population, seized their land and renamed it Hokkaido, or
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 2, 2008
New light has been shed on the greatest battle in British naval history after a rare eye-witness account by one of its heroes was uncovered.
William Hargood was captain of HMS Belleisle, which was at the heart of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 when Admiral Lord Nelson defeated the Franco-Spanish fleet.
Around a quarter of his vessel's men were killed or injured as they staged an often lone fight against the enemy before finally being "dismasted".
Source: BBC
July 2, 2008
When I was growing up they were the two words which could bring a cloud into any conversation.
They were whispered in the back shops of the Scottish Italian community or muttered quickly in the hope that they would never need to be mentioned again.
Arandora Star.
I thought everybody knew the story of the boat which sank off the Irish coast with the loss of nearly 700 lives - the majority of them Italian nationals.
As I got older, however, I realised this w
Source: AP
July 3, 2008
Madame Tussauds' has a new museum in Berlin — complete with a controversial wax Adolf Hitler hunkered down in his bunker.
The likeness of the Nazi leader, hunched over a desk in a dimly lit bunker just before he committed suicide at the end of World War II, was one of dozens unveiled Thursday at the opening of the British wax museum's latest branch.
The waxworks here are showcased in chronological and thematic order, highlighting Europe's postwar history.
Source: LiveScience
July 3, 2008
July Fourth is a celebration of outdoor cooking, as well as our nation's birthday. It's time to brush off the barbecue and throw masses of processed meat on the grill.
As we all stand around waiting for the fire to die down so that we can make s'mores, it's also a time to ponder the notion that the barbecue is a ritual 700,000 years old or more, and it might have something to do with our big brains.
Human ancestors started out eating whatever they could; berries, bark
Source: Reuters
July 3, 2008
Archeologists are opening a cave sealed for more than 30 years deep beneath a Mexican pyramid to look for clues about the mysterious collapse of one of ancient civilization's largest cities.
The soaring Teotihuacan stone pyramids, now a major tourist site about an hour outside Mexico City, were discovered by the ancient Aztecs around 1500 AD, not long before the arrival of Spanish explorers to Mexico.
But little is known about the civilization that built the immense cit
Source: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com
June 18, 2008
Bushwhacking through knee-high weeds and thorny kiawe, John Bond points out the stretches of asphalt and concrete where World War II fighters once roared into the sky at the former 'Ewa Marine Corps Air Station.
There's not much left to see of the airfield, with only foundation outlines, a quonset hut and concrete building or two standing, but the original runways are still there.
Tucked away in a jungle on the old base are also dozens of arched concrete aircraft revetm
Source: Daily Mail
July 2, 2008
One of Britain's very first shopping centres has been unearthed - a high street that was fashionable 1,800 years ago when togas were still in vogue.
A row of narrow shop buildings uncovered by archaeologists shows that the Romans in Britain had their very own well-heeled fashionistas.
The shop buildings used by the stylish Romans in ancient Britain were uncovered by archaeologists in fields at Monmouthshire, South Wales.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
July 2, 2008
Robert Venable most likely came to Philadelphia a slave, shipped from Barbados as a little boy and ultimately bought and used by merchant Hugh Donaldson in the late 1740s.
But by the time of the Revolutionary War, when Venable moved into a small house at 79 N. Sixth St., he was a free man, manumitted by Donaldson in an act of generosity Venable would never forget.
His was a momentous move at a momentous time to an extraordinary part of the city - the block where the National
Source: Sify News
June 28, 2008
Eight perfectly preserved mummies, believed to be some 4,500 year old, were found by workers engaged in a restoration project in Chile's far north, Spain's EFE news agency reported on Saturday quoting media report.
"These mummies date back to between 2,000 BC and 5,000 BC." archaeologist Calogero Santoro told the daily El Mercurio.
The mummies are remains of individuals belonging to the Chinchorro culture, which was one of the first to practice mummification a
Source: Discovery Channel News
June 27, 2008
Medieval bones from six different Danish cemeteries reveal that monks who wrote Biblical texts and other religious materials may have been exposed to toxic mercury, which was used to formulate just one of their ink colors: red.
The study, which will be published in the August issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, also describes a previously undocumented disease, called FOS, which was like leprosy and caused skull lesions. Additionally, the researchers found that mercury-co
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz
June 28, 2008
A replica 3000-year-old Pacific canoe, modelled on the world's first ocean-going vessels, has been tested in a world-leading Auckland wind tunnel.
Preliminary results show the canoes of the type sailed from New Guinea to Fiji, Tonga and Samoa about 1000BC were so well designed they could probably sail against the wind.
The 3m-long scale model has been tested and analysed in the University of Auckland's Tamaki campus wind tunnel, famed for its role in America's Cup yacht
Source: NYT
July 2, 2008
Researchers announced Wednesday that remains excavated in the last three years were those of the long-sought dwelling, on the old family farm in Virginia, 50 miles south of Washington. The house stood on a terrace overlooking the Rappahannock River, where legend has it the boy threw a stone or coin across to Fredericksburg.
On the subject of legend, the archaeologists who made the discovery could no more tell a lie than young George. No, there was not a single cherry tree anywhere a
Source: Chicago Tribune
July 3, 2008
Arlan Ettinger will never forget the response he got the day he took one of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks' hats to a meeting at Harlem's historic Apollo Theater.
"It was a fairly plain-looking black hat. And then I said it was Rosa Parks'. And their mouths just opened up without saying a word and tears" flowed, Ettinger said. "It was a very, very powerful moment. You could see the impact this woman has had on everyone."
Ettinger's New York City auc
Source: International Herald Tribune
July 2, 2008
Among the many once-familiar historical photographs that you won't see in China's official histories are any showing Chairman Mao with his one-time No. 2 man and presumed successor, Lin Biao, the military commander who died in a plane crash in 1971 after an apparent attempt at a coup.
In fact, China is a strangely inconsistent place. You'll find Lin's image on flea market plates, cups and posters, the newly manufactured "relics" of the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976
Source: NYT
July 2, 2007
Sixty years ago a B-29 bomber on a secret mission fell from the sky in Waycross, Ga. Nine men died, and the widows of three of them sued the government for negligence.
The case, United States v. Reynolds, gave birth to the state secrets privilege, which allows the government to shut down litigations simply by invoking national security. The privilege has been a particular favorite of the Bush administration, which has asserted it in dozens of cases, including ones challenging the le
Source: NYT
July 3, 2008
Baby boomers, hired in large numbers during a huge expansion in higher education that continued into the ’70s, are being replaced by younger professors who many of the nearly 50 academics interviewed by The New York Times believe are different from their predecessors — less ideologically polarized and more politically moderate.
“There’s definitely something happening,” said Peter W. Wood, executive director of the National Association of Scholars, which was created in 1987 to counte
Source: Inside Higher Ed
July 3, 2008
Scholars of the Armenian genocide have long accused Turkey of using its financial support to promote the idea that a genocide didn’t take place or that the jury is still out — views that have little credibility among historians of genocide.
An incident in 2006, only recently being talked about publicly, has some scholars concerned that Turkey and its supporters may be interfering in American scholarship.The chair of the board of the Institute of Turkish Studies,
