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: Richmond Times-Dispatch
May 23, 2008
With the help of an early-19th-century insurance map, archaeologists are having an easier time than usual in excavating an important historical site near Montpelier.
The researchers, including 17 students from James Madison University, are unearthing the South Yard, a residential complex where President James Madison's domestic slaves lived and worked.
The insurance map, which came to light in 2002, is proving invaluable.
"It was a perfect roadmap for
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org
May 23, 2008
Research led by the University of Leeds has discovered genetic evidence that overturns existing theories about human migration into Island Southeast Asia (covering the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo) - taking the timeline back by nearly 10,000 years.
Prevailing theory suggests that the present-day populations of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) originate largely from a Neolithic expansion from Taiwan driven by rice agriculture about 4,000 years ago - the so-called "Out
Source: NYT
May 23, 2008
A memorial dedicated to gay men and lesbians persecuted and killed under the Nazis will be inaugurated on May 27, the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany said. The $935,000 monument, designed by Michael Elmgreen of Denmark and Ingar Dragset of Norway, will be in Berlin on the edge of its Tiergarten park and near the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It features a concrete slab with a window that will allow visitors to view a looped video that will alternate every two years between a cli
Source: LiveScience
May 22, 2008
Seems everyone these days is giving the thumbs-up, no matter the circumstances.
Senator Edward Kennedy gave a big thumbs-up as he left the hospital Wednesday, facing a new outlook on life with a potentially deadly brain tumor. Hillary did it just this week at a we're-not-mathematically-defeated-yet campaign rally in Florida. John McCain can't not do it.
The gesture, for better or worse, has long breathed life or death into major events.
Death to gladiators
Source: KTRK news
May 22, 2008
It's a valuable artifact, which represents one of the worst, most brutal eras ever. Something that belonged to Adolf Hitler, and it's now in the hands of a Houston World War II veteran.
Eyewitness News takes a closer look at the debate over what should be done with this painful piece of history.
it was the summer of 1945 and U.S. troops had just taken over Munich, Germany.
"I was 20 years old and we had just been through a heck of a war," said Ja
Source: http://www.news.com.au
May 22, 2008
POLISH war crimes prosecutors today announced they have dropped a probe against John Demjanjuk, 88, an ethnic Ukrainian living in the United States dogged by allegations of Nazi war crimes.
"The investigation was dropped December 19, 2007 due lack of evidence to incriminate Demjanjuk for murder," prosecutor Anna Galkiewicz of Poland's Institute for National Remembrance (IPN) said.
The IPN is charged with investigating and prosecuting Nazi and communist-era cri
Source: Guardian
May 23, 2008
The last surviving Mitford sister is 88 now, but does not look it. Her sight is not as good as it used to be, though, and her voice comes from another time, the Noël Coward vowels shifting between kind but business-like answers and sudden girlish animation. An old-fashioned deference is alive here (her staff call her Her Grace) and I am not the first interviewer to be struck by her impeccable politeness, the kind of forceful politeness that both puts people at their ease and keeps them at a firm
Source: Reuters
May 12, 2008
France may posthumously clear the names of hundreds of soldiers shot for refusing to obey orders to fight during World War One, the minister in charge of veterans' affairs has told a newspaper.
"I am considering a way of rehabilitating, on a case by case basis, those shot as an example during the First World War," Jean-Marie Bockel told Monday's edition of Le Figaro.
"My officials are considering the overall dossier minutely because not all the cases are
Source: Earth Times
May 15, 2008
The clean-up of a former plant which made horrific German poison-gas shells used in the First World War is complete after 20 years of work, an official told legislators Thursday. The Espagit factory in Hallschlag, Rhineland Palatinate state accidentally exploded in 1920 when an estimated 20,000 poison-gas shells were on the premises. The debris meant the site was an ecological disaster area for decades.
Attacks with gas clouds on enemy lines during the First World War left huge numb
Source: Dallas Morning News
May 12, 2008
For more than 30 years, members of the clandestine Naval air squadron VO-67 could not talk about their role in the Vietnam War.
Now, as they prepare to go to Washington on Wednesday to receive the presidential unit citation – the highest award for heroism given to a military unit – they find the recognition bittersweet....
In late 1967, the members of naval anti-submarine patrol units began receiving orders to report for a special operation.
The 300 officer
Source: BBC
May 23, 2008
The victims of the Irish Famine are to be remembered in an annual official memorial day, which is to be established in the Republic of Ireland.
It is believed that about one million people in Ireland starved in the 1840s after the failure of the potato crop.
Hundreds of thousands of others emigrated during the disaster, sparking a worldwide Irish diaspora.
The Irish government has set up an expert group to organise a yearly event.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 23, 2008
The crumpled ruins of Beichuan, the most seriously damaged major town in the Sichuan earthquake zone, are to be preserved and turned into a museum and memorial.
The local government wants it to become not just a place to remember the 8,600 dead of the town, almost half its population, but somewhere the Chinese people can learn to prevent similar disasters.
After securing the town's collapsed and leaning homes, schools and office blocks, it wants to leave them as they ar
Source: LiveScience
May 21, 2008
Senator Paul Tsongas had a secret when he ran in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary — his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma had returned despite a bone-marrow transplant. Yet Tsongas and his physicians continued to claim he was “cancer-free” and his true medical condition became public only after his campaign folded. Had voters elected him president instead of Bill Clinton, Tsongas would have endured crippling cancer treatments and died in office, as he did just a few years later. “I don’t know if he
Source: AFP
May 22, 2008
High above the world's oldest operating irrigation system, Zhang Shuanggun, a local villager, stands on an observation platform cracked by China's massive earthquake last week.
She has a simple answer for why the ancient, bamboo-based Dujiangyan irrigation system sustained only minor damage, while nearby modern dams and their vast amounts of concrete are now under 24-hour watch for signs of collapse.
"This ancient project is perfection," Zhang said.
Source: BBC
May 22, 2008
The pundits are foretelling hard times at the moment and doing their best to explain why the world economy could be headed for trouble. But imagine a time when people struggled to understand why they were going hungry.
Between 1440 and 1460 England was suffering a late medieval equivalent of the credit crunch.
The country was still recovering from the effects of the Black Death a century earlier. The population had dropped from as much as five million before the plague and it
Source: BBC
May 22, 2008
At one time, chisels would be handed to people visiting Stonehenge, so they could chip away at the ancient monument to get their own souvenirs.
But the practice has been outlawed since 1900, when landowner Sir Edmund Antrobus decided the site needed protecting and introduced charges.
Before then, anyone who visited the site could walk freely among the ancient stones.
Now, the stones are fenced off, with private access allowed only by special arrangement.
Source: Email from Calvin E. Johnson, Jr.
May 22, 2008
HNN received the following announcement from Calvin E. Johnson, Jr. It is self-explanatory.
###
Is the "War Between the States" still taught in our schools?
The Jefferson Davis State Historic Site in Fairview, Kentucky
marks the spot where Jefferson Davis was born on June 3, 1808.
Plans are underway to celebrate Davis' 200th birthday on June 7th
8th, there, in the shadow of a 351-foot monument to Davis.
Earlier,
Source: Huffington Post (Blog)
May 22, 2008
John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of Sen. John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God's behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a "hunter," sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God's will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.
Going in and out of biblical verse, Hagee preached: "'And they the hunters should hunt the
Source: AP
May 21, 2008
Syrian customs officials seized 40 artifacts stolen from the National
Museum in Iraq as they were being smuggled across the border into Syria, state media reported
Wednesday.
The report quoted the chief of the customs department, Nabil al-Sayyouri, as saying the pieces
were seized at al-Tanaf crossing on the Syrian-Iraqi border. They were hidden in a bag carried by
an Iraqi crossing into Syria.
Source: Herald Sun (AU)
May 23, 2008
THE last time they had the chance to offend anyone was 2700 years ago, when they were wandering around ancient Egypt.
Since then, as mummies, they have given little cause for annoyance, spending the last 120 years in a museum where countless thousands of visitors have managed to see them without becoming the least upset.
No longer, it appears.
As a result of complaints, the naked remains of Asru, a chanter at the Temple of Amun in Karnak, the partially wrap
