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: BBC
June 20, 2006
The Britons of 250,000 years ago were a good deal more sophisticated than they are sometimes given credit for, new archaeological evidence suggests.
It comes in the form of giant flint handaxes that have been unearthed at a site at Cuxton in Kent.
The tools display exquisite, almost flamboyant, workmanship not associated with this period until now.
Source: Japan Times
June 20, 2006
Japan's foreign minister, Taro Aso, will this week receive an appeal to his "honor and decency" in the repayment of a small family debt more than 60 years old.
The request comes in a personal letter from Australian nurse Marilyn Caruana on behalf of her father, John William Hall, now 87, and formerly employed by Aso's father, Takakichi, as forced labor while a prisoner of war at the family coal mine in Kyushu in 1945. The debt is Hall's unpaid wages.
He was on
Source: NYT
June 20, 2006
The names of the dead would be inscribed above ground, not around the pools below, as many of their relatives have demanded. But roaring waterfalls would still cascade into the pools, at the bottom of two enormous voids reflecting the absence of the twin towers.
The reconceived World Trade Center memorial and museum, unveiled today after weeks of anxious anticipation, tries to solve security problems, placate disaffected family members and, most of all, bring the project close to th
Source: NYT
June 18, 2006
THE HAGUE — Among the unfinished business left by the death of Slobodan Milosevic is the central question of whether he was guilty, as charged, of genocide in Bosnia.But while his death brought a sudden end to his trial at the United Nations war crimes tribunal, the genocide issue may well be decided by another United Nations court based in The Hague: the International Court of Justice.
That court, also known as the World Court, has recently finished
Source: The Toronto Star
June 20, 2006
Calcutta References to the beef-eating past of ancient Hindus have been deleted from Indian school textbooks following a three-year campaign by Hindu hardliners.
For almost a century, history books for primary and middle schools told how in ancient India, beef was considered a great delicacy among Hindus - especially among the highest caste - and how veal was offered to Hindu deities during special rituals."Our past" chapters in the texts also detailed
Source: Wa Po
June 19, 2006
Barbara Epstein, a founding editor of the New York Review of Books, a journal of ideas that has helped define intellectual discourse in the English-speaking world for the past four decades, died June 16 of lung cancer at her Manhattan apartment. She was 77.
With her co-editor, Robert Silvers, Ms. Epstein edited the biweekly Review since its founding in 1963. With their connections in the highest reaches of academia, arts and letters, they recruited a glittering cast of intellectual
Source: Ottawa Citizen
June 19, 2006
Reality TV doesn't have to be unreal or unpleasant to watch -- even in the summer silly season.
History Detectives, PBS's cross between Antiques Roadshow and The Da Vinci Code, returns with a new season tonight, and not a moment too soon.
This season's upcoming investigations include a character in Parkersburg, West Virginia who owns what could be one of the first known examples of Coca-Cola advertising, and a man in Chicago who notices the material he is using for roof
Source: LAT
June 19, 2006
A new alliance is about to give the sometimes unappreciated field of California and Western history a boost, scholars say.
This contemporary peace accord is not among political parties, ethnic groups or water rights claimants who have squabbled in the region's past.
Instead it involves three highly regarded -- and relatively new -- academic institutes cooperating to advance the study of a legacy stretching from before the 16th century forays of Spanish conquistadors int
Source: Australian
June 20, 2006
IT stands, overgrown with weeds, in a corner of the neglected grounds of St John's Church in Calcutta, a 15m-high obelisk commemorating an infamous event that took place 250 years ago today -- if it happened at all.
Generations of wide-eyed English schoolboys have been brought up on the story of the Black Hole of Calcutta, of how 123 British men, women and children perished in a cramped and stifling dungeon deep in the bowels of Fort William after the camp was captured by the Nawab
Source: NYT
June 19, 2006
CHÂTEL-CHÉHÉRY, France — On Oct. 8, 1918, Cpl. Alvin Cullum York and 16 other American doughboys stumbled upon more than a dozen German soldiers having breakfast in a boggy hollow here.
The ensuing firefight ended with the surrender of 132 Germans and won Corporal York a promotion to sergeant, the Congressional Medal of Honor and a place in America's pantheon of war heroes.
Now another battle is unfolding as rival researchers use global positioning systems and computer
Source: NYT
June 18, 2006
WHEN an Iraqi insurgent group releases a new videotape or claims responsibility for an attack, Western reporters in Baghdad rarely hear about it firsthand. Nor do they usually get the news from their in-house Iraqi translators.
Instead, a reporter often receives an e-mailed alert from a highly caffeinated terrorism monitor sitting at a computer screen somewhere on the East Coast. Within hours, a constellation of other Middle East analysts has sent out interpretations — some of them
Source: NYT
June 19, 2006
For years, a small band of researchers at the New York Public Library has been tackling questions from young and old, the clueless and the haughty, the vexed and the unvexed, reducing life's infinite jumble to an answer, more or less.
Today, despite the Internet, the eight women and two men of what is known as the telephone reference service are still at it. Every day, except Sundays and holidays, between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., anyone, of any age, from anywhere can telephone (212) 340-
Source: NYT
June 17, 2006
Hoping for leniency in a coming trial, an accused tomb robber led Italian officials two weeks ago to a startling discovery on a sun-scorched hilltop here: the oldest Etruscan burial chamber ever found.
The tomb, dating from at least the seventh century B.C., was shown on Friday to reporters who were taken by bus to the site, less than 13 miles north of Rome. For now, archaeologists have named it the Tomb of the Roaring Lions, after the childlike representations of growling quadruped
Source: NYT
June 17, 2006
Construction of a long-delayed and reduced memorial to the victims of the Columbine High School shootings began on Friday in a quiet spot between two hills in a park where students took refuge as chaos descended on April 20, 1999.
Alex Dudik, who was a senior that year, returned for the groundbreaking near here and a speech by former President Bill Clinton to commemorate the attack.
The plans for a memorial — an inner wall for the 13 murder victims, and an outer circle
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 19, 2006
A unique Anglo-Saxon sword has been discovered in an old suitcase in the attic of the archeologist who unearthed it nearly 50 years ago. The seventh century "pattern-welded" Bamburgh Sword, which was forged for a king, narrowly avoided being dumped in a skip by workers who were clearing the house of the archeologist and broadcaster Brian Hope-Taylor after his death.
Source: NYT
June 19, 2006
A dazzling gold-flecked 1907 portrait by Gustav Klimt has been purchased for the Neue Galerie in Manhattan by the cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder for $135 million, the highest sum ever paid for a painting.
The portrait, of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of a Jewish sugar industrialist and the hostess of a prominent Vienna salon, is considered one of the artist's masterpieces. For years, it was the focus of a restitution battle between the Austrian government and a niece of Mrs. Bloc
Source: AP
June 19, 2006
Former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, who was a close aide to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., and Mayor Shirley Franklin are working to raise enough money to buy King's personal papers and keep them in the city.The collection, which includes papers, manuscripts and King's personal library, will be auctioned June 30 at Sotheby's in New York for the King family. Sotheby's expects it to sell for $15 million to $30 million.
"I've been talking to a lot
Source: Washington Times
June 19, 2006
The J. Paul Getty Trust has concluded that it bought 350 ancient artifacts from dealers suspected or convicted of trading in looted artifacts, but it has not informed Italian authorities contesting the trust's ownership of dozens of other items, a newspaper reported.
The internal review last year found that the 350 items in the Getty's antiquities collection, including Greek, Roman and Etruscan artifacts, were valued at about $100 million, the Los Angeles Times reported for yeste
Source: BBC
June 17, 2006
Farm contractors have unearthed 2,000 Roman coins beneath a field at a farm near Carmarthen.
The coins, which date from late Roman times, have been categorised as "treasure".
The exact location of the discovery is being kept secret to protect the site from treasure hunters. The HM Coroner has been informed.
The coins are thought to have been lying just 12 inches beneath the surface of a field.
The Romans left Wales in 410AD, having firs
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
June 18, 2006
Some guys give their wives jewelry or flowers. Ralph Regula gave his wife a national park.
Regula, a Republican congressman from Ohio, is a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee. In 2000, his subcommittee created the First Ladies National Historic Site in his district in Canton, Ohio.
Regula's wife, Mary, is the founding president of the nonprofit National First Ladies' Library, which operates the historic site for the National Park Service. She draws no s
