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: NYT
April 10, 2006
One of the many unexpected things about the small graveyard here where Xi Qingsheng buried his mother during the mayhem of the Cultural Revolution is that it still exists.
The rusted front gate, locked for many years, opens into a walled cemetery that amounts to a time capsule from an era the Communist Party wants to forget. Revolutionary slogans, long since discredited, are etched onto huge, ornate tombstones, including the large concrete marker that Mr. Xi built for his mother whe
Source: BBC
April 10, 2006
A man digging his back garden in Cardiff uncovered Roman pottery, which has prompted months of excavation. The find at the house on the Pentrebane estate is the first evidence of Roman activity in this part of the city.
Archaeologists have so far uncovered 300 pieces of pottery shards which they believe date back nearly 2,000 years and could be a manufacturing site.
Source: outlookindia.com
April 17, 2006
The economy in this small, nondescript pocket of rural Bengal is booming. And not due to a miraculous leap in agricultural yield but the highly lucrative business of smuggling priceless antiques, including ivory and gold objects, and exquisite terracotta art, out of the country.
Located 40 kilometres northwest of Calcutta and spread over about four square miles, Chandraketugarh is a treasure trove of antiques, some dating back to 650 BC. These are being dug up by avaricious locals w
Source: Sun-Sentinel (Fl)
April 10, 2006
These are the shipwrecks whose remains lie scattered like busted skeletons on the sea floor off South Florida. In Broward County, officials aim to locate and chart their number, which they say could top 30, but any treasure they tally will be in terms of the wrecks' cultural, historical and recreational value.
"You've got a whole cross-section of Florida maritime history out there off the beach," said state underwater archaeologist Roger Smith. "There's anything from
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
April 10, 2006
Descendants of 17th century Virginia pioneers joined with British officials Monday to mark the anniversary of the Virginia Charter, which created a company that started the first permanent English settlement in North America four centuries ago.The London Virginia Company in 1606 sent out settlers who landed the following year along the James River on the coast of Virginia. The settlement barely survived Indian raids, disease and severe food shortages, but managed to endure.
Source: Independent (UK)
April 10, 2006
A French artist and art historian claims to have cracked the real Da Vinci code - the mystery of how Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa. Jacques Franck - a controversial figure but an acknowledged authority on Leonardo da Vinci - believes he has solved a conundrum which has defeated art experts for almost 500 years. In The Da Vinci Code, the best-selling thriller by Dan Brown, the Mona Lisa is said to contain clues to a 2,000-year-old conspiracy to deny the real character of Jes
Source: BBC
April 8, 2006
Next week sees the 61st anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, the first of the Nazi death camps to be reached by British and American troops at the end of World War II.
During the last few months, Andrew Joynes has been piecing together the story of one man who survived the camp and whose story is now being told at the new memorial centre at Belsen.
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
April 10, 2006
For 66 years, two murals depicting the lynching of an American Indian have hung in a now-abandoned county courthouse in Idaho's capital, monuments to prevailing attitudes that once dominated the West but today have become uncomfortable reminders of America's expansion to the Pacific Ocean.Starting in 2008, the Idaho Legislature plans to meet in the courthouse as its century-old Statehouse undergoes a $115 million revamp.
Historic preservationists say they'll fig
Source: BBC News
April 9, 2006
The Indian Air Force (IAF) has announced it will retire its fleet of MiG 25s, Cold War-era spyplanes, previously shrouded in secrecy.
A spokesman said the last of the IAF's four surviving MiG-25s will be phased out of service on 1 May.
The MiGs, capable of flying at over three times the speed of sound, were bought from the USSR in 1981.
Source: National Geographic News
April 10, 2006
Around 1479 B.C. King Hatshepsut guided Egypt through 20 years of peace, prosperity, and artistic expression. But there's a twist: Hatshepsut was a woman.
"She's the most significant female ruler in ancient Egypt," said Catharine Roehrig, an Egyptologist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Some of the fruits of Hatshepsut's prosperous reign—statues, jewelry, papyrus, and more—make up a recently opened traveling exhibition at the Met through J
Source: news.telegraph (UK)
April 10, 2006
The strange mixture of joy and grief that marks a traditional Irish funeral, with its week-long drink-fuelled wake, is under threat from a European directive.The Irish custom that sees corpses kept in an open coffin so the deceased can be viewed during the wake has been endangered by an edict issued by Stavros Dimas, the EU environment commissioner.
He wants chemicals used by embalmers to preserve the cadaver withdrawn under a new biocides directive.
Source: CNN
April 10, 2006
Most cities would be happy to open a multimillion-dollar museum for art, history or science once a decade. Beijing has just unveiled two.The Beijing Capital Museum, in a sleek building with an airy foyer soaring five stories high, features exhibits that include a full-scale copy of one of the city's old residential lanes.
The Museum of Chinese Film, which visitors enter through a star-shaped front door, showcases a century of cinema history from Chin
Source: NYT
April 9, 2006
IN churches around the world today, Christians will hear the familiar story of Christ's Passion that begins Holy Week: the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the betrayal at the hands of Judas Iscariot, the death on the cross.
But in the publication last week of what is described as an ancient text called the Gospel of Judas, Judas is portrayed not as the treacherous apostle but rather as a hero of the Easter story who helps fulfill salvation history by betraying his beloved Jesus at
Source: Reuters
April 9, 2006
Pope Benedict XVI will visit the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz next month, the Vatican said Saturday, confirming his trip to Poland from May 25 to 28.
The pope will also visit Wadowice, the birthplace of the late John Paul II, as well as Krakow, the southern Polish city where John Paul served as archbishop before becoming pope in 1978.
Source: CNN
April 7, 2006
Welcome to the world of the Beatles, Geoff Emerick.
Emerick managed to fulfill Lennon's request (he ran the Beatle's voice through a Leslie, an amp with two spinning speakers) on what became "Tomorrow Never Knows." Over the next few years, he was Martin's right-hand man for the majority of Beatles recordings, including "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Abbey Road."
He recalls his adventures with the group -- and his participation
Source: Press Release--UNC
March 31, 2006
New Discoveries Point to "Cave of John the Baptist" as Important Site in the Time of Isaiah Recently completed digging at Israel's Suba Cave, an archaeological site that is possibly connected with John the Baptist, or Jewish groups of his time has revealed features that deepen the mystery of the site's ancient origins, according to University of North Carolina at Charlotte archaeologist James D. Tabor, associate director of the excavation.
Source: Yahoo News
April 7, 2006
Nazi Germany planned to expand the extermination of Jews beyond the borders of Europe and into British-controlled Palestine during World War Two, two German historians say. In 1942, the Nazis created a special "Einsatzgruppe," a mobile SS death squad, which was to carry out the mass slaughter of Jews in Palestine similar to the way they operated in eastern Europe, the historians argue in a new study.
The director of the Nazi research center in L
Source: West Yorkshire Police
July 8, 2006
A 300-year-old book that appears to be bound in human skin has been found in northern England, police said Saturday.The macabre discovery was made on a central street in Leeds, and officers said the ledger may have been dumped following a burglary.Detectives were trying to trace its rightful owner and believe it may have been taken from a dwelling in the area.
Much of the text is in French, and it was not uncommon around the time of the French Revolution f
Source: NYT
April 7, 2006
Rudolf Vrba, who as a young man escaped from Auschwitz and provided the first eyewitness evidence not only of the magnitude of the tragedy unfolding at the death camp but also of the exact mechanics of Nazi mass extermination, died on March 27 at a hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was 81.His wife, Robin, said he died of cancer.
After the war Dr. Vrba went on to become a distinguished medical researcher in Israel, Britain, the United States and Canada,
Source: NYT
April 7, 2006
Man's first known trip to the dentist occurred as early as 9,000 years ago, when at least nine people living in a Neolithic village in present-day Pakistan had holes drilled into their molars and survived the procedure, anthropologists reported yesterday.
The findings, which appear in the journal Nature, push back the dawn of dentistry by 4,000 years. The drilled molars, 11 in all, come from a sample of 300 individuals buried in graves at the Mehrgarh site in western Pakistan, belie
