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: Yahoo News
February 27, 2006
Archaeologists discovered a pharaonic sun temple with large statues believed to be of King Ramses II under an outdoor marketplace in Cairo, Egypt's antiquities chief said Sunday. The partially uncovered site is the largest sun temple ever found in the capital's Aim Shams and Matariya districts, where the ancient city of Heliopolis — the center of pharaonic sun worship — was located, Zahi Hawass told The Associated Press.
Among the artifacts was a pink gran
Source: Washington Post
February 27, 2006
Recently, however, a team of archaeologists reported a breakthrough: the discovery of a skull deep below the flagstones of the 14th-century Frombork Cathedral. Aided by fresh historical research and a high-tech police crime lab, the archaeologists have tentatively concluded that the skull -- that of a man with a broken nose who was approximately 70 years old when he died -- is indeed that of the astronomer.The findings have aroused excitement in Poland, where Copernicu
Source: LAT
February 27, 2006
The Mexican government and military committed "crimes against humanity" through a "scorched-earth" campaign against rural guerrillas in the 1970s, according to a draft report released Sunday of the first official investigation into Mexico's "dirty war" against leftist rebels and activists.The investigation by the country's "Special Prosecutor for Social and Political Movements of the Past" was commissioned by President Vicente Fo
Source: The Irish Times
February 27, 2006
MILOSEVIC TRIAL: Criticising the judicial approach at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic currently taking place in The Hague, a Dutch historian told a conference at Trinity College Dublin there was "no concrete evidence" linking the former Yugoslav president with the July 1995 massacre at Srebrenica in which an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed.Prof Bob de Graaff, who co-authored a report on Srebrenica which brought down the Dutch government in 2002, was add
Source: Financial Times
February 27, 2006
One of the most high-profile and potentially far-reaching copyright cases seen in the English courts recently will start this morning, with two authors of a non-fiction book suing Random House, publisher of Dan Brown's best-seller The Da Vinci Code, over alleged infringement.Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh are claiming that the American author's novel appropriated themes and ideas that they explored in a 1980s work called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
The
Source: eSchool News
February 27, 2006
Through an agreement with the National Archives, Google Inc. has added historic video footage of such events as the Apollo moon landing and Japan's surrender in World War II to its internet search engine. Students, teachers, researchers, and others now can access these digital video clips free of charge through the Google Video search portal.Students and teachers now have free online access to more than 100 historic films, including old World War II newsreels and NASA docume
Source: BBC News
February 27, 2006
Descendants of a Scottish clan have launched a bid to reclaim ownership of a tiny island in Loch Lomond. The Clan MacFarlane Society is worried about the condition of Island I Vow between Tarbet and Ardlui, which was once an ancestral stronghold.
It said the island, which is barely the size of a football pitch, was suffering at the hands of vandals.
But a couple from Bo'ness, who are also Macfarlanes, believe they have the best claim on the island
Source: Washington Times
February 27, 2006
Choked in ivy, its balconies and pillars crumbling, the once-imposing villa looks as if it were abandoned years ago. A curtain twitches. A dark-haired woman wearing sunglasses peers out before whipping it back. She lives in just two rooms of the spacious property and one of those has a hole in the ceiling. The others are uninhabitable owing to damp, mold and broken windows.
There has been no heating for 25 years. Water has to be heated on a stove.
Source: Wa Po
February 27, 2006
Previously unpublished photographs from the civil rights era were discovered in an equipment closet at the Birmingham News and appeared for the first time Sunday in a special section of the newspaper.The cardboard box with thousands of negatives, marked "Keep. Do Not Sell," was discovered in November 2004 by a photo intern, Alexander Cohn, who went through the files and interviewed people in the pictures to help produce the eight-page section, "Unseen. U
Source: NYT
February 25, 2006
The Public Broadcasting Service's plan to show a debate after its documentary in April on the Ottoman Turks' massacres of Armenians has infuriated Armenian-Americans. The debate, which includes two people who deny that the massacre constituted genocide, has ignited an aggressive campaign against the network.This week, United States Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of Pasadena, Calif., whose Southern California district includes parts of the largest ethnic Armeni
Source: NYT
February 25, 2006
From 1996 to 1998, Burt Neuborne represented Holocaust survivors in a historic lawsuit that accused Swiss banks of helping the Nazis loot hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Jewish holdings. His labors helped win a $1.25 billion settlement.A respected civil rights lawyer and law school professor, Mr. Neuborne did the work without asking a fee, and was widely praised for his central role in the case.
Then in 1999, Mr. Neuborne took on an expanded role — as l
Source: chron.com
February 26, 2006
SELMA, ALA. - The Museum of Slavery and Civil Rights plans to offer a new frontier in "experiential tourism" this spring: a day as a slave. "In order to heal, we must embrace the history of slavery here in America," said Afriye We-kandodis, the museum's director.Not everyone is so excited. George Swift steers visitors to the National Voting Rights Museum, but he's not as enthusiastic about its sister attraction.
"Some things
Source: Catholic News Agency
February 22, 2006
A sports writer for the USA Today newspaper is wondering; why has broadcast network NBC neglected any mention of the incredibly famous Shroud of Turin, despite the 2006 Olympics being held in its front yard.In the U.S., NBC has exclusive broadcast rights to the games, making it the primary source for most American’s event coverage.
Michael McCarthy, writing in a column last week, said that in the days of Olympic coverage so far, “NBC (with the except
Source: Yahoo News
February 14, 2006
Ancient Native Americans hunted some species of birds and fish almost to extinction in parts of California, according to research that challenges the Utopian myth that native people always lived in harmony with the land. University of Utah anthropologist Jack Broughton concluded in a paper published this month that California wasn't always a lush Eden before settlers arrived in the 1700s to find an astonishing abundance of wildlife.
Instead, from 2,600 to
Source: Yahoo News
February 19, 2006
St. Louis. This runs counter to the long-held belief that the first human entry into the Americas was a crossing of a land-ice bridge that spanned the Bering Strait about 13,500 years ago. The new thinking was outlined here Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The tools don’t match
Recent studies have suggested that the glaciers that helped form the bridge connecting Siberia
Source: English People's Daily Online
February 21, 2006
Chinese archaeologists said that parts of an instrument to make fire, dating back to 8,000 years ago, have been found in east China's Zhejiang Province. The relics, made of bones and wood, were discovered at the Kuahuqiao Relics Site in Xiaoshan, Zhejiang Province, according to Qianjiang Evening News.
Liu Zhiqing, a retired professor from Zhejiang University, was quoted by the newspaper as saying that the relics were part of an instrument to drill w
Source: CBC News
February 22, 2006
Archaeologists at the Fortress of Louisbourg are scrambling to learn more about a 250-year-old wall exposed in a recent storm.The storm surge laid open an old defence wall and other structures long thought to have been destroyed, and there are fears another storm could destroy them.
"This was originally built in the 1730s," said archeologist Rebecca Duggan, pointing to a newly exposed wall. "The interesting thing is we thought most of this wall h
Source: Yahoo News
February 22, 2006
RALEIGH, N.C. - Authorities are resorting to a risky new method aimed at helping preserve what is believed to be the sunken flagship of the pirate Blackbeard. The Army Corps of Engineers is creating an underwater sand dune to shelter the Queen Anne's Revenge, which sits about 26 feet underwater off the North Carolina coast.
The untried method could potentially damage the ship, which sank in 1718. But if it works, experts said it could be a model for
Source: Times-Picayune
February 24, 2006
DAUPHIN ISLAND, ALA. -- Armed with a short shovel, Glenn Forest crouched in the sand under one of the hundreds of Hurricane Katrina-wrecked homes on this island's west end. He uncovered a section of wooden hull here, a length of iron-ringed mast there -- indications, he said, of a possibly historic 45-foot ship fragment.
Hours earlier, he had stopped a repair crew at the house from breaking up the structure.
"They were going to cut it up and
Source: Archaeology (March-April 2006)
March 1, 2006
Sometime before 600 B.C., a surgeon in the settlement of Abdera on the north coast of the Aegean faced a difficult case. Standing back from his patient, a young woman in her late twenties lying on the table before him, he examined the wound cautiously. Normal practice required that the healer ask how an injury occurred, but here it was clear from the broken flesh and hair matted with blood. A stone or lead missile, hurled from a sling by one of the native Thracians intent on the colony's destruc
