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 News
February 14, 2006
A County Antrim man who helped discover an intact Egyptian tomb has said he was privileged to be involved in the find. Alistair Dickey, 26, from Broughshane, was part of the University of Memphis-led team which found the tomb and five mummies.
It was the first intact tomb to be found in the Valley of the Kings since Tutankhamun's in 1922.
"The first half hour after we found it, we actually saw into the chamber - the whole team was on cloud ni
Source: Harut Sassounian in California Courier
February 7, 2006
PBS is planning to air immediately after the April 17 broadcast of Andrew Goldberg's "The Armenian Genocide" documentary, a 25-minute long panel discussion that includes two genocide deniers, Asbarez reported last week. A petition is now circulating to protest PBS's plan. Goldberg told this writer that he did not agree with the PBS decision to hold a panel discussion on the Armenian Genocide. &quo
Source: Paradosis Blog
February 8, 2006
Gregory Pappy Boyington, a graduate of the Univeristy of Washington (went to High School in Tacoma), winner of the medal of honor, who shot down 28 enemy aircraft and was a prisoner of war for 20 months, has been refused a memorial by the student senate. Apparently he "is not the type of person we want to honor" and some even went so far as to liken his duty in WW2 to murder. One of the biggest antagonists of the proposal was apparently the leader of the student D
Source: NYT
February 14, 2006
A small tablet in a special display this month in the Istanbul Museum of the Ancient Orient is thought to be the oldest love poem ever found, the words of a lover from more than 4,000 years ago. The ancient Sumerian tablet was unearthed in the late 1880's in Nippur, a region in what is now Iraq, and had been resting quietly in a modest corner of the museum until it was brought back to the limelight this year by a company that made it part of a Valentine's Day promotion
Source: NYT
February 14, 2006
All told, almost half of American presidents from 1789 to 1974 had suffered from a mental illness at some point in life, according to a recent analysis of biographical sources by psychiatrists at Duke University Medical Center. And more than half of those presidents, the study found, struggled with their symptoms — most often depression — while in office. "What is hopeful about this is that it is evidence that people can suffer from depression or other mental problems a
Source: WGMS (Washington D.C.)
February 14, 2006
A Dutch expert has confirmed that two paintings, part of Warsaw's royal palace collection, are authentic works by the famous 17th-century artist Rembrandt, a Polish art official said on Tuesday. The conclusion reached by the expert, Ernst van den Wetering, puts an end to the uproar over whether they were genuine works by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), which art historians have been insisting on since 1969.
"Polish art historians, convinc
Source: Reuters
February 14, 2006
Key documents and historical treasures relating to the turbulent birth of modern Ireland are due to go under the hammer later this year in what has been billed as "the Irish sale of the century".Scheduled for mid-April to coincide with the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, when Irish rebels staged an ill-fated insurrection against British rule, the auction will comprise nearly 500 lots, many of them previously unseen.
The star attractio
Source: Inside Higher Education
February 13, 2006
New book names the "101 most dangerous academics in America." Some included feel honored, and others see McCarthyism.Caroline Higgins is 66 years old, and at 5’2” she’s not a daunting figure. Walking on the Earlham College campus last week, she ran into one of her students, a football player who very much towers over her. She mentioned that she was about to be named to a list of the “101 most dangerous academics in America.”
Higgins said that her
Source: NYT
February 13, 2006
People everywhere wish they could be proud of every bit of their countries' histories. But honest people understand that's impossible, and wise people appreciate the positive value of acknowledging and learning from painful truths about past misdeeds. Then there is Japan's new foreign minister, Taro Aso, who has been neither honest nor wise in the inflammatory statements he has been making about Japan's disastrous era of militarism, colonialism and war crimes that culminated in the Second World
Source: NYT
February 13, 2006
Dave Tatsuno, a Japanese-American businessman and amateur filmmaker whose home movies, shot in secret in the 1940's, offer a rare documentary portrait of life in an American internment camp during World War II, died on Jan. 26 at his home in San Jose, Calif. He was 92.In 1942, Mr. Tatsuno and his family were interned at the Topaz Relocation Center in the Utah desert. Over the next three years, shooting covertly with a contraband camera, he recorded everyday life in his dust-
Source: CBS News
February 13, 2006
At 68 years old, Beatrice Goodwin wants to know where she came from, reports CBS News correspondent Trish Regan. Her grandfather, Clarence Tilley, was born in Portsmouth, N.H., in 1870, and she can trace her family as far back as her great-grandmother, who died the day Beatrice was born. "I think sometimes the older you get, the more interested you get in who you are or who you were, where you came from," says Beatrice.
Now, a recent discovery i
Source: Yahoo News
February 13, 2006
A team of scientists hopes to crack one of the layers of mystery surrounding 15th-century French heroine Joan of Arc: Could a rib and other fragments recovered after she was burned at the stake be hers? Eighteen experts plan a battery of tests to determine whether the few remains reportedly recovered from the pyre where the 19-year-old was burned alive for heresy — including a rib bone and some skin — really could have belonged to her.
The woman warrior-tu
Source: Washington Times
February 11, 2006
Former President Jimmy Carter, who publicly rebuked President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program this week during the funeral of Coretta Scott King and at a campaign event, used similar surveillance against suspected spies. "Under the Bush administration, there's been a disgraceful and illegal decision -- we're not going to the let the judges or the Congress or anyone else know that we're spying on the American people," Mr. Carter said Monday in Nevada
Source: CBS
February 11, 2006
A red-faced auction house was forced to withdraw a letter it believed was written and signed by the late President Ronald Reagan while he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease after it discovered it was a forgery. The autographed letter was supposed to be auctioned off this month, but Bill Panagopulos, president of Alexander Autographs in Greenwich, Conn., told CBSNews.com the letter was withdrawn after the forger came forward and admitted his handiwork.
Source: Press Release--African American Heritage Preservation Foundation, Inc.
February 13, 2006
The Virginia Historic Resources Board has approved a new historic highway marker in Prince Edward County, Virginia. The Board meeting was held in June 2005 and voted to authorize a marker to commemorate the birthplace of United States Senator Blanche Kelso Bruce.A dedication ceremony will be held on March 1, 2006 at 12 p.m. for the unveiling of this historical highway marker on the 165th birthday of Senator Bruce. This historical highway marker will be unveiled at the
Source: Smithsonian Institution
December 31, 2069
The 2006 National Conference on Cultural Property Protection will be conducted at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, VA, from February 26 to March 1, 2006. Included: presentations by Bonnie Magness-Gardiner and Matthew Bogdanos.
Source: BBC News
February 12, 2006
A stone which will form part of a Falklands War memorial arrived in Brecon on Sunday after an 8,500 mile journey from the south Atlantic. The five-tonne rock is a gift from the people of the Falklands to Welsh veterans of the 1982 conflict.
On Sunday it was transported on the last leg of the journey by part-time soldiers from a TA regiment.
It is hoped the stone will form the centrepiece of a veterans' memorial to mark the 25th anniversary of the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 13, 2006
The future of heritage railways is being threatened by new safety requirements, according to steam enthusiasts.Under Health and Safety Executive regulations, volunteers could have to pay bills running into thousands of pounds to keep their cherished schemes alive.
"Many of us feel that nothing would make safety authorities happier than to see us all closed down," David Morgan, the chairman of the Heritage Railway Association," told The Daily Teleg
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 13, 2006
Statues sacred to secretive Kenyan tribes are no longer being erected to mark the deaths of revered elders because corrupt middlemen contracted by Western art dealers are stealing them as soon as they are installed.Hundreds of "vigango" totems have been looted from rural homesteads near Kenya's coast, home to the Mijikenda tribes about which little is known.
The 4ft wooden statues, carved with triangular etchings and believed to incarnate t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 13, 2006
The final masterpiece of the world's greatest clockmaker is to be put through its paces at last, 230 years after it was finished, to see if it fulfils its maker's specifications.The priceless Late Regulator clock took John Harrison, the pioneer of longitude, 36 years to build and he was still calibrating it when he died at his home in London on March 24, 1776, his 83rd birthday.
Harrison believed that the Late Regulator would vary by only a second ev
