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
November 1, 2010
The ancestors of humans and other primates like apes and monkeys may have originated in Asia, not Africa, a new study in the journal Nature reports.
There has long been debate about the matter, but a recent discovery of anthropoid fossils including two previously unidentified species and one known species provides new clues....
Source: NYT
October 31, 2010
The great waves of plague that twice devastated Europe and changed the course of history had their origins in China, a team of medical geneticists reported Sunday, as did a third plague outbreak that struck less harmfully in the 19th century.
And in separate research, a team of biologists reported conclusively this month that the causative agent of the most deadly plague, the Black Death, was the bacterium known as Yersinia pestis. This agent had always been the favored cause, but a
Source: BBC News
October 31, 2010
A delegation from the British Legion met Adolf Hitler in July 1935, recently uncovered photographs show.
The 148 images were in a swastika-embossed album found by an employee.
They show British veterans of World War I being saluted by Germans, and delegation leader Maj Francis Fetherston-Godley shaking hands with Hitler's deputy Rudolph Hess.
A concentration camp visit was not photographed, but details were included in the Legion's archive.
Leg
Source: BBC News
October 31, 2010
Archaeologists have unearthed a collection of Bronze Age axe heads, spear tips and other 3,000-year-old metal objects buried in an Essex field.
The items include an intact pottery container with heavy contents which has been removed undisturbed.
The materials are now at a local museum where archaeologists hope to uncover new insights into Bronze Age Britain.
"This is a really exciting find," said local archaeologist Laura McLean.
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Source: WaPo
October 31, 2010
NEW YORK -- President John F. Kennedy's aide and speechwriter, Theodore C. Sorensen, a symbol of hope and liberal governance, died at a time of contempt for Washington and political leaders.
Sorensen's passing Sunday came just as supporters of his friend and boss were preparing to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a very different moment in history: The election of Kennedy as president and the speech that remains the greatest collaboration between Sorensen and Kennedy and the standa
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 28, 2010
A 400-year old journal documenting one of England's most notorious witch trials has been "digitised" so that its gory contents can be enjoyed by a wider audience.
The diary - immortalised in the 1968 Vincent Price horror movie The Witchfinder General - tells of how 33 women were branded witches in a trial in the mid-17th century.
The trial was triggered by Matthew Hopkins, an English lawyer appointed by Parliament during the English Civil War to root out sor
Source: Scotsman
October 28, 2010
IT IS a major public sector building project which has been delayed, causing headaches for bosses and the public.
But it is decapitated skeletons and 2000-year-old forts rather than red tape and swelling costs that have caused the hold-up for the new health centre in Musselburgh.
Progress on the site has been delayed by at least six months after significant Roman remains were discovered.
Now architects have revealed the extent of their discoveries, which in
Source: National Geographic News
October 28, 2010
An ancient English cemetery filled with headless skeletons holds proof that the victims lost their heads a long way from home, archaeologists say.
Unearthed between 2004 and 2005 in the northern city of York (map), the 80 skeletons were found in burial grounds used by the Romans throughout the second and third centuries A.D. Almost all the bodies are males, and more than half of them had been decapitated, although many were buried with their detached heads.
York—then ca
Source: The Boston Globe
October 30, 2010
The Tea Party movement is too diverse (and too rowdy) to be easily stereotyped. In fact, the one thing holding it together may be its commitment to history — and to the idea that America has deviated from its constitutional course.
This notion that the Tea Party represents a return to original American values is lodged deep in the movement’s DNA. “If you read our Founding Fathers,” cable commentator Rick Santelli said during the 2009 CNBC segment that first raised the idea of a Tea
Source: BBC
October 30, 2010
Silbury Hill acquired its distinctive shape in more modern times, according to new archaeological evidence.
It is traditionally thought that the hill, with its steep banks and flat top, was conceived and completed in pre-historic times.
But new research presented in a new book suggests the final shape was a late Anglo-Saxon innovation.
The hill, near Avebury in Wiltshire, is Europe's largest man-made prehistoric mound....
Source: CNN
October 30, 2010
Relatives divided since 1953 reunited for the first time Saturday at a South Korean-built tourism resort in North Korea amid tensions between the two sides.
Elderly men in suits and women in traditional Korean silk hanbok dresses sat at numbered tables in a large restaurant,
Many burst into tears; some sat, spoke and exchanged photographs; others simply looked bewildered as they clutched hands and stared into faces unseen for six decades. The relatives have been separat
Source: CHE
October 29, 2010
Some 2,000 years after falling silent, the Babylonian and Assyrian languages of ancient Mesopotamia are echoing again, online.
Want to hear sections of the Codex Hammurabi, the codification from 1790 BC that is one of the world’s oldest set of laws? Or sections of the Gilgamesh Epic, in which the gods instruct the eponymous hero-king to prepare a boat ahead of a great flood, a tale familiar to anyone reared on the Bible? Or how about the “Poem of the Righteous Sufferer,” which prefi
Source: BBC News
October 29, 2010
Ehud Netzer, the Israeli archaeologist credited with discovering the tomb of the biblical King Herod, has died after falling during a dig. He was 76.
The Hebrew University professor died on Thursday from injuries sustained when a railing gave way at the Herodium archaeological site in the West Bank.
Prof Netzer had worked at the Herodium site for more than 30 years before he located King Herod's palace in 2007.
Israel's prime minister released a statement m
Source: BBC News
October 28, 2010
It is 1943, the peak of the Second World War. The place is London. The British War Cabinet is holding meetings on a famine sweeping its troubled colony, India. Millions of natives mainly in eastern Bengal, are starving. Leopold Amery, secretary of state for India, and Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell, soon to be appointed the new viceroy of India, are deliberating how to ship more food to the colony. But the irascible Prime Minister Winston Churchill is coming in their way.
Source: CNN
October 28, 2010
In July, rocker Ozzy Osbourne became one of few to submit his blood to have his full genome sequenced and analyzed.
The results are in, and it turns out his genome reveals some Neanderthal lineage, according to Scientific American.
Osbourne and his wife, Sharon, are expected to discuss the testing and its results testing Friday at the TEDMED 2010 scientific conference in San Diego, California.
In a Sunday Times of London column (registration required), the
Source: AFP
October 28, 2010
Clad in a white linen tunic, sandals in the ancient Carthaginian style and a pendant and beads like those found with his remains, 2,500-year-old "Ariche" has virtually come back to life on the sacred hill of Byrsa where he was born.
The outcome of scientific cooperation between France and Tunisia, the young man has been remodelled and returned to his native soil in historical Carthage, a city state that lasted from 814 B.C. to 146 B.C. He will be given a place of honour in
Source: Digital Journal
October 27, 2010
Police arrested a Bolivian woman who tried to send a Peruvian mummy in a cardboard box to France using regular postal service.
The archaeological piece, probably from the Inca culture, was discovered during a routine inspection at the time it was being shipped through the Post Office of Bolivia in La Paz bound for the French town of Compiegne addressed to a person identified as Annette Huc, said Tuesday police Col. Adolfo Cárdenas, according to El Comercio de Lima (in Spanish).
Source: AP
October 26, 2010
An Armenian archaeologist says that scientists have discovered a skirt that could be 5,900-year-old.
Pavel Avetisian, the head of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography in Yerevan, said a fragment of skirt made of reed was found during recent digging in the Areni-1 cave in southeastern Armenia. Avetisian told Tuesday's news conference in the Armenian capital that the find could be one of the world's oldest piece of reed clothing.
Earlier excavation in the same lo
Source: BBC
January 28, 2010
The Serbian government has raised to 10m euros (£8.7m, $13.8m) its reward for information leading to the capture of war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic.
It said that by raising the reward tenfold it showed a clear commitment to removing the final obstacle to Serbia's entry into the European Union.
Gen Mladic is accused by international prosecutors of genocide while leading Bosnian Serb forces in 1992-95.
The reward for the capture of Croatian Serb leader Goran
Source: BBC
October 27, 2010
A North Carolina state legislator says he supports the military, but a flyer prepared by his campaign could lead some to question which country's.
Democrat Tim Spear's campaign has apologised after inadvertently sending voters a leaflet showing actors in World War II-era German uniforms.
The firm that produced the advert touting his support for the military has accepted blame, US media reported.
The state Republican Party obtained the flyer and distributed
