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
September 11, 2010
Modern military wives typically don't ship out alongside their husbands, but the young wife of a British naval officer did just that during the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century. Now a historian who tracked down 40 unpublished volumes of her diaries has gotten the go-ahead to write a book investigating her life.
Elizabeth "Betsey" Wynne accompanied her husband aboard his warship during a disastrous British assault on the Spanish Canary Islands. She spent the voyage home-
Source: BBC News
September 13, 2010
The German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, introduced the world's first state pension system in the 1880s.
You had to be 70 years old - and the expectation was that you would probably only live a few years after that to collect it. But in 1916, they lowered the pensionable age to 65.
It has remained at 65 for almost a century and it will take a brave government to juggle with the political sensitivity of raising that age again.
"It is a part of our poli
Source: BBC News
September 13, 2010
People who were still developing in the womb at the time of severe World War II food shortages did worse than others of similar ages at mental tests almost 60 years later, researchers say.
Scientists, writing in the PNAS journal, said the 1944 Dutch "famine" may have accelerated brain ageing.
They studied nearly 300 adults who had been foetuses at the time.
UK experts said even severe morning sickness was unlikely to cause a similar level of malnu
Source: Maryland AP News
September 13, 2010
A piece of Civil War literary history is for sale in Frederick. The Barbara Fritchie House is on the market with an asking price of $185,000. The two-story, red-brick structure is a replica of the house from which the 90-something widow defiantly waved a Union flag at Confederate General Stonewall Jackson in John Greenleaf Whittier's poem....UPDATE: As of May 2011, neither the Barabara Fritchie House nor the museum are currently for sale.
Source: Independent (UK)
September 12, 2010
Plans by the energy giant BP to sink an oil well off the Libyan coast could have disastrous consequences for the region's rich heritage of coastal ancient city sites and shipwrecks – already under threat from oil tankers, coastal erosion and tourist developments – archaeologists from around the world have warned.
The energy company has been under increased scrutiny following the leak from its well in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year which spewed oil for three months in the world
Source: Independent (UK)
September 6, 2010
The most important aspect of human evolution was facilitated not by Darwinian-style natural selection but by a crucial technological device invented by early Stone Age women, shows research by a leading British prehistorian.
Timothy Taylor of Bradford University claims that increased brain size was made possible by the invention of the baby sling, a development which enabled slower growing, physically and mentally immature offspring to survive and flourish....
Source: Bloomberg News
September 13, 2010
Russian scientists found the remains of Emperor Ivan VI in the village of Kholmogory in the northern Arkhangelsk region, Interfax reported, citing Anatoly Karanin, head of the archaelogical team that made the discovery.
Karanin said the likelihood that the remains are genuine is “extremely high,” the Moscow-based news service reported today....
Source: Daily Progress
September 12, 2010
Thomas Jefferson is known as one of the great architects of independence, but largely out of sight of his esteemed guests at Monticello was a world of enslavement, which archaeologists are gradually bringing to life through excavations.
“We want to be able to show what life was like then,” said Thomas Jefferson Foundation spokeswoman Lisa Stites, adding that a true picture would show the world of Jefferson’s slaves. Jefferson had as many as 200 slaves at any given time.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 14, 2010
She died alone, with no known relatives to attend her funeral, but Eileen Nearne had a remarkable secret.
She once lived a daring life as a secret agent for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Nazi-occupied France in the Second World War.
Although she will be given a simple funeral next week, organised by her local council, she has been described as an unsung heroine of the war, serving as a radio operator, under the codename Rose....
Source: AP
September 13, 2010
Pope Benedict XVI will break his own rule this weekend when he beatifies Cardinal John Henry Newman, the renowned 19th Century Anglican convert who greatly influenced the Roman Catholic Church.
Newman remains a complicated figure within the Anglican church he abandoned, and the pope's glorification of him during a state visit to Britain could unleash new tensions between churches already divided over issues like the ordination of women and gay bishops.
Benedict will mov
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 13, 2010
An ally of Angela Merkel who was criticised for implying Poland was jointly to blame for the outbreak of the Second World War is to resign from her party’s leadership.
Erika Steinbach, who heads a league representing the 12.5 million Germans expelled from eastern Europe after the war, had come under fire in her own Christian Democratic (CDU) party for saying Poland mobilised its armed forces before Germany did.
Claiming that she had become an “alibi” as Mrs Merkel’s par
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 13, 2010
Members of a record-breaking group of factory workers whose exploits were made into a Second World War propaganda film have been reunited.
The group, who made RAF Wellington bombers at a factory in Broughton, North Wales, were filmed as they built a plane from scratch in just under 24 hours - beating the record set by the Americans by more than a day.
The 12-minute film, complete with an American voice-over, was shown in the US to prove to North American audiences that
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 9, 2010
According to a new book on the famine, Sir Winston ignored pleas for emergency food aid for millions in Bengal left to starve as their rice paddies were turned over to jute for sandbag production and supplies of rice from Burma stopped after Japanese occupation.
Between one and three million died of hunger in 1943.
The wartime leader said Britain could not spare the ships to transport emergency supplies as the streets of Calcutta filled with emaciated villagers from the su
Source: Kansas City Star
September 9, 2010
Federal officials have approved a regional Civil War commemorative plan.
The proposal, drafted by local organizers of the Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area, seeks to showcase the local conflicts that preceded the larger war. It recently received U.S. Interior Department sanction.
The federal district, established in 2006, now is entitled to apply for additional funds.
Organizers want to use the money to coordinate events interpreting the border war
Source: PennLive.com
September 12, 2010
Gettysburg will forever be linked to confrontation. And unfortunately, the Civil War was just the beginning.
Forget about the casino debate for a moment to consider the quandary Gettysburg National Military Park officials continue to face regarding the future of the old Cyclorama Center just off Taneytown Road....
...When officials geared up to tear down the concrete 1962 building this year, a flag was thrown....
Source: WV Gazette
September 9, 2010
The Sierra Club, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC), Friends of Blair Mountain and the West Virginia Labor History Association filed a legal challenge today to reverse the decision by the National Park Service to remove the Blair Mountain Battlefield from the National Register of Historic Places. Filed in federal district court in Washington, D.C., the lawsuit alleges that the decision to delist Blair Mountain—the site of a famous 1921 battle in Logan County, West Virginia, involving
Source: Athens News Agency
September 12, 2010
A scientific paper published in the "International Journal of Medical Science" by prominent researchers of Bristol, Manchester and Oxford universities has questioned claims that an ancient tomb found in Vergina in northern Greece contains the remains of Philip III Arrhidaios, half-brother of Alexander the Great.
According to the paper published on Sept. 8, the skull of the male body in the tomb bears marks of injuries consistent with those known to have occured to Alex
Source: National Parks Traveler
September 10, 2010
Slightly more than a year after it was announced, National Park Service officials finalized a deal Friday to have the Museum of the American Revolution rise within the grounds of Independence National Historical Park, not within Valley Forge National Historical Park.
In a meeting in Philadelphia, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, and American Revolution Center Chair H.F. (Gerry) Lenfest formalized the land exc
Source: Guardian (UK)
September 13, 2010
There will be a rare chance this week to compare two famous portraits of Queen Elizabeth I as they are displayed together for the first time in 25 years, after art detective work proved both were painted on timber from the same two oak trees, in the same studio and almost certainly by the Tudor genius Nicholas Hilliard.
The two paintings, which show the queen magnificently dressed and festooned with pearls and gold chains, are known as the Phoenix and the Pelican portraits, after th
Source: AP
September 11, 2010
For nearly three centuries after the Reformation, Catholics in England were outlaws.
But in the turmoil and persecution that followed the break between King Henry VIII and Rome, noble families such as the Stonors clung to their faith, "in spite of dungeon, fire and sword," as the Victorian hymn "Faith of our Fathers" put it.
"We're just stubborn, really," says Ralph Thomas Campion Stonor, the seventh Lord Camoys, a title bestowed on an ance
