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
September 1, 2010
A lonely island in the middle of the South Atlantic conceals Charles Darwin's best-kept secret.
Two hundred years ago, Ascension Island was a barren volcanic edifice.
Today, its peaks are covered by lush tropical "cloud forest".
What happened in the interim is the amazing story of how the architect of evolution, Kew Gardens and the Royal Navy conspired to build a fully functioning, but totally artificial ecosystem.
By a bizarre twist,
Source: Fox News
September 2, 2010
Physics was the reason for the Big Bang, not God, according to scientist Stephen Hawking.
"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," the professor said in his new book, in a challenge to traditional religious beliefs.
"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going," he wrote in his book "The Grand Design," extracts of which are printed in Londo
Source: BBC
September 1, 2010
Thieves have targeted a historically important submarine wreck lying in the English Channel, it has emerged.
English Heritage said divers stole the torpedo tube hatch of the Holland 5, which sank six miles off Eastbourne in East Sussex in 1912.
The theft was discovered during a licensed dive by the Nautical Archaeology Society (NAS) in June and confirmed during a dive last month.
Sussex Police and English Heritage have appealed for help to catch the perpetr
Source: The Canadian Press
September 1, 2010
Archaeologists in Jordan have unearthed a 3,000-year-old Iron Age temple with a trove of figurines of ancient deities and circular clay vessels used for religious rituals, officials said Wednesday.
The head of the Jordanian Antiquities Department, Ziad al-Saad, said the sanctuary dates to the eighth century B.C. and was discovered at Khirbat 'Ataroz near the town of Mabada, some 20 miles (32 kilometres) southwest of the capital Amman.
The sanctuary and its artifacts — h
Source: BBC
September 1, 2010
The remains of a huge 12,000 year old feast have been found in a cave in Northern Israel.
Archaeologists working in Hilazon Tachtit found what they thought was a late Palaeolithic campsite, when they discovered tools and animal bones.
However they soon realised they were looking at a large burial site, with huge numbers of animal bones.
They found the remains of at least three aurochs - giant extinct cattle - and over 70 tortoise skeletons....
Source: BBC
September 1, 2010
A 75-year-old Surrey woman cleared out her attic and found two paintings that could fetch up to £30,000 at auction.
The woman decided she wanted to throw the oil paintings away, but first went to her neighbour Spencer Wright to ask how to dispose of them.
Mr Wright said he realised they should not be consigned to the bin, and used an iPhone app to contact Christie's.
The artworks were painted in 1904 to celebrate the founding of the Australian army by Major
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 1, 2010
A New York art courier entrusted with helping to sell a $1.3 million (£850,000) painting is being sued after it vanished while he was on a night out.
James Carl Haggerty is now being sued by one of the owners of “Portrait of a Girl” by the French artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.
Owner Kristyn Trudgeon is suing for the value of the painting, which was completed in about 1857 and spent years at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles....
Source: CNN
September 1, 2010
Former U.S. President George W. Bush was a "true idealist" who displayed "genuine integrity and political courage," former British prime minister Tony Blair reveals in his memoirs.
Detailing the close professional and personal relationship which developed between the two leaders in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks in the U.S. and during the build-up to the Iraq war in 2003, Blair writes that Bush was "very smart" while having "immense simplicity
Source: CNN
September 1, 2010
Divers are recovering bottles of champagne that have been lying at the bottom of the Baltic Sea for about two centuries, an autonomous Finnish island official said Wednesday.
About 70 bottles lie mostly undamaged at 50 meters deep [roughly 164 feet] south of the Aland Islands.
Juslin said that the cargo was aboard a ship believed to be heading from Copenhagen, Denmark, to St Petersburg, Russia, between 1800 and 1830. It could have possibly been sent by France's King Lo
Source: Reuters
September 1, 2010
Former British prime minister Tony Blair said on Wednesday he could have not have imagined what he called the "nightmare" that unfolded in Iraq but still did not regret joining the U.S.-led invasion.
In a political memoir Blair echoed previous statements that the 2003 invasion was justified because Saddam Hussein posed a threat and could have developed weapons of mass destruction.
The self-penned volume "A Journey" was published on the day the United
Source: Texas A&M News
August 31, 2010
Texas A&M University researchers working to restore the hull of La Belle, a light frigate recovered from its underwater grave, are using an unconventional method to preserve the pieces: a state-of-the-art freeze dryer big enough to hold a few head of cattle.
La Belle was carrying 43 people when it sank in Matagorda Bay in January 1686. The ship’s remains now lie in a vat of oily preservative on Texas A&M’s Riverside Campus, the former Bryan Air Force Base that serves as head
Source: Savannah Morning News
August 27, 2010
Covered over for a couple of hundred years, a British-built Revolutionary War fort at Ebenezer shows up perfectly on Dan Elliott's ground-penetrating radar as a set of squiggly lines.
Just a few feet away, radar shows more squiggly lines, this time indicating several graves outside the cemetery fence.
"The story of the dead here is really interesting, and complicated," said Elliott, who, since 1987, has been worked on several projects at Ebenezer.
Source: New York Times
August 30, 2010
Don’t tread on Andy C. McDonel.
This year, Mr. McDonel began flying a yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag on his roof in this unincorporated area just outside Phoenix. The historic banner — which dates to 1775, when it was hoisted aboard ships during the initial days of the Revolutionary War — has been adopted by the Tea Party movement. But Mr. McDonel said that he had unfurled the flag for its historical significance and nothing else.
He notes that the banner, the Gadsden
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
August 31, 2010
Call it the second evacuation of Kennesaw, thanks to the Civil War.
Students waited outside the building for the all clear Monday. A Kennesaw State University classroom building was evacuated Monday because of Civil War relics that authorities feared were dangerous.
When General William T. Sherman rode through in 1864, folks got out of the way; and hundreds of Kennesaw State University students were evacuated from a classroom Monday because of two live cannonballs on ca
Source: AP
August 30, 2010
A Vietnam War-era artillery shell exploded and killed a villager in southern Vietnam as he was cutting it up for scrap metal.
Long Duc village chief Truong Hoang Hai in the southern province of Soc Trang said the man was killed in the explosion Monday that also seriously wounded his wife. The man was in his early 40s.
Vietnamese government figures show unexploded ordnance has killed more than 42,000 people and wounded some 62,000 since the conflict ended in 1975....
Source: Live Science
August 31, 2010
The Magna Carta helped form the foundation for modern English and U.S. law. Now one of two copies known to exist outside England is headed for a special new case to preserve it.
The very first Magna Carta dates to 1215, when English barons forced King John to write down the traditional rights and liberties of the country's free persons. A copy of the Magna Carta signed by King Edward I in 1297 currently resides within a helium-filled casement at the National Archives Building in Was
Source: Live Science
August 29, 2010
Giant cave bears thought to have once dined on each other might have been driven to extinction by the advance of humanity, scientists now suggest.
Cave bears (Ursus spelaeus) are named after the places where their bones are often found - caves across Europe. These giants were roughly a third larger than modern grizzly bears, and while scientists previously thought cave bears were vegetarians, recent findings hinted they might also have consumed meat, and possibly even cannibalized e
Source: Sify News
August 31, 2010
Chinese archaeologists have found the ruins of two prehistoric villages in Tongliao City of eastern Inner Mongolia.
The archaeologistsin north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region found the ruins in Hamin'aile Village, of Horqin Left-wing Middle Banner (County).
The remains were identified in the spring as possibly originating from Hongshan Culture, dating back 5,000 years, said Ji Ping, a researcher at the Institute of Cultural and Historical Relics and Archaeology
Source: The Wall Street Journal
August 31, 2010
Canadian scientists' announcement Monday that they failed to find the final resting place of British naval hero Sir John Franklin deepened one of the most enduring mysteries of the Arctic.
In May 1845, Franklin set sail from England with 134 men aboard two ships, the Terror and Erebus, to search for the fabled Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic to the Pacific Ocean. Five sailors left the ship in Greenland. The rest were never heard from again.
Last week, a si
Source: BBC
March 31, 2010
The army in Southern Sudan has pledged to demobilise all child soldiers by the end of the year.
The Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) has established a child protection unit to fulfil the pledge.
The UN children's agency estimates that the SPLA, thought to have already discharged more than 20,000 children, still includes about 900 in its ranks.
Sudan's civil war ended with a peace agreement in 2005, which committed both sides to an extensive process of
