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: USA Today
August 26, 2010
Bird calls ring from the forest, echoing amid the crumbling ruins whose darkened doorways have long beckoned explorers and scholars.
The Maya ancients who built the ruins of Kiuic (kee-week) here fled those doorways in a hurry, an international archaeology team now realizes. Left behind may be frozen-in-time clues to the fabled collapse of their civilization.
Archaeologists have explored Kiuic's ruins for more than a century, but working since 2000, Bey and colleagues a
Source: BBC
August 26, 2010
A glamorous Nazi spy may have been behind one of the biggest setbacks suffered by Allied forces during World War II, newly released files suggest.
The secret government papers suggest that Marina Lee, a blonde ballerina, stole battle plans which led to the fall of Norway to Germany in 1940.
According to the files, Germany was close to pulling out of Norway before Lee passed on details of the plan.
The documents were part of an archive released by British sp
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 26, 2010
The prehistoric hunter known as Oetzi the Iceman may have been ceremonially buried on a high Alpine pass rather than killed there in a deadly ambush, experts say.
Researchers believe they have found evidence which shows that Oetzi, named after the Oetz Valley in which he was found, died lower down the valley, probably violently, but was then carried up to the 10,500ft high pass for a ceremonial burial.
The new theory suggests that he may have been an important figure
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 25, 2010
The Nuremberg Laws, which laid the legal groundwork for the execution of six million Jews during the Holocaust, have been handed over to the US National Archives.
Consisting of four pages, and signed by Adolf Hitler, the anti-Semitic documents were appropriated by US General George Patton at the end of the Second World War after being discovered in Bavaria.
Gen Patton disobeyed orders that Nazi documents were to be handed over to the government and spirited them out o
Source: AP
August 26, 2010
A museum official says a bush fire has destroyed the historic site of the encampment of 19th Century warrior King Lobengula in western Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe's National Museums and Monuments director Godfrey Mahachi says strong winds swept the fire through the five acre (two hectare) national heritage site, destroying all eight beehive hut structures, including the king's palace, and a palisade of wooden fortifications.
Lobengula's tribal capital was rebuilt as a symbolic n
Source: AP
August 26, 2010
Former South African President Nelson Mandela's home was bugged during a tumultuous period for his African National Congress party, a prominent labor leader said Thursday.
Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, said Mandela told him that listening devices were placed in his Johannesburg home, where ANC leaders would come seeking his advice.
Mandela's house was bugged in 2007 during the buildup to an ANC conference at which Pres
Source: AP
August 26, 2010
The Auschwitz memorial in Poland says it has obtained around 150 medical instruments believed to have been used by the Nazis in experiments on the death camp inmates.
Memorial spokesman Bartosz Bartyzel said Thursday the gynecological and surgical instruments were recently offered to the museum by a historian who acquired them from a family that found them shortly after World War II at their house, which was located on the former camp grounds.
Bartyzel says given where
Source: CNN
August 26, 2010
A solemn Mass at the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, India, marked the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa's birth on Thursday.
People from all walks of life gathered at the global headquarters of the order of nuns, which Mother Teresa founded 60 years ago.
Mother Teresa was born as Agnes Gonxha Boiaxhiu to ethnic Albanian parents in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 26, 1910.
She arrived in India in 1929 and dedicated her life to help those in need. She rec
Source: Tablet
August 26, 2010
Russia’s great expanse stretches south from the Arctic for many thousands of miles until it comes to a halt at the long spine of the Greater Caucasus Mountains. The republics on the northern side of the Caucasus, including turbulent Dagestan and Chechnya, still belong to Russia. Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia, on the southern side of the mountains, gained their independence when the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s. The high slopes are home to shepherds and the descendants of clans wh
Source: Civil War Preservation Trust
August 26, 2010
Today a coalition of preservation groups working with local business owners involved in Businesses Against the Casino released an independent assessment of the potential impacts of gaming on Gettysburg and Adams County. The report, Impacts of the Proposed Mason-Dixon Casino on the Gettysburg Area – A Realistic Assessment, found that the application for a resort casino license near Gettysburg greatly exaggerates the economic impact of the proposal and ignores the “serious, substantial and sustai
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 26, 2010
A politician tipped as a future Japanese prime minister has said the British are not very likeable, but admitted the way British prisoners marched in The Bridge on the River Kwai demonstrated their best qualities.
Ichiro Ozawa, the former secretary-general of Japan’s ruling Democratic Party, also said he values US democracy but dismissed the American people as “simple-minded”.
The 68-year-old veteran politician, who resigned as the second most important official in the
Source: AP
August 26, 2010
CALCUTTA, India – Hundreds of nuns, bishops and volunteers attended a Mass on Thursday marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mother Teresa, the selfless nun who dedicated her life to serving the sick and poor in India.
School children, tourists and volunteers, some carrying bunches of flowers or candles, also crowded Mother Teresa's grave in the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity, the order of nuns she founded in 1950 in the eastern Indian city of Calcutta....
Source: Detroit News
August 26, 2010
Detroit -- Once headed to the trash heap, a cache of rare papers have been found that trace the history of the Nation of Islam.
The collection of papers, documents and photos, many dating to the 1930s, detail the innerworkings of the religious group of black Muslims, including the surprisingly prominent role of women in its founding.
They were uncovered earlier this month at a home on Detroit's west side.
The find includes handwritten and typed letters related to
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
August 26, 2010
An amateur historian has discovered the mummified body of a World War I solider frozen into an Italian glacier.
Dino De Bernardin made the grim find as he walked in mountains close to his home, which had been the scene of bitter fighting between Italian and Austro-Hungarian troops between 1915 and 1917.
At an altitude of 2,800metres, his attention was drawn to a 'bundle of rags’ that he saw emerging from the melting ice....
Source: NYT
August 25, 2010
For many 19th- and 20th-century immigrants or their children, it was a rite of passage: Arriving in America, they adopted a new identity.
Charles Steinweg, the German-born piano maker, changed his name to Steinway (in part because English instruments were deemed to be superior). Tom Lee, a Tong leader who would become the unofficial mayor of Chinatown in Manhattan, was originally Wong Ah Ling. Anne Bancroft, who was born in the Bronx, was Anna Maria Louisa Italiano.
Th
Source: ABC News
August 24, 2010
The remains of a prehistoric child were removed from an underwater cave in Mexico four years after divers stumbled upon the well-preserved corpse that offers clues to ancient human migration.
The skeletal remains of the boy, dubbed the Young Hol Chan, are more than 10,000 years old and are among the oldest human bones found in the Americas.
The corpse was discovered in 2006 by a pair of German cave divers who were exploring unique flooded sandstone sinkholes, known as c
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 25, 2010
The residents of an entire Leicestershire village have joined a dig to find archaeological remains, with over 200 people involved in the excavation which found relics stretching back as far as the Roman Empire.
The dig took place in Kibworth, just off the A6. It even involved taking up the tarmac of the car park at the local pub, the Coach and Horses, so that the earth below could be excavated.
The results will be seen in a new series on BBC Four this autumn, Story of
Source: China Digital Times
August 24, 2010
Cao Cao was one of the three warlords competing for control of China after the downfall of the mighty Han empire (BC206 – AD 220 CE). Cao’s life was popularized in The Legend of Three Kingdoms, a novelized history which has been revered as one of the four Chinese literature classics.
According to the Modern Express, 23 experts at an academic forum in Suzhou have declared that the tomb is a fake, citing anachronistic styles of engraving Chinese characters as one of the sources of the
Source: Discovery News
August 25, 2010
The smell of freshly baked bread wafted through Egypt’s western desert more than 3,500 years ago, according to new findings at the El-Kharga Oasis announced on Wednesday.
During excavation work for the Theban Desert Road Survey, a project to map the ancient desert routes in the Western desert, a team of Egyptian and US archaeologists from Yale University stumbled upon the remains of what appears to be an ancient bakery town.
About 1 km (0.6 miles) long from north to so
Source: BBC
August 25, 2010
A man convicted of the 2003 assassination of the Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic has been extradited from Croatia to Serbia.
Sretko Kalinic was arrested in June after being shot by an accomplice in Djindjic's murder, Milos Simovic, who was later arrested himself.
Both men had been at large since the reformist Mr Djindjic was killed by a sniper linked to former paramilitaries.
In 2007, they were sentenced in absentia in Serbia to 30 years in jail.
