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: Telegraph (UK)
August 20, 2010
A little-known skirmish between a downed German bomber crew and a group of British soldiers, the last ever military conflict to take place on British soil, is finally being marked 70 years after the event.
Most history books have Bonny Prince Charlie's 1746 defeat at Culloden as the final battle to occur in this country.
But the virtually unheard of Battle of Graveney Marsh in the Kent countryside 194 years later was actually the last action involving a foreign enemy.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 20, 2010
The world's oldest working mechanical clock is to be fitted with an electric motor for the first time after being wound by hand every week for more than 600 years.
The mechanism on the Clock, at Wells Cathedral in Somerset, will be set manually for the last time next week, following the retirement of the last member of a family who has maintained it for almost a century.
Experts say the clock, which tracks the sun across the sky and records the stages of the moon, is a
Source: AP
August 18, 2010
HAVANA – Fidel Castro is showcasing a theory long popular both among the far left and far right: that the shadowy Bilderberg Group has become a kind of global government, controlling not only international politics and economics, but even culture.
The 84-year-old former Cuban president published an article Wednesday that used three of the only eight pages in the Communist Party newspaper Granma to quote — largely verbatim — from a 2006 book by Lithuanian-born writer Daniel Estulin.
Source: NBC Washington
August 12, 2010
In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let Marian Anderson perform before an integrated audience at Constitution Hall. The Board of Education of the then-segregated District also refused to let her perform in the auditorium of a white public high school. So Anderson turned to a symbol of freedom: the Lincoln Memorial....
Two months ago, at the same memorial, a group of students were confronted by a security guard for singing the national anthem. The students, m
Source: AP
August 19, 2010
SAN DIEGO – Salvage divers gently cleared away silt and mud covering a WWII dive bomber buried in the bottom of the San Diego reservoir, carefully working Thursday to lift the rare plane from the water 65 years after it was ditched during a training run.
Bob Metz, 84, who watched the painstaking work, said he recalls his oldest brother, Sgt. Joseph Metz, telling about how he and the pilot — who have both since died — managed to swim ashore to safety, then hitchhiked back to the near
Source: NYT
August 23, 2010
Two floors below the main level of Yale’s medical school library is a room full of brains. No, not the students. These brains, more than 500 of them, are in glass jars. They are part of an extraordinary collection that might never have come to light if not for a curious medical student and an encouraging and persistent doctor.
The cancerous brains were collected by Dr. Harvey Cushing, who was one of America’s first neurosurgeons. They were donated to Yale on his death in 1939 — alon
Source: AP
December 31, 2069
The immense chestnut tree that cheered Anne Frank as she and her family hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam was toppled Monday by wind and heavy rain. The once-mighty tree, now diseased and rotted through the trunk, snapped about three feet above ground, crashed across several gardens and damaged a brick wall and several sheds....
Source: NYT
August 22, 2010
For almost three decades beginning in 1936, many African-American travelers relied on a booklet to help them decide where they could comfortably eat, sleep, buy gas, find a tailor or beauty parlor, shop on a honeymoon to Niagara Falls, or go out at night. In 1949, when the guide was 80 pages, there were five recommended hotels in Atlanta. In Cheyenne, Wyo., the Barbeque Inn was the place to stay.
leader named Victor H. Green conceived the guide in response to one too many accounts o
Source: Yomiyuri (Japan)
August 22, 2010
A team of specialists led by the president of Tokyo's Sophia University has excavated the severed upper halves of six Buddhist statues from the Angkor ruins in northwestern Cambodia.
The Sophia University Angkor International Mission, headed by university President Yoshiaki Ishizawa, excavated the statues from a circular moat at the ruins of Banteay Kdei temple on Friday.
About 60 centimeters tall, the statues are believed to have been produced in the late 12th or early
Source: National Parks Traveler
August 24, 2010
Capturing and preserving a 200-year-old slice of history is no easy task, and yet that's part of the task for the folks managing the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, which ranges nearly 4,000 meandering miles from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean.
With an eye on finalizing a Comprehensive Management Plan for the trail by the Fall of 2014, National Park Service managers are laying the foundation for developing a sound plan that will guide the trail's management for 15-20 years.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 24, 2010
Adolf Hitler is likely to have had Jewish and African roots, DNA tests have shown.
Saliva samples taken from 39 relatives of the Nazi leader show he may have had biological links to the “subhuman” races that he tried to exterminate during the Holocaust.
Jean-Paul Mulders, a Belgian journalist, and Marc Vermeeren, a historian, tracked down the Fuhrer’s relatives, including an Austrian farmer who was his cousin, earlier this year.
A chromosome called Haplogroup E1b
Source: Fox News
August 24, 2010
Just prior to his death in 2008, Larry "Bozo" Harmon penned the recently released memoir "The Man Behind the Nose,” about his adventures who was a professional clown, ran for President, bonded with dangerous cannibal tribes in New Guinea, and was saved from being swallowed whole by a murderous python in Thailand by his 83 AAA shoes.
But now Harmon’s second of four ex-wives, Sandra Harmon, the author of two relationship books and “Elvis & Me” with Priscilla Presley
Source: CNN
August 24, 2010
"This is a mass grave," Bill Watson said as he led the way through the thick Pennsylvania woods in a suburb about 30 miles from Philadelphia.
"Duffy's Cut," as it's now called, is a short walk from a suburban cul-de-sac in Malvern, an affluent town off the fabled Main Line. Twin brothers Bill and Frank Watson believe 57 Irish immigrants met violent deaths there after a cholera epidemic struck in 1832.
They suspect foul play.
"This is a mu
Source: BBC News
August 20, 2010
A toilet described as once having belonged to US author JD Salinger has been put on sale on the online auction site eBay for $1m (£644,000).
The vendor says he obtained the "used toilet commode" from a couple who now own the former home of the Catcher in the Rye author.
It comes "uncleaned and in its original condition", the ad for it states.
"Who knows how many of [his] stories were thought up and written while Salinger sat on this
Source: BBC News
August 24, 2010
The police, the Catholic Church and the state conspired to cover up a priest's suspected role in one of the worst atrocities of the Northern Ireland Troubles, an investigation has found.
Nine people died in bombings in Claudy, County Londonderry on 31 July 1972.
The NI Police Ombudsman's probe found that high-level talks led to Fr James Chesney, a suspect in the attack, being moved to the Irish Republic.
No action was ever taken against Fr Chesney, who died
Source: BBC News
August 24, 2010
The estate of the acclaimed late photographer Ansel Adams is suing a man who has apparently been selling prints he claims are Adams's work.
The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, which filed the legal case in the US, wants to stop Rick Norsigian selling images it does not endorse.
In July, Mr Norsigian's lawyer said experts concluded "beyond reasonable doubt" the prints were Adams's work.
The case has "no merit", Mr Norsigian's lawyer
Source: BBC News
August 23, 2010
The Egyptian government's head of fine arts has been remanded in custody pending an investigation into the theft of a Van Gogh painting at the weekend.
Muhsin Sha'lan, first under-secretary at the culture ministry, was accused of "negligence", according to the state news agency Mena.
Several other officials were believed to have been detained at the same time.
The theft of the $50m (£32m) painting from a Cairo museum on Saturday has been blamed on
Source: BBC News
August 23, 2010
Nearly 60 years ago, a French town was hit by a sudden outbreak of hallucinations, which left five people dead and many seriously ill. For years it was blamed on bread contaminated with a psychedelic fungus - but that theory is now being challenged.
On 16 August 1951, postman Leon Armunier was doing his rounds in the southern French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit when he was suddenly overwhelmed by nausea and wild hallucinations.
"It was terrible. I had the sensation of
Source: BBC News
August 24, 2010
Tuesday marks the 1,600th anniversary of one of the turning points of European history - the first sack of Imperial Rome by an army of Visigoths, northern European barbarian tribesmen, led by a general called Alaric.
It was the first time in 800 years that Rome had been successfully invaded. The event had reverberations around the Mediterranean.
Jerome, an early Christian Church Father, in a letter to a friend from Bethlehem - where he happened to be living - wrote that
Source: BBC
August 23, 2010
Canadian workers have unearthed large dinosaur bones while digging a sewer tunnel in the city of Edmonton.
A tooth and limb bone, which experts believe belong to the Albertosaurus and the Edmontosaurus species, were found by drainage crews in the Quesnell Heights neighbourhood.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum is helping city officials to identify the fossils.
Museum officials said workers will continue to dig out bones still stuck inside the walls of the tunnel.
