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: Daily Mail (UK)
August 18, 2010
They were arch enemies, fighting each other for their very survival. But five years after bomber pilot William Ross was shot down and killed in the Second World War, it was a German soldier who showed compassion to the fiancee left behind.
Gernot Knop had witnessed the 28-year-old RAF sergeant’s death in anti-aircraft fire as he attacked a Nazi fuel ship.
And writing in English to Dorothy Bird, he told her of Sergeant Ross’s heroic last mission and returned to her the f
Source: National Parks Traveler
August 18, 2010
A summer archeological field program at Great Smoky Mountains National Park offered more than science for a group of students from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI)—it also allowed them to connect with their ancestral past.
At first glance, a description of the topics covered in the program is quite impressive: "Students participated in archeological excavations and were provided an opportunity to learn archeological field methods and regional culture history. Afterno
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 18, 2010
The vuvuzela has blasted its way into the Oxford Dictionary of English for the first time after becoming the sound of the World Cup.
Along with other new words like tweetup, cheeseball and turducken, it is included in the third edition of the dictionary, published today (THURS).
The word vuvuzela has only been in common use since the summer when the long horn began to be heard at the World Cup matches in South Africa.
It is one of more than 2,000 new words
Source: BBC News
August 17, 2010
Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has been found guilty of lying to agents.
A federal jury in Chicago found him guilty of making false statements but was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on 23 other corruption charges.
The judge said he intended to declare a mistrial on the remaining counts.
Blagojevich, 53, was accused of trying to use his office for personal gain - including a bid to sell President Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat.
Source: Fox News
August 18, 2010
Fearing the U.S. is a sinking ship, a man from North Carolina's Piedmont has set out on a mission to teach everyday Americans how to shoot a rifle and how to embrace their Revolutionary War history.
"How do you measure the value of liberty to a society?" Appleseed Project founder Jack Dailey asked a small group of families and individuals that gathered this past weekend at the West Georgia Youth Range in Georgia's Haralson County. "Wouldn't you measure it by the numbe
Source: Live Science
August 18, 2010
Fossils of what could be the oldest animal bodies have been discovered in Australia, pushing back the clock on when animal life first appeared on Earth to at least 70 million years earlier than previously thought.
The results suggest that primitive sponge-like creatures lived in ocean reefs about 650 million years ago. Digital images of the fossils suggest the animals were about a centimeter in size (the width of your small fingertip) and had irregularly shaped bodies with a network
Source: AP
August 17, 2010
A three-year-old federal law that makes it a crime to falsely claim to have received a medal from the U.S. military is unconstitutional, an appeals court panel in California ruled Tuesday.
The decision involves the case of Xavier Alvarez of Pomona, Calif., a water district board member who said at a public meeting in 2007 that he was a retired Marine who received the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration.
Alvarez was indicted in 2007. He pleaded guil
Source: CNN
August 14, 2010
The discovery of the exact location of a stockade and dozens of personal artifacts belonging to its Union prisoners is one of the biggest archaeological Civil War finds in decades, federal and Georgia officials said Monday.
Outside of scholars and Civil War buffs, few people have heard of the Confederacy's Camp Lawton, which replaced the infamous and overcrowded Andersonville prison in fall 1864.
For nearly 150 years, its exact location was not known, the U.S. Fish and
Source: Times of India
August 14, 2010
It's one of the ironies of history that even as India celebrated its independence, the man who had led its unique struggle stayed away from the festivities. On August 15, 1947, Mahatma Gandhi was in Calcutta, where he had gone to calm Hindu-Muslim communal violence. Through the day, he fasted and prayed....
Gandhi almost collapsed. But even as he fell down, he recited some lines from the Quran. On hearing them, the Muslim said, “I am sorry. I am prepared to protect you. Give me any
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 16, 2010
Clutching a wooden cross decorated with a poppy, two-year-old Alice Bruce yesterday joined thousands of mourners in remembering those killed fighting the Japanese during the Second World War.
The youngster laid her tribute at the Cenotaph in London where Prime Minister David Cameron and the Prince of Wales were among those commemorating the 65th anniversary of Victory over Japan Day.
Alice came with her family to honour her great grandfather Pte Frank Bruce, of 2nd Bat
Source: AP
August 15, 2010
Now a new history by a professor at University of California, Santa Barbara seeks to reinforce that view, arguing that fear of Soviet invasion persuaded the Japanese to opt for surrender to the Americans, who they believed would treat them more generously than the Soviets.
Frank, who is writing a three-volume history of the Pacific war, said he continued to disagree with Hasegawa on the relative importance of the Soviet intervention and the A-bombs in forcing the surrender decision.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 15, 2010
They are Britain's "Forgotten army" from the Second World War, former prisoners-of-war who spent three years in brutal Japanese camps after the fall of Malaya and Singapore.
brutal.
With no official memorial service to remember their fallen comrades, the survivors have for years held their own commemorations on V-J Day, which marks the end of the war in the Far East in 1945.
Today, the 65th anniversary of V-J Day, the ex-POWs will hold their final remem
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 15, 2010
Rail companies will be forced to come clean on their role in transporting Nazi victims during the Holocaust when they bid for a multi-billion-pound contract to operate a new bullet train in California.
A Democratic politician in the US state is pushing to make it a requirement that any involvement in taking people to work, concentration, prisoner of war, or extermination camps between January 1942 and December 1944 must be disclosed.
The proposal is specifically aimed at SNCF
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 17, 2010
At first glance it is hard to imagine anyone objecting to plans to demolish a street of dilapidated Victorian two-up-two downs in a neglected part of Liverpool.
But when Beatles fans realised the plans included the destruction of drummer Ringo Starr's birthplace, they accused the council of cultural vandalism bordering on the criminal.
Devotees of the Fab Four have said proposals to demolish 9 Madryn Street in the Dingle district of Liverpool, where Starr, whose real name is
Source: BBC News
August 17, 2010
Francesco Cossiga, a former Italian president and an enduring presence in Italy's post-war politics, has died at the age of 82.
He had been taken to hospital in Rome last week with respiratory and heart problems.
Cossiga served as interior minister in the 1970s, resigning after he failed to save the life of kidnapped Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978.
He was president from 1985-1992, before becoming an outspoken lifetime senator.
Cossiga was bor
Source: BBC News
August 17, 2010
The war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, on its return from a summer break, has heard about the siege of Sarajevo.
A UN observer said the bombardment of the Bosnian capital in late 1992 was so intense that the UN ran out of space to record the attacks on its forms.
Mr Karadzic, who is defending himself, attended the session at the international court in The Hague.
He denies 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against hu
Source: BBC News
August 17, 2010
Australia should become a republic when Queen Elizabeth II dies, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said just days ahead of a general election.
Welsh-born Ms Gillard said the Queen's death would be an "appropriate point" for Australia to move away from having a British monarch as head of state.
Australians voted against becoming a republic in a 1999 referendum, but the issue continues to be divisive.
Ms Gillard's main opponent, Tony Abbott, is a sta
Source: Huffington Post
August 16, 2010
A U.K. archivist has uncovered clues that may prove Quasimodo -- the disfigured bell-ringer hero of Victor Hugo's 1831 classic "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" -- really did exist.
According to reports, Adrian Glew, who works on the Tate collection's archives in London, was studying the seven-volume autobiography of 19th century British sculpter Henry Sibson. Sibson had been employed in the 1820s to help renovate Paris's Notre Dame cathedral, which had been heavily damaged in
Source: AP
August 16, 2010
Young and strapping, the 57 Irish immigrants began grueling work in the summer of 1832 on the Philadelphia and Columbia railroad. Within weeks, all were dead of cholera.
Or were they murdered?
Two skulls unearthed at a probable mass grave near Philadelphia this month showed signs of violence, including a possible bullet hole. Another pair of skulls found earlier at the woodsy site also displayed traumas, seeming to confirm the suspicions of two historians leading the a
Source: The Boston Globe
August 16, 2010
A team of top scientists, launching what is billed as the most ambitious and advanced survey of the Titanic, sets out next week to map in photographic detail the entire wreck site, and reconstruct in electronic form the ruins scattered on the seabed.
By melding photographs, high-definition video and computer imaging, scientists — including experts at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute — plan to create a three-dimensional computer model that will allow scientists and members of t
