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: National Parks Traveler
August 13, 2010
A recent visit to Isle Royale National Park by the Niagara, a historically accurate reconstruction of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's victorious 1813 flagship, included an unwelcome surprise. Despite efforts to prevent such problems, the ship was harboring some dangerous stowaways.
The ship is owned by the State of Pennsylvania’s Erie Historic Maritime Museum, "a nonprofit educational association striving to preserve and further the education of historic sailing techniques, env
Source: Xinhua
August 13, 2010
For Gao Fengqin, the worst horror of the Second World War happened in the closing days.
"I still remember the day my mother took me to a small restaurant to meet my new Chinese mother," says Gao Fengqin, now 70.
"I had noodles and when I finished, she stood up to leave. I gripped her leg, crying for her not to go."
It was 65 years ago that Gao's Japanese mother, Kobayasi, gave her away to the Chinese couple who raised her into adulthood.
Source: BBC News
August 13, 2010
A full size replica of a Second World War spitfire could raise over £50,000 for the Royal British Legion when it goes up for auction in September.
The aluminium replica of a MKVb Supermarine Spitfire was built in 2008 by members of the Ripon branch of the Royal British Legion.
Since it was built, the aircraft has been used at a variety of events including the 70th birthday of RAF Leeming events.
The auction takes place on September 17.
The spitfire t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 13, 2010
A series of mountain crags called "Swastika" and "Himmler" have caused outrage in Sweden after a climber publicised the Nazi-inspired names given to the popular climbing area.
Following accepted climbing practice, the first person to tackle a route has the right to name it.
However, concerns have been raised after it was revealed that routes in the popular Järfälla climbing area outside Stockholm had been given names inspired by the Third Reich.
Source: Boston Globe
August 12, 2010
MOSCOW—Russia has rejected a U.S. court ruling to turn over a Jewish library to a Hasidic group in New York.
A U.S. judge last week ruled against the Russian government for its refusal to return thousands of manuscripts that once belonged to a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi. The library was seized by Red Army in Nazi Germany as war booty....
Source: NYT
August 13, 2010
After nine years of fighting in the deserts and mountains of the Middle East, the military has concluded that the traditional, hard-earned combat skills that allowed generations of “muddy boots” commanders to protect American interests around the world simply are not enough to assure victory in today’s wars — or career advancement through the top ranks of the armed forces....
In an acknowledgment that the top jobs have become ever more intellectually challenging, physically exhausti
Source: NYT
August 12, 2010
It was not like the old days: This time, the ships were smaller, the journey was shorter, the work was easier and these young sailors were surely softer....
But none of that troubled an elderly diver, who watched with approval as a new generation of Kuwaiti men embraced the sea, trimming sails and clapping their hands as they sang the old pearl diver’s songs. For the diver, Khalifa al-Rashid, 74, the young men represented a hope that in a country transformed by oil — into a land of
Source: NYT
August 12, 2010
Among all the troubles that have been visited on Russia in this summer of record heat, wildfires, smoke and crop failure, perhaps none have been so persistent and impervious to remedy as the peat fires. Particularly maddening, many here say, is the knowledge that the problem is caused by humans.
As early as 1918 Soviet engineers drained swamps to supply peat for electrical power stations. That approach was abandoned in the late 1950s, after natural gas was discovered in Siberia, but
Source: AP
August 11, 2010
Two ancient animal bones from Ethiopia show signs of butchering by human ancestors, moving back the earliest evidence for the use of stone tools by about 800,000 years, researchers say.
The bones appear to have been cut and smashed some 3.4 million years ago, the first evidence of stone tool use by Australopithecus afarensis, the species best known for the fossil dubbed "Lucy," says researcher Zeresenay Alemseged.
The study authors said the bones indicate the
Source: USA Today
August 11, 2010
More evidence that The Flintstones didn't tell us the whole story about cavemen. Our prehuman ancestors cannibalized one another for the "nutritional value" starting about a million years ago, finds an analysis of bones left in a Spanish cave.
In the journal Current Anthropology, a team led by archaeologist Eudald Carbonell of Spain's University of Rovira and Virgili, report fossil evidence of continuous cannibalism - cut marks and butchering remains - as a way of life amo
Source: USA Today
August 11, 2010
Western Europe's massive prehistoric tombs were built in a burst of activity over a few centuries around 4000 BC, suggests dating evidence, rather than continuously throughout the Stone Age.
In the current European Journal of Archaeology, archaeologist Chris Scarre of the United Kingdom's Durham University, looks at the latest dating of "megalithic" prehistoric tombs stretching from Sweden to Spain. The mound-shaped burial sites are better known as "barrows" in G
Source: AP
August 11, 2010
Archaeologists say they have uncovered the heaviest and most valuable gold coin ever found in Israel.
The 2,200-year-old coin weighs an ounce (28 grams) and was found at the Tel Kedesh site near the Lebanon border on June 22, according to Wednesday's statement from the antiquities authority.
It said this coin is six times the weight of most others from that era....
Source: National Geographic News
August 10, 2010
Femurs and skulls of freshly dead used to make buttons, combs, scientists say.
Members of a pre-Aztec civilization used human bones—likely from their freshly dead relatives—to make buttons, combs, needles, spatulas, and dozens of other everyday utensils, Mexican archeologists say.
The discovery comes from a new analysis of 5,000 bone fragments found in the ancient city of Teotihuacan, a large archaeological site about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of Mexico City (s
Source: National Geographic
August 10, 2010
...Long dismissed as accidental additions to Viking graves, prehistoric "thunderstones"—fist-size stone tools resembling the Norse god Thor's hammerhead—were actually purposely placed as good-luck talismans, archaeologists say.
Using fire-starting rock such as flint, Stone Age people originally created the stones to serve as axes. But the Vikings, whose Iron Age heyday lasted from about A.D. 800 to 1050, saw the primitive tools as lightning repellent.
Because
Source: BBC
August 12, 2010
For years, fans of the Batman comics have puzzled over a mystery at the heart of the series: why doesn't Batman just kill his arch-nemesis, the murderous Joker?
Enter philosopher Immanuel Kant and the deontological theory of ethics.
At least, that's how the discussion progresses in a growing number of philosophy classes in the US.
Cultural and media studies have paved the way for universities to incorporate pop culture into their curriculum. These days it
Source: The Times of India
August 13, 2010
Using remote sensing imagery in a unique way, a scientist at the Maharashtra Remote Sensing and Applications Centre (MRSAC) has located two burial sites of about 3000-3500 years back. One of these megaliths (large stones), Junapani, found near just 9 km from the city on Katol road, is now part of the acquired area of the proposed Gorewada Zoo project. Though the site is known to the archeologists, it has last been mentioned in the Nagpur Gazetteer in 1930. There is no mention of the settlement a
Source: Live Science
August 12, 2010
...The site of an ancient city called Auza, the earliest African city of the Phoenician civilization that existed 3,500 years ago, may have been in a different spot than experts have thought, archaeologists report.
Scholars know Auza existed from written records, but its exact location has never been proven. By studying ancient maps and records, emeritus classics professor Sir John Boardman of the Beazley Archive at Britain's University of Oxford was able to locate a more likely si
Source: Guardian (UK)
August 12, 2010
Roman buildings, unknown to historians, detected by Cardiff University students learning to use mapping equipment.
Archaeology students learning how to use mapping equipment have stumbled across the site of large Roman buildings on the banks of the river Usk in Wales, right by one of the best-known and most-studied Roman sites in Britain.
The structures have yet to be excavated, but one is enormous, possibly a granary or warehouse – or a palatial riverside villa.
Source: BBC
August 11, 2010
Osama Bin Laden's former cook and driver has been sentenced to 14 years in prison by a Guantanamo Bay tribunal.
Sudanese-born Ibrahim al-Qosi, 50, had admitted conspiracy and providing support for terrorism.
However, he could serve far less time because of a plea deal which is likely to remain secret for several weeks.
Qosi, who was detained in Afghanistan in 2001, also admitted working as Bin Laden's bodyguard and helping him avoid capture by US forces....
Source: BBC
August 12, 2010
A statue by a renowned Victorian sculptor has been stolen from a park in his home city.
'Joyance', an 1899 statue of a boy by Sir William Goscombe John, was cut from the water fountain in Thompson's Park, Canton, Cardiff.
Sir William was one of the most prominent 19th Century sculptors and the theft comes in the 150th anniversary year of his birth.
2010 marks the 150th anniversary of Sir William Goscombe John's birth in Canton and a local pub is named in hi
