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: NYT
July 29, 2010
A month after the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Joseph P. Kennedy, the American ambassador in London and father of a future president, expressed grave doubts about “this war for idealism” against Hitler.
Joseph P. Kennedy, then an ambassador, criticized the war and Thomas E. Dewey in a 1939 letter to Roosevelt’s personal secretary.
“I can’t see any use in everybody in Europe going busted and having communism run riot,” Kennedy wrote to Marguerite LeHand, President Frank
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 28, 2010
An investigation into the release of the Lockerbie bomber is to be broadened in an attempt to force Kenny MacAskill to stop “stonewalling” and give evidence, senior US senators have said.
The Senate’s foreign relations committee postponed a hearing into the furore, due to be heard on Thursday, after a series of key witnesses refused to appear.
Mr MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Minister, argued he had nothing to tell senators about alleged links between BP and the rel
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 28, 2010
The United States has confirmed that the ambassador to Japan will attend a ceremony marking the anniversary of the Hiroshima atom bomb drop for the first time.
PJ Crowley, a spokesman for the US State Department, said it would be the first time a US ambassador will attend the August 6 anniversary.
About 140,000 people were killed or died within months when an American B-29 bombed Hiroshima.
Mr Crowley would not say if US officials would attend ceremonies
Source: AP
July 28, 2010
Part of a set of dentures used by Winston Churchill to disguise a lisp is going on sale.
The partial dentures are being put on auction with an estimated value of about $7,000.
A duplicate set is kept by the Royal College of Surgeons of England. The organization says the dentures were a tool that the wartime British Prime Minister relied upon to overcome a childhood lisp....
Source: AP
July 28, 2010
A suspected former Nazi death camp guard has been charged with participating in the murder of 430,000 Jews and other crimes during the Third Reich, German prosecutors said Wednesday.
Samuel Kunz, 88, was informed last week of his indictment on charges including participation in the murder of 430,000 Jews at the Belzec death camp in occupied Poland, where he allegedly served as a guard from January 1942 to July 1943, prosecutor Christoph Goeke in Dortmund said.
Kunz is a
Source: CNN
July 28, 2010
A University of Florida archaeologist found centuries-old bones this week during a dig in northeastern Florida, authorities said.
The human remains, estimated to be between 500 and 700 years old, were found Monday during a excavation at Silver Glen Springs Recreation Area in Ocala National Forest, about 30 miles south of Palatka, according to Jenifer Lowe with the Marion County Sheriff's Office.
Asa Randall, a senior archaeologist with the University of Florida, based
Source: CNN
July 28, 2010
From the two-story care home where she lived in the northern English city of Bradford, 104-year-old Ivy Bean would tell her nearly 57,000 Twitter followers around the world what she did each day -- from eating fish and chips to sitting in the garden.
Bean's warm and friendly nature came across in every message, and she regularly corresponded with her followers. Even when she had a bad day, she never dwelled on it for long.
Her mischievous side would sometimes come throu
Source: National Library of Medicine
July 28, 2010
The National Library of Medicine (NLM), the world's largest medical library and an arm of the National Institutes of Health, has been named a partner in a multi-centered grant to digitize materials in the history of medicine.
As one of five libraries participating in the digital Medical Heritage Project, NLM will receive $360,000 over the next two months to digitize items from its historical medical collections. The initiative is funded by a $1.5 million award to the Open Knowledge
Source: Canada East
July 28, 2010
Arctic archaeologists have found the ship that forged the final link in the Northwest Passage and was lost in the search for the Franklin expedition.
The HMS Investigator, abandoned in the ice in 1853, has been found in shallow water in Mercy Bay along the northern coast of Banks Island in Canada's western Arctic.
"The ship is standing upright in very good condition," Marc-Andre Bernier, Parks Canada's head of underwater archaeology, said Wednesday. "It's
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 28, 2010
Director Oliver Stone has apologised for comments he made to a London newspaper about the Holocaust and Jewish control of the media, which drew an avalanche of criticism.
"In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret," Stone said in a statement issued by his publicist.
"Jews obviously do not control m
Source: NY Times
July 27, 2010
or more than two decades the heirs of a world-renowned Jewish collector have been petitioning the Hungarian government to return more than $100 million worth of art, most of which has been hanging in Hungarian museums, where it was left for safekeeping during World War II or placed after being stolen by the Nazis and later returned to Hungary.
The requests have been rebuffed, as have appeals to the government from current and former United States senators, including the Democrats Ch
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 28, 2010
Professor John Burland has spent the last two decades striving to save - and understand - the Leaning Tower of Pisa. After defying gravity, Italian bureaucracy and accusations of corruption, it seems he’s finally cracked the case....
Burland had helped save Big Ben from collapse during the Jubilee Line extension of the early Nineties, but progress in Pisa was far less smooth.
‘There were 14 egos at work and little common ground between people from such different discipl
Source: Reuters
July 28, 2010
As Rome's ancient Colosseum literally crumbles from neglect, the cash-strapped Italian government is looking for private sponsors willing to help pay for restoration work in exchange for advertising rights.
The vast Roman amphitheatre which housed bloody public spectacles including gladiator fights, mock sea battles and animal shows is one of the most famous monuments from the ancient world.
But it has suffered badly in recent years and only 35 percent of the structure
Source: Hurriyet Daily News
July 28, 2010
An 1,800-year-old personal care set from the Roman period has been revealed during excavations at Myra-Andriake in Antalya’s district of Demre, daily Radikal reported Wednesay.
A pair of bronze tweezers and a manicure rasp were found at the excavations of the Andriake Port, said the head of the excavations, Professor Nevzat Çevi, an academic from Akdeniz University’s Archeology Department. Indicating that the 1,800-year-old care set was considerably advanced compared to similar ones
Source: Fox News
July 28, 2010
The recent decoding of a cryptic cup, the excavation of ancient tunnels in Jerusalem, and other archaeological detective work may help solve one of the great biblical mysteries: Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?
The new clues hint that the scrolls, which include some of the oldest known biblical documents, may have been the textual treasures of several groups, hidden away during wartime -- and may even be "the great treasure from the Jerusalem Temple," which held the Ark of
Source: BBC News
July 27, 2010
A US federal watchdog has criticised the US military for failing to account properly for billions of dollars it received to help rebuild Iraq.
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction says the US Department of Defence is unable to account properly for 96% of the money.
Out of just over $9bn (£5.8bn), $8.7bn is unaccounted for, the inspector says.
The US military said the funds were not necessarily missing, but that spending records might have b
Source: BBC News
July 28, 2010
Troop commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan created the "perfect storm" for an overstretched army, a former Army chief has told the Iraq inquiry.
Gen Sir Richard Dannatt said the Ministry of Defence's projections of required troop commitments differed from Army estimates.
He said the Army had come close to "seizing up" in 2006.
New documents revealed Gen Sir Mike Jackson warned in 2005 the helicopter fleet in Iraq was "inadequate"
Source: BBC News
July 28, 2010
The parliament of Catalonia has voted to ban bullfighting - the first region of mainland Spain to do so.
The vote took place as the result of a petition brought to parliament, signed by 180,000 people who say the practice is barbaric and outdated.
Bullfight supporters insist that the corrida, as it is known, is an important tradition to preserve.
They also fear the vote could be the first of many in the country. The ban takes effect in January 2012.
Source: WaPo
July 28, 2010
A German newspaper says that former Nazi SS officer Erich Steidtmann, suspected but never convicted of involvement in World War II massacres, has died at age 95.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Wednesday that Steidtmann died Sunday from a heart attack at his home in Hannover....
Source: WaPo
July 28, 2010
Lawmakers in Catalonia outlawed bullfighting Wednesday, making it Spain's first major region to ban the deadly, centuries-old ballet between matador and beast after heated debate that pitted animal rights against a pillar of traditional culture....
The first Spanish region to outlaw bullfighting was the Canary Islands, in 1991. But fights were never that popular there and when the ban took effect there had not been a bullfight for seven years. That makes the Catalonia vote a much mo
