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: DW World
July 15, 2010
Eleven oil paintings that were among a stash that US soldiers are thought to have taken during World War II are on their way home.
The link between the paintings and their origins was discovered by Beth McFadden, whose great uncle, US Army Sergeant Harry Gursky, had been stationed near the town.
"Without the integrity and good will of Beth Ann McFadden, the repatriation of these paintings to the Pirmasens Museum could not have taken place," said a statement fr
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 16, 2010
A long lost Hollywood silent film featuring Charlie Chaplin is to be screened for the first time in nearly a century after being discovered at an antiques fair.
The comedy called A Thief Catcher was made in 1914 and was missing for so many years that Chaplin's appearance in it as a buffoon policeman had been forgotten.
The 10-minute movie was discovered by the American cinema historian, Paul Gierucki, who bought a can of old film marked "Keystone" at an antiqu
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 1, 2010
A terse letter in which Italy's national hero, Giuseppe Garibaldi, pleads poverty over an outstanding tax debt is among a cache of rare documents which will go on display for the first time at the world's oldest bank.
The documents come from the archives of the Monte dei Paschi bank, which was founded in 1472 in the Tuscan city of Siena and ranks as the oldest surviving bank in the world....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 15, 2010
The ONS has released a document, published during the early years of Queen Victoria's reign, which reveals in minute detail the economic and social make up of the country....
Despite the Empire's reputation for being fuelled by afternoon tea, the data indicates that coffee was still the drink of choice in Britain.
In 1840, the year Victoria married Prince Albert, Britain imported 28 million lbs of tea, but we imported more than twice as much coffee at 70 million lbs. By
Source: Discovery.com
July 14, 2010
Scientists who exhumed the remains of several members of the Medicis, the clan that dominated the Florentine Renaissance, have conclusively dismissed the theory of family murders, solving a more than 400-year-old cold case.
Malaria, not poison as long rumored, killed Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his second wife, Bianca Cappello, according to research to be published in Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
The couple d
Source: This is Grimsby (UK)
July 10, 2010
ARCHAEOLOGISTS have discovered 46 sets of human remains from what is thought to be a late-Roman cemetery during the redevelopment of a derelict pub.
The remains – including complete skeletons – were found during a dig at the site of the Talbot Inn, in Caistor, which is being transformed into a £1.3-million Lincolnshire Co-operative foodstore....
Source: Herald Sun (AU)
July 13, 2010
A VIDEO of a Melbourne woman's family singing and dancing along to the Gloria Gaynor hit I Will Survive while on a trip to a Nazi death camp has angered Jews across the globe.
Jane Korman, an artist who lives in Ashwood and is Jewish, posted the video of her 89-year-old father Adolk - who survived the Holocaust - and her three children dancing to the hit inside the Auschwitz death camp in Poland where as many as 1.1 million people were killed during World War II.
Althou
Source: Deutsche Welle (Germany)
July 18, 2010
Officials at Germany's Stasi archive have agreed to release some information showing West Germany's secret service employed former Nazi criminals. But some key data remains under wraps.
It's one of the country's worst-kept secrets. Yet questions still surround the presence of former Nazis and war criminals in West Germany's police, secret service (BND) and politics. Who were those people, what positions did they hold in Nazi Germany and later in post-war West Germany?
Source: NY Times
July 17, 2010
Amid the horrors of the Holocaust, the atrocities perpetrated by a few brutal women have always stood out, like aberrations of nature.
Enlarge This Image
There were notorious camp guards like Ilse Koch and Irma Grese. And lesser known killers like Erna Petri, the wife of an SS officer and a mother who was convicted of shooting to death six Jewish children in Nazi-occupied Poland; or Johanna Altvater Zelle, a German secretary accused of child murder in the Volodymyr-Volynskyy
Source: BBC News
July 19, 2010
An undiscovered Caravaggio painting may have been found in Rome, according to the Vatican newspaper.
The painting depicts the martyrdom of St Lawrence and belongs to the Jesuits in Rome.
It will now be examined in detail by art historians to find out if it really is the work of the famous Baroque painter.
Italy celebrated the life of the great master over the weekend on the 400th anniversary of Caravaggio's death.
A gallery housing his work and
Source: BBC News
July 19, 2010
The last of 250 British and Australian World War I troops recovered from mass graves has been reburied with full military honours in northern France.
Prince Charles and the relatives of identified soldiers attended a commemorative ceremony at the new Fromelles Military Cemetery.
It comes 94 years after the soldiers were killed in the Battle of Fromelles.
Work to excavate and identify the soldiers began two years ago, after the bodies were discovered.
Source: CNN
July 19, 2010
Safe deposit boxes believed to contain manuscripts and drawings by the late author Franz Kafka are due to be opened at a bank in Zurich.
The move is the latest twist in a long legal battle over who owns the papers.
Two Israeli sisters say they inherited the documents from their mother, but the Israeli state claims them as part of the country's cultural heritage.
Related stories
Kafkaesque battle over writer's papers
Hidden Kafka papers s
Source: Los Angeles Times
July 18, 2010
With names like Morgan, Getty and Huntington attached to impressive collections available for public view, the history of art collecting in America has acquired a new level of scholarly scrutiny.
The artistic legacies of American collectors get serious attention in scholarly circles. The back story is another matter. Biographers and journalists may revel in the messy business of how and why rich and powerful Americans spend fortunes on Rembrandts, Monets, Picassos and Rauschenbergs.
Source: BBC
July 18, 2010
Archaeologists have unearthed a second ancient figurine at a dig on Orkney.
The discovery was made at the same site as the Orkney Venus, the earliest representation of a human figure to be found in Scotland.
The Orkney Venus, a 5,000-year-old female carving which was found last summer, was just 4cm tall and composed of sandstone.
The new find is the same size and shape as the original Venus but is made of clay and is missing its head.
The olde
Source: AP
July 18, 2010
A South African community once riven by anti-foreigner violence came together Sunday in the spirit of Nelson Mandela to play a little soccer.
The so-called "goodwill games" were among activities around the world marking Mandela Day, which falls on Mandela's July 18 birthday and was conceived as an international day devoted to public service. Community leaders in Atteridgeville organized the unity-building tournament of teams of South Africans, Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and
Source: AP
July 18, 2010
Trapped by two Chinese divisions, troops of the 8th U.S. Cavalry Regiment were left to die in far northern Korea, abandoned by the U.S. command in a Korean War episode viewed as one of the most troubling in American military history.
Sixty years later those fallen soldiers, the lost battalion of Unsan, are stranded anew.
North Korea is offering fresh clues to their remains. American teams are ready to re-enter the north to dig for them. But for five years the U.S. gover
Source: AP
July 18, 2010
Minutemen groups, a surge in Border Patrol agents, and a tough new immigration law aren't enough for a reputed neo-Nazi who's now leading a militia in the Arizona desert.
Jason "J.T." Ready is taking matters into his own hands, declaring war on "narco-terrorists" and keeping an eye out for illegal immigrants. So far, he says his patrols have only found a few border crossers who were given water and handed over to the Border Patrol. Once, they also found a decayin
Source: AP
July 17, 2010
Who has the right to dance at Auschwitz, to make light of the Holocaust, to shoot videos set amid cattle cars and gas chambers?
A home video that has gone viral on the Internet showing a Holocaust survivor dancing at Auschwitz and other Holocaust sites to the disco classic "I Will Survive" with his daughter and grandchildren has brought such questions to the fore.
To some, images of Adolek Kohn and his family shuffling off-beat at such hallowed places is an in
Source: AP
July 17, 2010
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he'll resume direct peace talks if Israel accepts its 1967 frontier as a baseline for the borders of a Palestinian state and agrees to the deployment of an international force to guard them.
Abbas is under growing pressure from the United States to resume negotiations, and met Saturday with President Barack Obama's Mideast envoy, George Mitchell.
Abbas' latest comments, published Saturday in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad, hinte
Source: AP
July 17, 2010
Divers have discovered what is thought to be the world's oldest drinkable champagne in a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea, one of the finders said Saturday. They tasted the one bottle they've brought up so far before they even got back to shore.
Diving instructor Christian Ekstrom said the bottles are believed to be from the 1780s and likely were part of a cargo destined for Russia. The nationality of the sunken ship has not yet been determined.
The divers discovered the shi
