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: AP
July 4, 2010
Not just flora and fauna are getting caked in oil. So is the Gulf of Mexico's barnacled history of pirates, sea battles and World War II shipwrecks.
The Gulf is lined with wooden shipwrecks, American-Indian shell midden mounds, World War II casualties, pirate colonies, historic hotels and old fishing villages. Researchers now fear this treasure seeker's dream is threatened by BP PLC's deepwater well blowout.
Within 20 miles of the well, there are several significant shi
Source: BBC News
July 7, 2010
Researchers have discovered stone tools in Norfolk, UK, that suggest that early humans arrived in Britain nearly a million years ago - or even earlier.
The find, published in the journal Nature, pushes back the arrival of the first humans in what is now the UK by several hundred thousand years.
Environmental data suggests that temperatures were relatively cool.
This raises the possibility that these early Britons may have been among the first humans to use
Source: National Security Archive at GWU
June 23, 2010
- Four decades ago, in response to North Korean military provocations, the U.S. developed contingency plans that included selected use of tactical nuclear weapons against Pyongyang’s military facilities and the possibility of full-scale war, according to recently declassified documents. Astonishingly, casualty estimates ranged from a low of 100 or so civilian deaths, up to “several thousand.”
Newly-elected President Richard Nixon and his key advisors, National Security Advisor Henry
Source: NYT
July 6, 2010
After breakfast, his parents left for their jobs, and Scott Nicholson, alone in the house in this comfortable suburb west of Boston, went to his laptop in the living room. He had placed it on a small table that his mother had used for a vase of flowers until her unemployed son found himself reluctantly stuck at home....
Complicating the generational divide, Scott’s grandfather, William S. Nicholson, a World War II veteran and a retired stock broker, has watched what he described as
Source: NYT
July 6, 2010
For the first time in 67 years, people are living in a certain rather famous town house on East 65th Street — up on the sixth floor, where the original occupants’ laundry flapped in the breeze long ago.
The original occupants were Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, and his mother, Sara. The mother commissioned the house in 1906 as a wedding present for her son and daughter-in-law. And on the theory of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, Sara moved right in.
Source: NYT
July 6, 2010
The Eternal City is anything but.
Collapses this spring at a couple of ancient sites here caused weary archaeologists to warn, yet again, about other imminent calamities threatening Rome’s precarious architectural birthright.
Meanwhile, the smart set went gaga when an ostentatious national museum for contemporary art, Maxxi, opened recently, along with an expansion to the city-run new-art museum, Macro. That was just after Rome’s mayor, Gianni Alemanno, convened a confe
Source: Seattle PI
July 5, 2010
Research illuminating an ancient language connection between Asia and North America supports archaeological and genetic evidence that a Bering Strait land bridge once connected North America with Asia, and the discovery is being endorsed by a growing list of scholars in the field of linguistics and other sciences.
The work of Western Washington University linguistics professor Edward Vajda with the isolated Ket people of Central Siberia is revealing more and more examples of an anci
Source: St. Augustine Record
July 3, 2010
Archaeologists from the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program have found a potential colonial shipwreck buried under the sand about a mile off the coast and north of the St. Augustine Beach pier.
The scientists found a cauldron, thousands of lead shot, a glass base and a second cooking vessel about 400 meters from the site of where the ship the "Industry" sank in 1764.
The newly discovered ship could be older than the "Industry," said Chuck Meid
Source: Rutland Herald
July 5, 2010
Vermont officials are preparing to seize a Civil War era cannon at the center of a longstanding and pitched battle between the state and a group of historic re-enactors.
The bronze, 12-pound Napoleon cannon paid for by the Proctor family is owned by the state but has been maintained, repaired and used for three decades by re-enactors from the 2nd Battery Vermont Light Artillery — named after the original unit that used the cannon.
That arrangement worked comfortably unt
Source: Hannover Daily Record
July 6, 2010
A 66-year-old Livingston man was burned when a man asked him for a light and, instead of lighting a cigarette as he thought, he lit a paper cartridge filled with gun powder.
Police said Joseph Princiotta, 42, of Jersey City, obtained the cartridge from his friend, a Civil War re-enactor, who had the tube of gun powder with some of his re-enactment gear....
Source: WaPo
July 7, 2010
When Queen Elizabeth II first visited New York City, in 1957, the glamorous young monarch was welcomed with a ticker-tape parade befitting war heroes or World Series champs. On Tuesday, as the 84-year-old royal addressed the U.N. General Assembly for the first time since then, there was hardly a well-wisher to be found outside U.N. headquarters.
The low-key welcome was largely by design, reflective of the rest of the queen's somber New York agenda: a visit to Ground Zero, and to a m
Source: CNN
July 6, 2010
California's parole board Tuesday refused to release onetime Manson family acolyte Leslie Van Houten, finding the 60-year-old remains dangerous more than four decades after the group's Southern California murder spree.
The board found that Van Houten "still poses a risk to society," spokesman Luis Patino said. The decision marks the 19th time that she has been denied parole, and she won't be eligible again until 2013, Patino said.
Known as "Lulu" whi
Source: CNN
July 6, 2010
Bobby Fischer was a master chess player, a man who once seemed the epitome of control. But Fischer's personal life was often chaotic and marked by mystery.
Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Nicholas and his wife, Clea Benson, also a reporter, spent years researching Fischer's life, digging through public records and conducting dozens of interviews with people who knew the Fischer family, discovering, among other things, that "Bobby was lied to most of his life about who his real
Source: Discovery News
July 6, 2010
A sandstone sculpture of a kneeling man sharpening a knife could be a long forgotten work by Michelangelo, according to an Italian scholar who has rediscovered the statue in a private collection.
Measuring 111 centimeters (3.65 feet), the statue is now on display for the first time after more than 120 years at the exhibition, “And There Was Light. The Masters of the Renaissance,” in Göteborg, Sweden.
The powerful sculpture is a copy of a marble statue known as the “Arro
Source: Discovery News
July 6, 2010
Arm bone remains show that Neanderthals were unusually pumped up on male hormones, possibly due to an all-meat diet.
Remains of an early Neanderthal with a super strong arm suggest that Neanderthal fellows were heavily pumped up on male hormones, possessing a hormonal status unlike anything that exists in humans today, according to a recent paper.
Neanderthal males probably evolved their ultra macho ways due to lifestyle, genes, climate and diet factors, suggests the st
Source: BBC
July 6, 2010
A painting of Flint Castle by Joseph Mallord William Turner has sold at auction for £541,250.
The painting, which had a top guide price of £500,000, was sold at Sotheby's in London.
The watercolour sketch over pencil is considered one of Turner's greatest Welsh landscapes, and captures the castle on the Dee Estuary in the 1830s.
It was sold by a private collector who did not want to be identified.
Turner completed a second watercolour of the ca
Source: BBC
July 6, 2010
Tesco has been given approval to exhume 19th Century human remains as it starts construction in Linwood, Renfrewshire.
A judge granted an order allowing the firm to open a burial vault at the former parish church and remove the corpses for cremation and reinterment.
Linwood has been described as a Tesco town after plans were approved to build a supermarket and other facilities which will supported by the company.
When the site was discovered Tesco put a cam
Source: CNN
July 6, 2010
A nearly 40-year-old board game is getting a lot of new attention because of eerie similarities between the scenarios of its play and the 78-day-old BP Gulf oil disaster.
The game BP Offshore Oil Strike, which came out in the 1970s and is adorned with an old BP logo, revolves around four players exploring for oil, building platforms and constructing pipelines – all in the name of being the first to make $120 million.
But like the real-life oil game there are some big ha
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 6, 2010
Thousands of supporters will gather today to celebrate the Dalai Lama's 75th birthday.
The Nobel laureate will address a crowd of 5,000 fans and followers at his temple in McLeod Ganj, a hill station in the Indian Himalayas where he has lived since fleeing Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
In apparently fine health and showing no signs of slowing down despite his advanced years, the Buddhist spiritual leader will break with recent birthday tra
Source: BBC
July 6, 2010
A personalised account of life on board one of Lord Horatio Nelson's ships during the Napoleonic Wars has been made available online.
The logbook by Andrew Service charts his experiences on the 38-gun frigate Medusa in the early 1800s.
The Royal Navy Sailor, who was born in Port Glasgow in 1871, saw action in the Mediterranean, the East and West Indies and the North and South Americas.
His family donated the logbook to the University of Glasgow in the 198
