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: Rapid City Journal (SD)
June 18, 2010
When the towers of the World Trade Center fell on Sept. 11, 2001, Clarence Wolf Guts asked his son to call the U.S. Department of Defense to see if the country needed his code talking abilities to find Osama Bin Laden.
Wolf Guts was in his late 70s at the time, so his son, Don Doyle, did not make the call, but said the request personified his father's love of country.
"He still wanted to help. He was trying to still be patriotic," Doyle said.
Wolf
Source: Chattanooga Free Press
June 24, 2010
The Civil War Preservation Trust has named two Northwest Georgia battlefields in their 15 "at risk" sites.
The national group said the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park and the Resaca Battlefield are at risk, but for different reasons.
Chickamauga "is beset by proposals for cellular communications towers" and Resaca is still struggling to secure funding and move forward with an interpretive center, the group said....
Source: Guardian (UK)
June 24, 2010
The disgraced former Telegraph owner Conrad Black and the Enron fraudster Jeffrey Skilling have won fresh hope of early release from jail following a US supreme court ruling that their convictions partly relied on a controversial corruption law that was too broad in its scope.
In a major legal victory for the two jailed tycoons, America's top court issued separate, but related, rulings declaring that the men were treated unfairly when appeal court judges threw out their attempts to
Source: USA Today
June 24, 2010
The old warlord, infamous for backstabbing and bloodletting, can hardly complain. When Chinese state television broadcast a live excavation this month of the tomb of General Cao Cao, the destruction found inside confirmed that tomb robbers had beaten archaeologists to the underground site.
Back in the third century, Cao Cao organized his soldiers into a treasure-hunting, tomb-raiding division. These days, the Chinese government threatens the death penalty for stealing cultural relics, ye
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 23, 2010
The subterranean passageways of the Colosseum in which gladiators waited to do battle and terrified wild animals were caged are to be opened to the public for the first time this summer.
An ingenious system of pulleys, ropes and platforms enabled lions, tigers, bears and other wild beasts to be winched up into the sand-covered arena, to the cheers and jeers of 50,000 baying spectators.
The opening of the 2,000-year-old underground tunnels and galleries will enable tour
Source: Eurek Alert
June 23, 2010
The separation of Neardenthal and Homo sapiens might have occurred at least one million years ago, more than 500.000 years earlier than previously believed after DNA-based analyses. A doctoral thesis conducted at the National Center for Research on Human Evolution (Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana) -associated with the University of Granada-, analysed the teeth of almost all species of hominids that have existed during the past 4 million years. Quantitative methods were
Source: BBC
June 24, 2010
A Neolithic burial site in the parish of St Sampson has yielded pottery fragments and flints that date back 4,500 years.
They were discovered in a gallery grave, which lies within Delancey Park.
Evidence has also been found of related structures that were previously unknown to archaeologists.
The finds were made during a preliminary examination of the site in June 2010. More extensive excavations are due to take place in 2011....
Source: Discovery News
June 22, 2010
The world's largest dinosaur graveyard has been discovered in Alberta, Canada, according to David Eberth of the Royal Tyrrell Museum and other scientists working on the project.
The Vancouver Sun reports that the massive dinosaur bonebed is 1.43-square miles in size. Eberth says it contains thousands of bones belonging to the dinosaur Centrosaurus, which once lived near what is now the Saskatchewan border.
A journal paper outlining details about it is expected later th
Source: Discovery News
June 23, 2010
A dwarf-ed, human-like skeleton was discovered in 2004 deep inside Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. Was it a diseased human? A child?
Further examination of the bones revealed that they were not recent, nor human exactly. Archaeologists famously declared the skeleton a new human ancestor, Homo floresiensis, whose striking similarities to Frodo Baggins earned it the nickname the "hobbit."
But researchers continue to disagree over where exact
Source: Discovery News
June 23, 2010
The new finding challenges past assertions that the famous pharaoh died of malaria.
Legendary pharaoh Tutankhamun was probably killed by the genetic blood disorder sickle cell disease, German scientists said Wednesday, rejecting earlier research that suggested he died of malaria.
The team at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in the northern city of Hamburg questioned the conclusions of a major Egyptian study released in February on the enigmatic boy-kin
Source: Discovery News
June 23, 2010
Gen. McChrystal was not the first general to be dismissed by a president and due to the U.S. military and political systems, he won't be the last.
McChrystal's dismissal came after Rolling Stone magazine quoted the general and his staff making disparaging and insulting comments about Obama and the president's security team. The article described McChrystal as a man who, albeit brilliant, "speaks his mind with a candor rare for a high-ranking official"-- even when he disagr
Source: AP
June 24, 2010
A great wooden steamship that sank more than a century ago in a violent Lake Michigan storm has been found off the Milwaukee-area shoreline, and divers say the intact vessel appears to have been perfectly preserved by the cold fresh waters.
Finding the 300-foot-long L.R. Doty was important because it was the largest wooden ship that remained unaccounted for, said Brendon Baillod, the president of the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association.
The Doty was carrying a
Source: BBC
June 23, 2010
Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan has apologised to people in Okinawa for "the burden" of US bases on the island.
Mr Kan was on his official first visit to Okinawa to mark 65 years since the end of a bloody World War II battle.
His predecessor Yukio Hatoyama resigned earlier this month over the poor handling of a row over the relocation of the Futenma airbase.
Islanders have been angered by incidents involving US troops based there, including th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 23, 2010
Jesus may not have died nailed to the cross because there is no evidence that the Romans crucified prisoners two thousand years ago, a scholar has claimed.
The legend of his execution is based on the traditions of the Christian church and artistic illustrations rather than antique texts, according to theologian Gunnar Samuelsson.
He claims the Bible has been misinterpreted as there are no explicit references the use of nails or to crucifixion - only that Jesus bore a
Source: AP
June 24, 2010
Floods in Bosnia displaced thousands this week as they washed away homes, crops and bridges. The torrents may have also swept loose a perhaps even bigger concern: land mines planted during the Bosnian war.
Since the end of the war in 1995, authorities have done their best to clear away the estimated 1 million land mines planted by the conflicting sides — or at least to mark contaminated areas.
At the end of the 1992-95 war, the U.N. was forced to estimate the number of
Source: Slate
June 11, 2010
...It's a hangover trend from the Middle Ages. Standard fashion around 1100 and 1200 A.D. dictated long, flowing robes and hoods for warmth; the greater a person's wealth, the higher the quality of the fabrics. This attire went out of style around the Renaissance. But sumptuary laws, often designed to prevent people from dressing above their class, kept academics (who were relatively low in the social hierarchy) in simple, unostentatious robes through the 16th century. Thereafter, academics and
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 22, 2010
The earliest known icons of four of Christ's apostles have been found adorning an elaborately decorated chamber in a catacomb beneath the streets of Rome.
Scientists used advanced laser technology to remove a hardened crust of dirt and calcium deposits in order to bring to light the brightly coloured 4th century paintings of Saints John, Paul, Andrew and Peter.
The images adorn the ceiling of a vault, carved out of volcanic rock, which provided the last resting place
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 24, 2010
Getting struck by lightning was a real hazard for British soldiers in the Second Boer War, according to military records put online for the first time.
During the late Victorian conflict 86 men were killed or injured by lightening while serving in southern Africa, the records published online today by genealogy website Ancestry.co.uk show.
On one occasion two soldiers were killed within moments of each other, when lightening struck their base in the appropriately-named
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 24, 2010
Yann Martel, the Booker prize-winning author, has said that "Jews don't own the Holocaust".
The Life of Pi writer, whose latest novel is about the Holocaust, claimed that he should be able to write about the period in history even though he is not Jewish.
His fictional work, Beatrice and Virgil, follows a blocked writer who meets a taxidermist writing a play about the Holocaust and has received a number of hostile reviews.
Martel, 46, rejected the
Source: Desoto Times Tribune (MN)
June 24, 2010
Hollywood has "Saving Private Ryan," and the History Channel chronicled the story of the five Irish-American Sullivan brothers, who fought and died during World War II.
But for Iven "Bruce" O'Neal of Hernando, the story of six brothers, including himself, who served during World War II, is a story which has never been told until now.
O'Neal served with the 97th Division, U.S. Infantry in Le Harve, France, and in the Rhineland with U.S. General George
