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: Telegraph (UK)
June 1, 2010
The Aston Martin car that featured in the James Bond film Goldfinger is expected to sell for £4million at auction.
It is the first time that the DB5 sports car Sean Connery drove in the hit movie has ever come on the open market.
The silver motor comes complete with the full complement of 'Q Branch' gadgets including machine guns, bullet-proof shield, revolving number plates, smoke screen and oil slick.
These secret devices were deployed by 007 when he was
Source: CNN
June 1, 2010
Three states -- Alabama, Mississippi, and New Mexico -- hold primaries Tuesday, and voters could make history in one of those states.
Rep. Artur Davis faces off against Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks in Alabama's Democratic gubernatorial contest. If the four-term congressman wins Tuesday's primary, he would become the state's first African-American Democratic nominee for governor. If Davis is elected in November, he would make history again, becoming Alabama's first black gover
Source: CNN
June 1, 2010
Marilyn Monroe's sultry rendition of "Happy Birthday" sung for President John F. Kennedy's 45th birthday celebration marked the actress's last major public appearance before her mysterious death in August 1962.
Tuesday, which would have been Monroe's 84th birthday, marks the public debut of a rare image of Monroe with President Kennedy and his brother Robert F. Kennedy together after the May 19, 1962 party.
The black and white photograph, taken by White House photog
Source: BBC News
May 31, 2010
The remains of 12 Mexican independence leaders have been exhumed in a solemn military ceremony led by President Felipe Calderon.
Bands played and crowds threw white flowers as the bones were paraded through Mexico City in glass caskets.
The crypts were opened as part of celebrations to mark 200 years since the start of Mexico's war of independence from Spain.
The bones will be studied to determine their authenticity.
"Today we pay tribute
Source: BBC News
June 1, 2010
Conservationists are in the Dominican Republic attempting to save one of the world's most strange and ancient mammals - the Hispaniolan solenodon.
While trying to track down one of these creatures, The Last Survivors team is also trying to find out exactly how this animal has been able to survive for a remarkable 76 million years.
It is pitch black.
Splashes of light from our torches illuminate patches of the vast cavern we are standing in, every now and th
Source: BBC News
June 1, 2010
A study of discarded oyster shells has reinforced the idea that the first British colonists in America had to endure an unusually severe drought.
Founded in 1607, Jamestown in Virginia was the first successful English settlement in North America.
Chemical analysis of shells thrown away from 1611-1612 shows that the James River where the oysters were harvested was much saltier then than it is today.
This was due to decreased flow from surrounding freshwater
Source: BBC News
June 1, 2010
French-born American sculptor Louise Bourgeois has died in New York, at the age of 98.
Based in New York since 1938, Bourgeois gained fame late in her long career and kept working to the end of her life.
Her giant spider sculptures have been exhibited around the world and earned her the nickname of Spiderwoman.
Her abstract explorations of themes such as birth, sexuality and death made her one of the world's most influential contemporary artists.
Source: CNN.com
May 31, 2010
Cemeteries are known for telling the stories of the people buried there. But the symbols on headstones and monuments can tell a different story: how our view of death has changed over time.
“Historic cemeteries really function as outdoor museums,” says Steve Estroff, education manager at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
A skull with wings, an urn or a tree were popular on headstones in America during the 17th and 18th centuries.
The Puritans “look
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 26, 2010
The first tranche of the “Non Conformist Registers” has been put online detailing the hundreds of thousands of people who shook up the established order with alternative ideas over the past 225 years.
The database, which goes live on Wednesday, discloses those who refused to conform to the doctrine of the established Anglican Church including Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Quakers.
The Quakers were the first religious group to denounce slavery whi
Source: Scripps News
April 20, 2010
Jim Brown grew up in the Civil War's shadow, listening to stories of the fighting from a father who lived it.
"He was in it from the beginning at Manassas to the end at Appomattox," Brown said. "He'd be amazed to see the changes today."
At 98, Brown's part of an exclusive group -- the surviving children of Civil War soldiers, removed by a single generation from the nation's bloodiest conflict. Records show fewer than 100 sons and daughters of the blu
Source: Newsweek
May 31, 2010
Between the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Allied victory in 1945, New York City was a choke point for the nation’s war effort, and America’s enemies did everything they could to choke it. U-boats ventured so close to Manhattan that German sailors could see the skyline’s glow. Nazi spies prowled Times Square. The most vulnerable part of the city—and the most important—was the port: 650 miles of miraculously productive waterfront that dispatched 3 million troops and even more tons of matériel to
Source: BBC
May 31, 2010
Letters from cricket legends WG Grace and Ivo Bligh are being auctioned to raise money for a new cricket museum in Cardiff.
The museum at the Swalec Stadium will tell the 122-year history of Glamorgan County Cricket Club.
"The letters are truly unique," said Richard Madley of auctioneers Dreweatts.
Other lots include a set of Wisden Cricket Almanacs from 1864 to 1970, which could raise £2,000-3,000 each.
It is hoped the auction wi
Source: BBC
May 30, 2010
A council is to seek millions of pounds-worth of funding to reopen a 12th Century abbey in Berkshire.
Reading Abbey has been closed to the public for more than a year because the structure is too unsafe.
Reading Borough Council said a study to find out what work needed doing would cost £90,000 while the cost of repairs was estimated to reach about £3m.
If the funding bids are successful the abbey could be closed for up to five years while the work is comp
Source: BBC
May 31, 2010
A nun from Brighton who helped hide persecuted Jews, Communists and Poles from the Nazis in wartime Rome is being considered for sainthood.
Mother Riccarda Beauchamp Hambrough was baptised as a child at Brighton's St Mary Magdalene Church.
She later became a nun and saved the lives of more than 60 people by smuggling them into her convent in Rome.
The Pope is to make her "a servant of God" - two steps away from sainthood.
Source: AP
May 31, 2010
Russia on Monday handed over to Poland copies of cockpit conversation recorders and other materials related to the investigation into the plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski.
Polish Interior Minister Jerzy Miller thanked Russian investigators for their cooperation, but said Poland needed access to all documents related to the crash in order to conduct its own probe.
It was not immediately clear how much information remained to be handed over, but Rus
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
May 28, 2010
The sight was bewildering. Four white students dressed like Ku Klux Klansmen walked through the cafeteria last week at Lumpkin County High School, heading to a class project on racism and walking straight into news reports around the world.
But when a similar scene unfolded in a Gwinnett County middle school last week, when the students wearing the Klan outfits were African-American, as was their teacher, the story changed.
What seismic sociological shift has occurred i
Source: AP
May 30, 2010
Tudor Parfitt has spent years chasing a theory that a lost tribe of Jews wound up in Southern Africa. But his latest leap has landed him in a minefield.
The subject at hand is this British scholar's contention that the remains of a 700-year-old bowl-shaped relic which he tracked down in a Zimbabwe museum storeroom in 2007 could be a replica of the Ark of the Covenant that carried the Ten Commandments.
According to African legend, white lions of God and a two-headed snak
Source: Newsweek
May 28, 2010
...The flow of undocumented immigrants began to taper in the middle of the past decade. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, the influx averaged 800,000 per year from 2000 to 2004, then dropped to about 500,000 per year from 2005 to 2008. It has almost certainly decreased even more since then, as the Great Recession has wiped out demand for foreign labor. People think of the torrent of illegal immigration in the recent past, and “it scares the pants off them,” says Dowell Myers, a professor in
Source: AP
May 30, 2010
Archaeologists have discovered the 3,300-year-old tomb of the ancient Egyptian capital's mayor, whose resting place had been lost under the desert sand since 19th century treasure hunters first carted off some of its decorative wall panels, officials announced Sunday.
Ptahmes, the mayor of Memphis, also served as army chief, overseer of the treasury and royal scribe under Seti I and his son and successor, Ramses II, in the 13th century B.C.
The discovery of his tomb ear
Source: Telegraph (India)
May 30, 2010
Archaeological excavations at Boxanagar in Sonamura subdivision of West Tripura have unearthed a large Buddhist complex, including relics of a stupa, teaching centre, a bronze image of Buddha and seals in Brahmi script, triggering a controversy over the history of the state.
The excavation commenced in 2003 under the supervision of Archaeological Survey of India’s (ASI) Guwahati circle.
In the second phase under archaeologists Bimal Sinha and B.K. Pande, remains of wall
