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: Guardian (UK)
May 30, 2010
Picasso is admired for his shifting perspectives and rebellious spirit, but last week the great artist played another posthumous trick on historians. Although his political sympathies are known to have lain with the hard left, it turns out he was not above breaking bread with Franco's regime. In 1956 the dictator's representatives made a concerted, but secret, effort to woo Picasso into agreeing to the staging of a prestigious retrospective in fascist Madrid.
It's hard to believe th
Source: Independent (UK)
May 29, 2010
A year ago this month, the haunting faces of unknown British and Commonwealth soldiers of the Somme emerged from the mists of time and battle to gaze from the pages of The Independent Magazine. The lost Somme photographs – 400 glass negatives of Tommies, Aussies and Canadians of the period 1915-16 rescued from a rubbish heap in northern France – generated extraordinary interest all over the world. The images were by far the most visited item on The Independent website in 2009 – and over the past
Source: WaPo
May 31, 2010
When he came home in 1967, he gathered everything from that time -- clothing, photographs, letters to his mother that she had carefully saved -- and he threw it all out. He set out to forget.
But as he got older, he wondered how much he had really moved on. He began to think that the path to healing might lie not in forgetting but in a meandering journey through all 50 states, visiting hundreds of memorials dedicated to those who had died and to those who had lived only to face oth
Source: NYT
May 28, 2010
She was Britain’s prima ballerina, an international idol of dance whose performances, with Rudolf Nureyev in particular, entranced and dazzled her audiences.
But she was also a plotter alongside her Panamanian husband, seeking the support of Fidel Castro to overthrow the Panamanian government in 1959 in a conspiracy that one British official called “highly reprehensible and irresponsible” and another likened to a comic opera at sea aboard her yacht.
In its broad detail
Source: National Parks Traveler
May 31, 2010
Memorial Day will see tens of thousands of people converging on the National Mall in our nation's capital. Many will visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and its iconic deep-vee black marble wall bearing the names of more than 58,000 American casualties.
nearly $9,000,000
Money contributed for construction of the memorial by corporations, foundations, unions, veterans, civic organizations, and more than 275,000 individuals. No federal funds were needed.
4,43
Source: NY Times
May 27, 2010
John W. Finn, the last survivor of the 15 Navy men who received the Medal of Honor for heroism during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, died Thursday at a nursing home in Chula Vista, Calif. He was 100 and had been the oldest living recipient of the medal, the nation’s highest award for valor.
His death was announced by J. P. Tremblay, deputy secretary of the California Department of Veterans Affairs.
On the morning of Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese planes bombe
Source: The Independent (UK)
May 30, 2010
The Dunkirk spirit is alive and well in George Kay. George, aged 90, climbed into his car in south London last week and drove (alone) to Dover. There, he boarded a ferry, and sailed for free, courtesy of Norfolk Lines, to Dunkirk. He was repeating, in reverse, for the first time in 70 years, a journey that he last made when he was one of 198,229 British soldiers who crossed the Channel under attack from German Stuka dive bombers and Messerschmitt fighters.
A makeshift cross-Channel
Source: ADN (Alaska)
May 30, 2010
On Kiska Island, anti-aircraft guns still point at the sky. Rusting barrels aim for targets that have not crossed their sights in almost 70 years.
Gray lakes fill craters blown into the tundra by bombs that once rained through the clouds. Around them lie the silent husks of war: a submarine, a war plane, tracked transports, tent pegs, ships and shells -- some yet waiting to explode.
Here stand mute witnesses of the long dissipated tension and tumult that wracked the wor
Source: BBC News
May 31, 2010
A lost ancient Egyptian tomb has been rediscovered by archaeologists in the desert sands south of Cairo.
The 3,300-year-old tomb is believed to belong to a mayor of the ancient capital of Memphis.
It was originally discovered by artefact hunters in the 19th Century, who then lost the tomb's location.
The tomb was located by a team of Egyptian researchers after a five-year search and they are hopeful mummified remains are still inside.
Nile hunt
Source: BBC Radio 4
May 3, 2010
You only really start to understand the place when you get a feel for its past. And a nation's history isn't only to be found on its battlefields, or in the ruins of its castles. It also lies in the bones of its culture - in its poems, in its music, and in the stories your neighbours might tell you.
The door-handles of my old Berlin apartment are beautiful. Brass, art nouveau and engraved with flowers worn smooth by more than 100 years of hands - the hands of those who lived here be
Source: Science Daily
May 26, 2010
Researchers from the Cartif Foundation and the University of Valladolid have created full color plans in 3-D of places of cultural interest, using laser scanners and photographic cameras. The technique has been used to virtually recreate five churches in the Merindad de Aguilar de Campoo, a region between Cantabria, Palencia and Burgos which boasts the highest number of Romanesque monuments in the world.
The project, which has been published in the Journal of Cultural Heritage, make
Source: Science Daily
May 27, 2010
With the help of ancient fossils unearthed in the Sahara desert, scientists have identified a new type of pterosaur (giant flying reptile or pterodactyl) that existed about 95 million years ago.
According to the findings published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE, the scientists consider the newly identified pterosaur to be the earliest example of its kind.
Unearthed in three separate pieces, the jaw bone has a total length of 344mm (13.5 inches). Each piece is well p
Source: Science Daily
May 27, 2010
A study by researchers at the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum sheds new light on a previously unclassifiable 500 million-year-old squid-like carnivore known as Nectocaris pteryx.
The new interpretation became possible with the discovery of 91 new fossils that were collected by the ROM from the famous Burgess Shale site (Yoho National Park) in the UNESCO World Heritage Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, British Columbia over the past three decades, and examined by PhD
Source: Science Daily
May 28, 2010
More than 100 years ago paleontologist E. D. Cope of "Dinosaur Wars" fame found a few fragmentary bones of a reptile in the deserts of New Mexico. He named the reptile Typothorax. A century later Typothorax, which belongs to a group of reptiles called aetosaurs, remained something of a mystery, known mainly from pieces of armor, a few limb bones, and some sections of tail.
Now, thanks to two remarkably complete skeletons discovered by volunteers and described in the latest
Source: Science Daily
May 28, 2010
It was not necessary to be literate to be able to access rune carvings in the 11th century. At the same time those who could read were able to glean much more information from a rune stone than merely what was written in runes. This is shown in new research from Uppsala University in Sweden.
Rune stones are an important part of the Swedish cultural environment. Many of them are still standing in their original places and still bear witness about the inhabitants of the area from a th
Source: Science Daily
May 28, 2010
Demonstrating that chemistry sometimes can inform history, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Colorado College and Mount Saint Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Md., have shown that sensitive nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques can be used to determine the elemental composition of ancient coins, even coins that generally have been considered too corroded for such methods.
Along the way, the researchers' analysis of coins minted in ancie
Source: Science Daily
May 28, 2010
Scientists have found the possible source of a huge carbon dioxide 'burp' that happened some 18,000 years ago and which helped to end the last ice age.
The results provide the first concrete evidence that carbon dioxide (CO2) was more efficiently locked away in the deep ocean during the last ice age, turning the deep sea into a more 'stagnant' carbon repository -- something scientists have long suspected but lacked data to support.
Working on a marine sediment core reco
Source: Science Daily
May 30, 2010
Michael J. Ryan, Ph.D., a scientist at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, has announced the discovery of a new horned dinosaur, Medusaceratops lokii. Approximately 20 feet long and weighing more than 2 tons, the newly identified plant-eating dinosaur lived nearly 78 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period in what is now Montana. Its identification marks the discovery of a new genus of horned dinosaur.
Ryan, curator and head of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Museum,
Source: World Bulletin
May 30, 2010
Experts unearthed an Arabic text from 8th century during the excavations under Marmaray project in Istanbul, a Turkish newspaper said.
The text, consists of 13 lines, was written on an animal's scapula. Ottoman manuscript expert from Istanbul Archaeology Museum, Gunay Paksoy, examined the text and there is no exact statement that it was a letter or an amulet, Bugün said.
Another two similar texts were found but it is not possible to read them, experts said.
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
