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)
January 4, 2009
The monument has baffled archaeologists who have argued for decades over the stone circle's 5,000-year history but academic Rupert Till believes he has solved the riddle by suggesting it may have been used for ancient raves.
Mr Till, an expert in acoustics and music technology at Huddersfield University, West Yorks., believes the standing stones had the ideal acoustics to amplify a "repetitive trance rhythm".
The original Stonehenge probably had a "very
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 31, 2069
A Second World War RAF veteran has been reunited with the plane he was shot down in over enemy lines in 1942.
George Shepherd, 91, had a close call when the Handley Page Hampden torpedo bomber was shot down by German fighters in 1942.
He avoided serious injury and managed to escape. He went on the run for 32 hours before being captured by German forces, and was eventually put in a prisoner of war camp in Poland. He was later forced on the Nazi death march before being
December 31, 2069
Within days of the Penguin Group's decision to cancel the publication of Herman Rosenblat's Holocaust memoir, York House Press, a small publishing house, has announced it will print the book, minus the fictionalized apple stories. Below is the publisher's announcement.
Related Links
Deborah Lipstadt: Apples Over the Fence: A Ne
Source: Washington Post
January 3, 2009
For seriously predicting that the United States will break into six parts in June or July of 2010, Igor Panarin has suddenly become a Russian state-media celebrity. Hardly a day goes by without another interview or two for the KGB-trained, Kremlin-backed senior analyst. The clamor in Russia for his ideas is growing, he says.
Panarin's disintegration divination comes complete with a map. In it, Alaska goes to Russia. Hawaii goes to Japan or China. "The California Republic"
Source: AP
January 2, 2009
LOCUST GROVE, Va. —- Wal-Mart wants to build a Supercenter within a cannonshot of where Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant first fought, a proposal that has preservationists rallying to protect the key Civil War site.
A who's who of historians including filmmaker Ken Burns and Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough sent a letter last month to H. Lee Scott, president and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., urging the company to build somewhere farther from the Wilderness Battlefield.
Source: AP
January 2, 2009
A college student dressed in a vintage German military uniform who was fatally shot by police on New Year's Day was a harmless, eccentric history buff
Miles Murphy, a University of Washington senior, was shot several times at his apartment early Thursday after police said he pointed a rifle affixed with a bayonet at officers and refused orders to drop the weapon.
Seattle police had converged on Murphy's apartment after receiving complaints that several men were firing r
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 2, 2009
Plans to create a museum celebrating the "common historical memory" of the European Union have run into controversy over attempts to agree an account of key events including Second World War.
MEPs have given the green light to a multi-million pound state-of-the-art "House of European History" to be opened in Brussels by 2014.
The project to "promote an awareness of European identity" is the brainchild of Hans-Gert Poettering, President of t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 2, 2009
Adolf Hitler is one of the last names you would expect to be deployed in a tourism marketing campaign.
But the Fuehrer has been given centre stage by the next European City of Culture.
Liverpool naturally highlighted its connections to the Beatles, its most famous sons, when it became City of Culture in 2008.
But the Austrian city of Linz, with no lederhosen version of the Fab Four to exploit, has instead decided to showcase the works of the architect of th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 2, 2009
Millions of savers are braced for zero per cent accounts within days as the Bank of England is poised to cut interest rates to the lowest level in its 315-year history.
Experts have warned the return on savings could plumb new depths with the Bank expected to take unprecedented steps to regain control over the economy.
They widely believe the Bank will reduce borrowing costs to below their 2 per cent level - and possibly all the way down to 1 per cent - in its first meeting o
Source: Deutsche Welle
January 2, 2009
Almost 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, most Germans are disappointed at what the country has achieved since reunification, a new survey shows.
The survey carried out by Forsa for the Friday edition of the Berliner Zeitung daily found that the majority of the 1,000 Germans polled were dejected by the developments of the last two decades in the country.
"The euphoria that dominated after the fall of the Berlin Wall has largely disappeared," Forsa chi
Source: Times (UK)
January 3, 2009
The Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, once told his British counterpart that Nato was making all the same mistakes that the Soviet army did in the country in the 1980s.
When Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador, asked if Mr Kabulov would explain what those mistakes were, the reply was a quick and simple “No!”. It was a joke, but, like most Russian ones, it was rooted in an uncomfortable truth.
“The Soviet Union tried to bring socialism to A
Source: Times (UK)
January 3, 2009
Sure, 2008 was bad. But for Americans it was nowhere near as bad as 11,000BC – according to research published in Science magazine yesterday.
At about that time, say scientists, a massive comet struck the atmosphere somewhere above North America, broke into pieces and rained down fire and death – wiping out the early Palaeo-Americans, also known as Clovis people, and making creatures such as the woolly mammoth, mastodon, short-faced bear, sabre-toothed cat, ground sloth and giant a
Source: Deutsche Welle
January 2, 2009
For many, the Marienfelde Refugee Center in Berlin was a first stop-off point, a place where people could prepare for a new life in the West after turning their backs on Communist Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
But the refugee center, which served as a temporary home for close to two million people during its busy 55-year history, closed its doors for good on Wednesday, Dec. 31.
Refugee arrivals from eastern Europe have dwindled to a trickle in recent years, nega
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 2, 2009
The skull of philosopher René Descartes is to be moved from Paris to the school where he studied as a boy.
Prytanée military school near the north-western town of La Flèche has asked for the remains to be put on display in its adjoining church.
The institution believes the skull’s current home in the capital’s Musée de l’Homme – between busts of prehistoric man and retired footballer Lilian Thuram – is inappropriate.
Descartes’s body has been picked apart e
Source: Boston Globe
January 2, 2008
The 1.2 million spectators who mobbed [Lyndon] Johnson's inauguration - still a record - are remembered today as little more than a trivia question and a crowd-control model. But as Barack Obama prepares to be sworn in Jan. 20 on Abraham Lincoln's Bible to inherit Franklin D. Roosevelt's economy - while facing inevitable comparisons to John F. Kennedy's style and Ronald Reagan's rhetoric - the 1965 event has begun to look like its own precedent: The only inaugural to compare to this one for she
Source: Reuters
January 2, 2008
Cuba's revolution is stronger than ever but faces"incessant struggle"
against the threat of the United States, President Raul Castro said on
Thursday in a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the uprising that
its leader, Fidel Castro, was too ill to attend.
Raul Castro spoke proudly of the 1959 revolution that transformed the
Caribbean island into a communist state 90 miles (145 km) from U.S.
shores, but he warned the country must not let down its guard."The enemy will never
Source: BBC
January 1, 2009
The 90th anniversary of the wrecking of a ship carrying hundreds of
sailors home following the end of World War I has been marked on the
Western Isles.
About 300 people gathered at a memorial on Lewis dedicated to the Iolaire
disaster in which 205 of the 280 passengers died.
The yacht was wrecked on a reef called the Beasts of Holm off Lewis in the
early hours of 1 January 1919.
Source: BBC
January 2, 2009
The Vatican City State, the world's smallest sovereign state, has decided
to divorce itself from Italian law.
Vatican legal experts say there are too many laws in Italian civil and
criminal codes, and that they frequently conflict with Church principles.
With effect from New Year's Day, the Pope has decided that the Vatican
will no longer automatically adopt laws passed by the Italian parliament.
Source: Guardian (UK)
January 2, 2009
MADRID -- After a two-year battle with the government, heirs of the Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco have been ordered to open his flamboyant summer estate to the public.
The regional government of Galicia this week declared the late 19th-century property in the northern town of Sada a cultural heritage site...
The move is the most recent step in Spain's belated quest to come to terms with the legacy of its civil war and the Franco dictatorship. The last triump
Source: Times (of London)
January 2, 2009
Unpublished texts by Ernest Hemingway about the hunt for German U-boats off the Cuban coast during the Second World War are part of an important collection of the writer’s works to be released next week.
While serving on a ship tracking Nazi submarines in the Gulf of Mexico, Hemingway wrote in code about his exploits.
The notes are among 3,000 letters and other writings by the Nobel laureate to be made accessible online from Monday by curators at the writer’s former res
