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: http://www.ledger-enquirer.com
November 16, 2008
The job is simple, repetitive, fascinating: Get in the car. Drive. Find a Civil War historical marker. Note its condition, location, etc.
Return to car. Repeat the process 900-plus times.
That's OK with Will Hanley. With rental car, computer and maps, the 28-year-old Savannah resident is compiling an inventory of Civil War markers across Georgia. Working for the Georgia Historical Society, Hanley is finding signs on roadsides and in state parks, in the blanket-flat reaches of
Source: York Daily Record
November 17, 2008
As the country looks toward the inauguration of Barack Obama, some are wondering how he will fulfill his vow to bring people together, especially after such an angry, bitter campaign.
With race used as wedge issue in the election of 2008, perhaps it's not surprising to hear Obama so often quoting Abraham Lincoln -- another Illinois-lawyer-turned-politician whose presidency changed the way Americans talked about race.
"I think he's taking Lincoln's lead," said
Source: Stars & Stripes
November 18, 2008
The remnants of a U.S. Army B-24 Liberator shot down over Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II were returned to U.S. soil last week.
The pieces of fuselage from the "Taloa" had been kept in a local farmer’s barn for more than six decades. The farmer, who refused to disclose his name to Stars and Stripes, feared being punished for disobeying a Japanese military police order in 1945 to not touch the wreckage.
The Taloa was shot down as it returned from a missio
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
November 1, 2008
Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the wo
Source: CNN
November 17, 2008
An extensive federal report released Monday concludes that roughly one in four of the 697,000 U.S. veterans of the 1990-91 Gulf War suffer from Gulf War illness.
That illness is a condition now identified as the likely consequence of exposure to toxic chemicals, including pesticides and a drug administered to protect troops against nerve gas.
The 452-page report states that "scientific evidence leaves no question that Gulf War illness is a real condition with real
Source: AP
November 16, 2008
DALLAS — A Texas museum hopes a document found in its archives turns out to be an authentic government copy of Abraham Lincoln's eloquent letter consoling a mother thought to have lost five sons in the Civil War.
The famed Bixby Letter, which the Dallas Historical Society is getting appraised as it prays for a potential windfall, has a fascinating history.
The original has never been found. Historians debate whether Lincoln wrote it. Its recipient, Lydia Bixby, was no f
Source: AP
November 11, 2008
Places that presidents call home often become major tourist attractions, from estates at Mount Vernon and Monticello, to Hodgenville, Ky., where Abe Lincoln's log cabin once stood, to Bill Clinton's boyhood home in Hope, Ark.
So what's the equivalent of Barack Obama's log cabin? Probably a 10th-floor apartment in Honolulu where he lived with his mother and grandparents. But to see all the places connected to Obama's life story, you'd have to visit three countries, six time zones and
Source: NYT
November 16, 2008
Deep below the Egyptian desert, archaeologists have found evidence of yet another pyramid, this one constructed 4,300 years ago to store the remains of a pharaoh’s mother. That makes 138 pyramids discovered here so far, and officials say they expect to find more.
Tourists will, no doubt, care.
Egyptians probably will not, unless they work in tourism.
But for citizens and foreigners alike, there is no escaping the truth that Egypt is inextricably linked in t
Source: International Herald Tribune
November 17, 2008
Before there were call centers and Indian conglomerates, before the East India Co. or the British Raj, there were Armenians who made their way to India to trade and to escape religious persecution from the Turks and, later, Persians.
Entrepreneurial and devout Christians, but familiar with the Islamic ways of Mughal emperors, Armenians arrived in northeast India in the early 1600s, some 60 years before British adventurers became established traders here. They acquired gems, spices a
Source: International Herald Tribune
November 17, 2008
Of all the right angles that have been built at ground zero in the last three years, of all the places where steel meets steel at 90 degrees, there is no more meaningful angle right now than the one that defines a corner of the north pool of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.
It visibly defines part of the outline of 1 World Trade Center - a void left in the city fabric after the attack of Sept. 11, 2001.
"Sculptors talk about how the sculpture is alrea
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 15, 2008
For almost 500 years, the sinking of the Mary Rose has been blamed on poor seamanship and the fateful intervention of a freak gust of wind which combined to topple her over.
Now, academics believe the vessel, the pride of Henry VIII's fleet, was actually sunk by a French warship – a fact covered up by the Tudors to save face.
The Mary Rose, which was raised from the seabed in 1982 and remains on public display in Portsmouth, was sunk in 1545, as Henry watched from the s
Source: NYT
November 15, 2008
By some logic, there is no earthly reason why bicycles should still exist.
They are a quaint, 19th-century invention, originally designed to get someone from point A to point B. Today there are much faster, far less labor-intensive modes of transportation. And yet hopeful children still beg for them for Christmas, healthful adults still ride them to work, and daring teenagers still vault them down courthouse steps. The bicycle industry has faced its share of disruptive technologies,
Source: Rasmussen Reports
November 16, 2008
The Rasmussen Consumer Index, which measures the economic confidence of consumers on a daily basis, fell a point to match its all-time low on Sunday. At 62.3, the Consumer Index is down five points from a week ago and down nine points from a month ago. The record low was set last Wednesday, November 12, surpassing a previous record set in mid-October.
Source: Chicago Tribune
November 16, 2008
Betty Shoemaker has seen all this before: a stock market crash, banks going bust, families cast out of their homes.
She was only 5 years old in 1929, when the nation fell into the long economic cataclysm that came to be known as the Great Depression. But she remembers clearly her father's despair at losing his accounting job, the misery of Logan Square neighbors evicted onto the street, her own shame at receiving food from public aid.Experts say safeguards developed since the 1930s
Source: AP
November 16, 2008
The men bound the thumbs of dozens of suspected communists behind their backs with banana leaves and drove them to a torch-lit jungle clearing. As villagers jeered, the prisoners were killed, one by one.
"There was no resistance," remembers Sulchan, then the 21-year-old deputy commander of an Islamic youth militia. "All of them had their throats cut with a long sword."
Sulchan was a killer in one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century, where up
Source: AP
November 16, 2008
When Gunnar Bergstrom was a guest of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime in August 1978, the young Swede enjoyed a dinner of oysters and fish hosted by dictator Pol Pot.
The meal followed a rare interview he and three of his countrymen were given by the secretive communist leader who labeled talk about genocide under his rule a Western lie.
The young European leftists, members of an unofficial friendship delegation, shared Pol Pot's view, seeing the Khmer Rouge takeover as a
Source: BBC
November 14, 2008
Lifeboat volunteers in East Sussex are marking the 80th anniversary of one of the worst disasters in the RNLI's history, when a crew of 17 drowned.
Rye Harbour lifeboat was launched in the early hours of 15 November 1928 to rescue a stricken steamer, the Alice.
The crew of the Alice was saved by another vessel, but the lifeboat Mary Stanford capsized in the storm.
A presentation to commemorate the disaster is to be held at St Thomas's Church, Winchelsea, on
Source: History Today
November 14, 2008
New research by University College London has revealed that massive amounts of government compensation were paid out to investors when slavery was abolished in the 19th century. Dr Nick Draper has discovered that £20 million worth of payments were made, a figure that equates to a staggering 40% of government expenditure of the day.
Even more surprising are the backgrounds to the recipients. The image many today would hold of slave owners may involve upper class affectations and West
Source: Deutsche Welle
November 15, 2008
"History is repeating itself" in Italy, Piero Terracina said Friday, Nov. 14, at a conference marking the 70th anniversary of the notorious racial laws targeting Jews, which were approved by the Italian cabinet on Nov. 15, 1938.
"Everything started with the census of the Jews and the terrible consequences to which this led us," said Terracina, reported AFP news agency.
The 80-year-old Holocaust survivor was freed from the Auschwitz concentration ca
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 16, 2008
Cynthia Roberts, 72, who stood as a Labour Parliamentary candidate, allegedly spied for the Czech Government when the country was controlled by the Soviet Union.
Documents obrained by the Mail on Sunday purport to show that she worked for the Communists under the codename Agent Hammer.
The files, held by the Czech security service, claim that she wrote secret dossiers for the communist regime on Tory politicians including Margaret Thatcher and ex-Cabinet Minister Davi
