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)
November 7, 2008
The photographs belonged to, and may have been taken by, a naval surgeon, the late Sir Henry Norbury, who served in the 1879 war, which ended the Zulu nation's independence.
Sir Henry was later honorary surgeon to Kings Edward and George.
The album, which was given to Sir Henry by his wife Mina in 1868, for his birthday, includes photographs of female witch doctors, Zulu warriors, British camps, ships, and landscapes.
It has remained in the Dorset-based fam
Source: BBC
November 7, 2008
US playwright John Wolfson has pledged more than 450 works, including a first folio of 18 Shakespeare plays, to be handed over after his death.
Wolfson said he was "fortunate to have found a place as appropriate for my books as Shakespeare's Globe".
Chief executive Peter Kyle said the Bankside theatre was "delighted" to be bequeathed the "wonderful" collection.
In addition to the Shakespeare works, the archive includes plays
Source: Slate
November 6, 2008
What if the candidate dies after the election but before the inauguration on Jan. 20? The 20th Amendment states that if the president-elect dies before beginning his term, then the vice president-elect assumes his or her spot. However, the point at which a candidate officially becomes "president-elect" is debatable. He or she definitely assumes the title after Jan. 6, when a joint session of Congress officially counts the Electoral College votes and declares a winner. But the shift cou
Source: BBC
November 6, 2008
As the 90th anniversary of the Armistice which brought World War I to an end approaches, signs of the bloody conflict on the Western Front are still very much apparent today.
The forests around Verdun, where so many died, are still and silent.
Nature has smoothed countryside torn up by shellfire, and undermined by the men who sheltered from it.
Ahead on the carpet of brightly coloured autumn leaves, Christina Holstein forced her way through low hanging branches t
Source: FoxNews.com
November 6, 2008
A stalagmite rising from the floor of a cave in China is providing clues to the end of several dynasties in Chinese history.
Slowly built from the minerals in dripping water over 1,810 years, chemicals in the stone tell a tale of strong and weak cycles of the monsoon, the life-giving rains that water crops to feed millions of people.
Dry periods coincided with the demise of the Tang, Yuan and Ming dynasties, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 6, 2008
They include factory workers killed or maimed by their hazardous occupation and a soldier who survived virtually the entire war, only to be killed days from the armistice when a shell landed on the hospital where he was being treated.
Their stories are documented on the National Roll of the Great War, set up after the end of hostilities with the aim of recording the contribution of every person - civilian and military - to Britain's war effort.
But instead of being bure
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 6, 2008
The leader of Belgium's far-Right National Front party, Michel Delacroix, resigned on Thursday a few hours after he was shown on television singing a song making light of the Holocaust.
"Mr Delacroix, perfectly aware of what his actions would mean for him, has decided to resign from his post as president of the National Front," the party said in a statement, underlining that his act was "inadmissible."
In a video on public RTBF television's midday ne
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 6, 2008
The final resting place of Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco is to be opened and the remains of some of those who were killed by his fascist forces returned to their relatives.
The exhumation of eight bodies from the mass tomb has been ordered by Judge Baltasar Garzón, who last month launched a criminal investigation into the fate of tens of thousands of those who "disappeared" during the Spanish Civil War and ensuing dictatorship.
The Valley of the Fa
Source: AP
November 6, 2008
Aging, frail survivors of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor gingerly sifted dirt as they helped to break ground on a new visitor's center for the USS Arizona Memorial.
The current visitor's center — across the harbor from the submerged battleship — is sinking because it was built on reclaimed land, causing water to seep into its basement. Engineers estimate the building will last only a few more years.
The center is where visitors board ferries taking them to the
Source: AP
November 5, 2008
The remains of a Marine who disappeared 40 years ago after his helicopter crashed during the Vietnam War have been identified and returned to his family in Southern California.
The Department of Defense said Wednesday that Lance Cpl. Luis Palacios will be buried Friday in Bellflower, about 10 miles south of Los Angeles, with full military honors.
Palacios was killed with 11 other military personnel in 1968 when their helicopter was hit by ground fire and crashed into mo
Source: AP
November 5, 2008
The black students who integrated Little Rock Central High School in a harrowing 1957 confrontation that riveted the nation's attention expressed their joy Wednesday in Barack Obama's election as the first black president.
During the campaign, Obama often said he was grateful to the so-called Little Rock Nine and other veterans of the civil rights movement. Wednesday, members of the group said the incoming president was more than welcome.
"I'm so happy today. You c
Source: HNN Staff
November 6, 2008
This is the promo from Casemate publishers of a new book:
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Source: Guardian (UK)
November 6, 2008
Death was on Winston Churchill's mind on July 17 1915, as he sat down to write four neat pages to his wife, Clementine. She never read his letter, unlike millions of distraught widows who opened their own envelopes similarly marked "in the event of my death".
"Do not grieve for me too much," he wrote. "Death is only an incident, and not the most important that happens to us in this state of being. On the whole, especially since I met you, my darling one, I h
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 6, 2008
Raymond Scott, 51, from Washington, Tyne and Wear, was being questioned by Durham Police after detectives discovered fresh evidence.
The self-confessed "dilettante" antique dealer has publicly denied stealing the work, which police believe was taken in 1998 from a library at Durham University.
A Durham Police spokesman said: "A 51-year-old man at the centre of the inquiry into the stolen Shakespeare folio was re-arrested today.
"The mov
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 6, 2008
Seeping rainwater has threatened the structure of the Grade II listed Victorian Gothic building near Milton Keynes, described as being as important as the Cabinet War Rooms.
The Bletchley Park Trust spent £100,000 starting repairs on the Victorian roof this summer but ran out of money.
Simon Greenish, director of the trust, said the work was the "first really big step" in saving the building and turning it into a "world class" £10 million education a
Source: BBC
November 6, 2008
One of the five remaining veterans of World War I has died at the age of 108, it has been announced.
Sydney Maurice Lucas was born in Leicester on 21 September 1900. He was among the last batch of conscripts to be called up in 1918.
The Armistice meant he escaped the horror of the trenches but went on to serve in World War II.
He died on 4 November in his home town near Melbourne in Australia where he moved in 1928.
He was just 17 when he w
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
November 5, 2008
Barack Obama, who won the overwhelming support of college students, faculty members, and higher-education officials during his campaign, will be the next president of the United States. His election on Tuesday breaks a racial barrier, making the U.S. senator from Illinois the first black man to ascend to the nation’s top job.
Mr. Obama, who taught constitutional law as a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, campaig
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
November 5, 2008
The 2008 presidential election has broken so many political barriers that historians may overlook one unusual fact: When Barack Obama takes the oath of office next January alongside his running mate, Joe Biden, it will be the first time in history that the president, vice president, and both of their spouses have worked in higher education.
Taken together, the Obamas and the Bidens have amassed decades of experience at colleges and universities. Mr. Obama taught constitutional law a
Source: WaPo
November 6, 2008
Seventy-five days and counting -- to "game day," as the military planners call it. Inauguration Day to the rest of us.
It is not a lot of time until Jan. 20, the day Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the nation's first black president.
The congressional committee in charge of the swearing-in announced yesterday that the inaugural theme will come from stirring words spoken by Abraham Lincoln and be linked to the 200th anniversary of his birth next year.
Source: Times (UK)
November 5, 2008
Slave cabins still stand at the Friendfield Plantation in Georgetown, South Carolina. The whitewashed, wooden structures in Slave Street, a sandy track at the back of the plantation owner's house, were once crammed with captive African labourers. No more than sheds really, the cabins have no heating, no glass and no indoor plumbing, and are propped up on brick pillars to keep out flood water and visiting snakes.
The Withers family relied on more than 300 Africans to bring in the ric
