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: History Today
September 30, 2008
The legal battle over the payment of a finders’ fee to the couple who discovered the Stone Age hunter Oetzi was finally resolved yesterday, when Erika Simon was awarded 150,000 Euros (£119,770) by the provincial government of Bolzano in Northern Italy.
The dispute lasted 14 years following Erika and Helmut Simon’s initial decline of a payment of 10 million lire (£4,122), which fell short of the legal finders’ fee of 25% of the discovery’s value. Helmut Simon died in a hiking accide
Source: Guardian (UK)
September 30, 2008
The blaze that caused £10m of damage to the Cutty Sark last year was sparked by an industrial vacuum cleaner on the ship, police said today.
The machine was being used to remove waste during restoration work on the historic tea clipper when the fire broke out in May.
Officials found that the equipment had been left running for a weekend before the fire broke out during the early hours of a Monday morning.
Nick Carey, of the London Fire Brigade, said the ind
Source: ANSA
September 25, 2008
Archaeologists in Sardinia said Thursday they have found the port of the Phoenician city of Tharros, held by some to be the ancient people's most important colony in the Mediterranean after Carthage.
Researchers from the University of Cagliari and Sassari found the submerged port in the Mistras Lagoon, several kilometres from the city ruins.
Excavations have long been going on at the site of the city itself, on a peninsula overlooking the Bay of Oristano in western Sard
Source: AFP
September 25, 2008
Archaeologists are racing against the little time left to salvage a fortune in coins and items from a 500-year-old Portuguese shipwreck found recently off Namibia's rough southern coast.
Despite its importance, the project, in a restricted diamond mining area, is itself costing a fortune in sea-walling that cannot be sustained after October 10.
"The vast amounts of gold coins would possibly make this discovery the largest one in Africa outside Egypt," said Fr
Source: NYT
September 28, 2008
LONDON — Early this month, Gibson Square publishers here announced that it would publish “The Jewel of Medina,” a novel about the early life of A’isha, one of the wives of the Prophet Muhammad. It was a bold decision: the book’s United States publisher, Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, had canceled its publication in August amid fears that it would offend and inflame Muslim extremists. (It has since been bought by another American publisher, Beaufort Books.)
For his par
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 29, 2008
Britain, in the autumn of 1938, was still something approaching a great power, with an empire on which the sun never set and – despite the ravages of the slump earlier in the decade – more prosperous than almost any other country on the planet. It was 70 years ago this week that we, in the words of our then prime minister Neville Chamberlain, decided that Czechoslovakia was merely a faraway country of which we knew little, and that if a chunk of it full of ethnic Germans was given to Hitler’s Re
September 29, 2008
A house built for Queen Victoria to stay in - but which she only used as a rain shelter - is to be sold.
The cottage, on the shores of Loch Katrine, was constructed in 1859 for the royal opening of Glasgow's water supply scheme.
Protocol stated that a house be built rather than using mobile accommodation.
However, its windows were shattered by a 21-gun salute during the opening. Instead, the Queen used the property as a shelter from the rain.
Source: Times (UK)
September 29, 2008
Upper Heyford A former military airfield in Oxfordshire is at the centre of a battle over how best to preserve Britain’s Cold War heritage.
A planning inquiry opens this week into the details of a 1,000-home development proposed for Upper Heyford, whose two-mile runway was capable of taking huge B52 American bombers and where the US Air Force once had 75 F111 fighters in 56 concrete hangars. English Heritage says the whole landscape should be kept intact, but Cherwell Distict Counc
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 29, 2008
HMS Exeter, used to shoot down Argentina Skyhawk jets in the Falkland War in 1982, sailed back to Portsmouth harbour last month, fuelling fears the Navy is suffering from defence budget cuts.
It has reportedly been downgraded to a "lower state of readiness" several months before it was due to be taken out of service.
Although the Ministry of Defence insists the Type 42 destroyer remains an important part of the fleet, there are fears the move demonstrates th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 29, 2008
Based on a cast of the Admiral's face taken during his own lifetime, the piece shows Nelson as he would have looked on the even of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 - including the scar over his right eyebrow from an injury inflicted at the Battle of the Nile in 1798.
The life-size bronze by the sculptor Robert Hornyold-Strickland was commissioned by an anonymous donor.
The work was unveiled by the Second Sea Lord, Vice-Admiral Alan Massey, at a ceremony in the wardroom o
Source: AP
September 28, 2008
NEW YORK -- Almost two years after being pried ignominiously from the mud by a phalanx of huffing tugboats and towed off to a shipyard for a major overhaul, the historic aircraft carrier Intrepid is returning home.
Freshly painted in naval "haze gray" and once again shipshape from stem to stern, the fabled survivor of Pacific war battles and five kamikaze suicide attacks will be towed up New York Harbor and slotted into its familiar Hudson River berth on Oct. 2.
Source: AFP
September 29, 2008
ORANJEMUND, Namibia -- Archaeologists are racing against the little time left to salvage a fortune in coins and items from a 500-year-old Portuguese shipwreck found recently off Namibia's rough southern coast.
Despite its importance, the project, in a restricted diamond mining area, is itself costing a fortune in sea-walling that cannot be sustained after October 10.
"The vast amounts of gold coins would possibly make this discovery the largest one in Africa outsid
Source: AP
September 28, 2008
CHICAGO — The faded papers hint at stark details in the lives of Nazi concentration camp inmates.
Letters secretly carried by children through the sewers of Warsaw, Poland, during the 1944 uprising. A 1933 card from a Dachau camp commander outlining strict rules for prisoner mail. A 1943 letter from a young man, who spent time in Auschwitz, to his parents.
The more than 250 World War II postal documents — cards, letters and stamps — have been acquired by an Illinois fou
Source: Historian Eric Rauchway at the Edge of the American West (blog)
September 26, 2008
The failure of Washington Mutual put at risk $1.9bn in assets, or $1,900,000,000.
US GDP today is about $13,800bn, or $13,800,000,000,000.
The assets put at risk represent therefore around .01% of GDP. Which is a big deal, and we’re glad for the FDIC and JP Morgan Chase.
Consider, though, the failure in 1930 of Bank of United States. (Note: the absence of definite articles is critical, this was a private bank, not an official entity.) It’s supposed to have
Source: AP
September 27, 2008
A quest is under way on four continents to find the missing pages of one of the world's most important holy texts, the 1,000-year-old Hebrew Bible known as the Crown of Aleppo.
Crusaders held it for ransom, fire almost destroyed it and it was reputedly smuggled across Mideast borders hidden in a washing machine. But in 1958, when it finally reached Israel, 196 pages were missing — about 40 percent of the total — and for some Old Testament scholars they have become a kind of holy gr
Source: AP
September 27, 2008
Hillary Rodham Clinton campaigned in Michigan Saturday for one-time rival and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, telling voters they cannot afford to see another Republican in the White House.
"We cannot turn over our country with these deep deficits, with these serious economic problems, with the international challenges, to the same team that got us into this mess in the first place," Clinton told more than 1,000 people gathered at a park in this town 10 mil
Source: HNN Staff
September 28, 2008
Careful readers of the New York Times may have noticed a change recently that could play havoc with historians for years. The newspaper of record is now dating its online articles with the date the pieces are posted. As most pieces are posted the day before they actually appear in the print edition, this means there will now be two publication dates: an online edition date and a print edition date. From now on historians citing the NYT will have to indicate carefully which edition they are re
Source: National parks traveler Online
October 26, 2008
When Ellis Island became part of Statue of Liberty National Monument in 1965, its more than 30 buildings were in terrible condition. The north side's Main Building and some supporting buildings were restored by 1990, but that left 29 buildings on the south side and a major structure (the Baggage and Dormitory Building) on the north side still badly in need of restoration. Save Ellis Island, Inc. was formed in 2000 to work with the National Park Service, the State of New Jersey, and other partner
Source: Chicago Tribune
September 26, 2008
Test your knowledge of the candiates. Click here for the McCain quiz. Click here for the Obama quiz.
Source: International Herald Tribune
September 27, 2008
The Senate galleries were packed, filled with both black and white spectators, and a murmur filled the air as the nation's first black member of Congress, Sen. Hiram Revels, stood to deliver his first speech to the chamber.
Nearly 140 years before Sen. Barack Obama's historic quest to become the nation's first black president, Revels captivated a nation in the midst of social upheaval following the Civil War. The date was March 16, 1870, less than five years after the 13th Amendmen
