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: Nature
7-31-13
In the 1970s, archaeologist Peter Bogucki was excavating a Stone Age site in the fertile plains of central Poland when he came across an assortment of odd artefacts. The people who had lived there around 7,000 years ago were among central Europe's first farmers, and they had left behind fragments of pottery dotted with tiny holes. It looked as though the coarse red clay had been baked while pierced with pieces of straw.Looking back through the archaeological literature, Bogucki found other examples of ancient perforated pottery. “They were so unusual — people would almost always include them in publications,” says Bogucki, now at Princeton University in New Jersey. He had seen something similar at a friend's house that was used for straining cheese, so he speculated that the pottery might be connected with cheese-making. But he had no way to test his idea....
Source: ABC News
7-31-13
Lawmakers are introducing new legislation in Congress to create a national Latino American history museum.Two years ago, a presidential commission called for the creation of a Smithsonian American Latino Museum. But the effort has stalled in Congress....
Source: Der Spiegel
7-31-13
Germany will open its last big war cemetery in Russia on Saturday, marking the culmination of a huge effort to recover Wehrmacht soldiers killed on its Eastern Front in World War II.By the end of this year, the German war graves commission will have found and reburied a total of 800,000 soldiers in Eastern Europe and Russia since 1992, when the former Eastern bloc countries began helping Germany retrieve the remains of missing soldiers following the end of the Cold War.On Saturday, German Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière will hold a speech at the inauguration of the new war cemetery at the town of Dukhovschina, near the city of Smolensk in western Russia.....
Source: CBS News
7-30-13
(CBS News) CULPEPER, Va. -- There are moments that define America, and the record of many of them are stored in a vault in Culpeper, Va.But these videotapes, some 50 years old, are deteriorating, and there is a race to preserve the history they contain."I think an important thing is to capture people's memories, to take people back to the day when they first saw Carol Burnett tug on her ear, or the day when Walter Cronkite couldn't hardly finish his sentence in November 1963, when Kennedy was shot," says Rob Stone, the Moving Image Curator of the Library of Congress....
Source: USA Today
7-30-13
Capt. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise had a five-year mission. But one of the starship's shuttles has been on a nearly 50-year mission that ends Wednesday.The shuttle craft Galileo, which appeared in seven episodes of the original Star Trek series, is settling in Wednesday at its final landing place, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's space center in Houston.It has been a long voyage for this nearly full-size shuttle that was built for "The Galileo Seven" episode, which first aired in January 1967. The historic TV prop might never have made it to the space center if it wasn't for a first-class Star Trek fan....
Source: Guardian (UK)
7-31-13
The pioneering scientist who created Dolly the sheep has outlined how cells plucked from frozen woolly mammoth carcasses might one day help resurrect the ancient beasts.The notional procedure – bringing with it echoes of the Jurassic Park films – was spelled out by Sir Ian Wilmut, the Edinburgh-based stem-cell scientist, whose team unveiled Dolly as the world's first cloned mammal in 1996.Though it is unlikely that a mammoth could be cloned in the same way as Dolly, more modern techniques that convert tissue cells into stem cells could potentially achieve the feat, Wilmut says in an article today for the academic journalism website, The Conversation."I've always been very sceptical about the whole idea, but it dawned on me that if you could clear the first hurdle of getting viable cells from mammoths, you might be able to do something useful and interesting," Wilmut told the Guardian....
Source: Guardian (UK)
7-30-13
A riddle worthy of a detective novel – involving an internationally acclaimed violinist, her prized instrument stolen at a busy London station, and a false trail leading to Bulgaria – may be nearing its conclusion.The discovery by police of a 1696 Stradivarius worth £1.2m and two bows with a combined value of £67,000 taken by opportunist thieves in 2010 while Korean-born violinist Min-Jin Kym was eating at a Pret a Manger cafe at Euston station has, she said, left her "on cloud nine" with an "incredible feeling of elation".Kim, 35, said in a British Transport police video: "This had been the instrument I had been playing on since I was a teenager, so it was a huge part of my identity for very many years."...
Source: Religion News Service
7-30-13
The conviction of Jesus by Pontius Pilate may be the most famous court verdict -- and perhaps the most consequential, since it led to Christ's crucifixion and the founding of a global religion.Now a Kenyan lawyer wants to overturn Pilate's decision, though he wants to keep the faith that flowed from it."The selective and malicious prosecution (of Jesus) violated his human rights," said Dola Indidis, a Roman Catholic who is petitioning the International Court of Justice, based at The Hague, to nullify Jesus' conviction and death sentence....
Source: The Art Newspaper
7-30-13
Conservators in Croatia have completed a ten-year project to remove more than 1,700 years of grime from the courtyard of the palace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian (AD244-311), in the coastal city of Split. Lasers were used as the primary method to clean the peristyle of the fourth-century imperial residence—an innovative technique that is normally reserved for cleaning individual sculptures or details of larger architectural elements, as opposed to whole structures. According to the architect Goran Niksic, who works for the city, this is the first time lasers have been used on this scale in Croatia to clean stone.
Source: The Arts Newspaper
7-30-13
The Villa of Mysteries, first excavated in 1909, is named after a large and colourful cycle of frescoes showing young women undergoing an ancient Roman marriage initiation rite. Conservators are using laser technology to restore the colours to their former glory. Pompeii officials released a statement saying this is the first time the technique has been applied to such an important cycle of works a the site and that “it constitutes a viable alternative for preserving surfaces that might be too sensitive for [traditional] mechanical and chemical methods of conservation”. The laser is able to detect and remove the different protective layers that have been applied to the frescos by previous restorers. A spokesman confirmed that the restoration work, which is scheduled to end in October, is going well so far.Similar laser technology was used on an unusually large scale to clean the courtyard of the palace of the Roman emperor Diocletian in Split, Croatia (see link above).
Source: Der Spiegel
7-31-13
Egypt's cultural heritage is in danger. Grave robbers, sometimes heavily armed, are taking advantage of political chaos to plunder its poorly guarded archaeological sites. Authorities feel powerless to stop them and fear that ancient treasures might be lost forever....In January 2011, the world-famous Egyptian Museum in Cairo was looted. Rioters destroyed priceless treasures. But valuable ancient relics went missing far from the capital, as well, due to a lack of supervision at historical sites. After the uprising, the repressive security apparatus withdrew everywhere, and the guarding of historical sites was neglected.Two-and-a-half years later, the police are slowly venturing into the streets. But they are mainly concerned with ongoing protests. Elsewhere, some Egyptians are behaving as if the state and its laws have ceased to exist.The army has placed two armored vehicles at the pyramids in Dahshur to deter grave robbers. But, so far, the thieves are undaunted. "We wanted to catch them," says a guard in Dahshur who asked to remain anonymous. "But then they opened fire on us with automatic weapons." He and his fellow guards were only armed with pistols. They jumped for cover, and the grave robbers carried on with their plundering....
Source: The Scotsman (UK)
7-31-13
TREASURES from the largest hoard of Viking silver ever found in Scotland are returning to the Northern Isles for the first time since they were unearthed on Orkney more than a century ago. In March 1858, David Linklater chased a rabbit into its hole near St Peter’s Kirk in Sandwick in Orkney, near the Bay of Skaill, and as he dug at the entrance to the warren he came across a few scattered pieces of silver buried in the earth.His find led to the discovery of the remarkable “Skaill Hoard” - 15 lbs of silver bullion consisting of 115 items of Viking jewellery, including nine brooches, 14 necklets, 27 armlets, an assortment of ingots and silver fragments and Anglo-Saxon and Arabic coins....
Source: National Post (Canada)
7-30-13
The release of the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s first research strategy — following a two-year process of reflection that was nearly derailed by the federal government’s decision last year to rename it the Museum of History and rewrite its mandate — has revived the age-old debate over the politicization of Canadian history.With Canada’s 150th birthday approaching in 2017, and the bicentennial of the War of 1812 just passed with unusual fanfare, the public’s appreciation of Canadian history is ripe for revision, and not just because some of the flagship national museum’s exhibits date to the 1990s, not long after it was renamed from the National Museum of Man. From the rewritten citizenship guide that undid years of Liberal ideological dominance, to the renaming of Canadian military units to honour the monarchy, history is increasingly the lens through which the country sees itself, and a ripe target for those who wish to change it.Now that the words “critical understanding” have been struck from the museum’s mandate, however, critics fear that history without criticism becomes propaganda....
Source: WaPo
7-29-13
A wave of vandalism continued to mar some of Washington’s more popular landmarks Monday with at least three more attractions spattered with green paint, and authorities announced the arrest of a woman near one of the incidents at Washington National Cathedral.The latest crimes occurred three days after the Lincoln Memorial was hit in similar fashion. On Monday, the light-green paint was discovered on an organ in the cathedral’s Bethlehem Chapel, in the cathedral’s Children’s Chapel and on the granite base of a statue next to the Smithsonian Castle on the Mall.D.C. police said Monday evening that they had charged Jiamei Tian, 58, whom they believe to be homeless, with one count of defacing property.The mysterious markings on the statue of Abraham Lincoln blemished one of the country’s most visited attractions and an iconic symbol of freedom. In the cathedral, they tarnished what is widely known as the nation’s house of worship — and a building still under repair after an earthquake two years ago caused such severe damage that it closed for three months....
Source: BBC News
7-29-13
Scientists have revealed that drugs and alcohol played a key part in the months and weeks leading up to the children's deaths.Tests on one of the children, a teenage girl, suggest that she was heavily sedated just before her demise....The mummified remains were discovered in 1999, entombed in a shrine near the summit of the 6,739m-high Llullaillaco volcano in Argentina.Three children were buried there: a 13-year-old girl, and a younger boy and girl, thought to be about four or five years old.Their remains date to about 500 years ago, during the time of the Inca empire, which dominated South America until the Europeans arrived at the end of the 15th Century....
Source: Indianapolis Star
7-29-13
NEW DELHI—It has all the makings of a bestselling novel. An Indian maharaja crowned as a toddler and rich beyond imagination falls into a deep depression in old age after losing his only son.After his own death a few months later, his daughters, the princesses, don’t get the palaces, gold and vast lands they claim as their birthright. Instead, they are given a few dollars a month from palace officials they accuse of scheming to usurp the royal billions with a forged will. The fight rages for decades.On Saturday, an Indian court brought this chapter to a close, ruling that the will of Maharaja Harinder Singh Brar of Faridkot was fabricated. His daughters will now inherit the estimated $4-billion estate, instead of a trust run by his former servants and palace officials....
Source: Indianapolis Star
7-29-13
YPSILANTI TOWNSHIP, MICH.—The Detroit-area factory where Rosie the Riveter showed that a woman could do a “man’s work” by building Second World War-era bombers, making her an enduring symbol of American female empowerment, will be demolished if money can’t be found to save it.The Willow Run Bomber Plant, a 135-hectare former Ford Motor Co. factory west of Detroit that churned out nearly 9,000 B-24 Liberator bombers during the Second World War, is slated to be torn down unless a group can raise $3.5 million by Thursday to convert at least some of the structure into a new, expanded home for the nearby Yankee Air Museum.“The younger generation needs to know what people went through and be able to go and see what they did and how they did it for our country,” Larry Doe, a 70-year-old Ypsilanti Township resident who has given to the cause, said recently before joining other donors for a trip on a B-17....
Source: NYT
7-29-13
Many paleontologists agree that two fossilized dinosaur skeletons found in the Hell Creek formation in Montana might be a major discovery.The fossils apparently show two dinosaurs locked together in mortal combat in a Cretaceous-era grave, an example of fighting that could provide a rare window into dinosaur behavior.Perhaps more important, each of the skeletons may be a new kind of dinosaur — a Nanotyrannus lancensis, a type of pygmy T. rex, and a Chasmosaurine ceratopsian, a close relation of the Triceratops.But scientists may never know for sure. Going against the hopes of many paleontologists, these two nearly complete skeletons, found by commercial prospectors on a private ranch, are not going directly to a museum for further study. Instead, billed as the “Montana dueling dinosaurs,” they will be auctioned in November by Bonhams in New York, for a projected price of $7 million to $9 million, which would be one of the highest prices ever paid for dinosaur fossils....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
7-30-13
Lance Corporal Ken Bailey was asked to train up the “paradogs” so they could be used as the “eyes and ears” of the soldiers on the ground.The dogs, which would be given minimal food and water before the jump, were being prepared to parachute into Normandy for D-Day landing and would freeze if they heard a sound.They were also trained to become familiar with loud noises and smells such as cordite, the explosive powder.Their handlers would carry a piece of meat in their pockets on the aircraft so as they parachuted out the “paradogs” would jump out after them.The documents written by L/Cpl Bailey, who served in the 13th (Lancashire) Parachute Battalion and was from Liverpool, were discovered by Andrew Woolhouse, who spent five years researching his book....
Source: NYT
7-29-13
BEIJING — As more than 100,000 Chinese soldiers swarmed over far fewer American Marines and soldiers in subzero temperatures on treacherous terrain in one of the fiercest battles of the Korean War, two United States Navy pilots took off from an aircraft carrier to provide cover for their comrades on the ground.One of the airmen, Ensign Jesse L. Brown, was the son of an African-American sharecropper from Mississippi. The other, Lt. Thomas J. Hudner Jr., was the son of a white patrician merchant family from Massachusetts.An hour into the flight, Ensign Brown’s plane was hit by enemy fire, forcing him to crash land on the side of a mountain at Chosin, north of Pyongyang. Lieutenant Hudner brought his plane down nearby and found Ensign Brown, but could not rescue him.On Monday, nearly 63 years after the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, Mr. Hudner, 88, arrived in Beijing after a 10-day visit to North Korea aimed at finding his friend’s remains....
