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: Medievalists.net
5-29-13
Archaeologists hope to unravel the mystery of how coins dating back to the 10th century were found off the shores of Australia.Ian McIntosh, professor of anthropology at Indiana University, will be leading an archaeological search on an island in northern Australia in order to see if evidence of a medieval settlement can be found. This was the same place that nearly seventy years ago several coins were discovered that date back as far as the year 900 AD.The coins raise the possibility of shipwrecks that may have occurred along an early maritime trading route and bring to mind the ancient trading network that linked East Africa, Arabia, India and the Spice Islands over 1,000 years ago. Aboriginal folklore also speaks of a hidden cave near where the coins were found that is filled with doubloons and weaponry of an ancient era....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
6-6-13
Britain announced compensation for thousands of Mau Mau veterans, saying that it “sincerely regretted” years of “suffering and injustice” carried out under its imperial rule of Kenya, but stopped short of a full apology.The brutal suppression of an independence rebellion led to torture, internment without trial and excessive numbers of executions, William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said in a statement to Parliament.He confirmed that more than 5,200 claimants would share compensation from the Government of £13.9 million, but said that the out-of-court settlement did not mean Britain was legally liable for the abuses, although he said the settlement was about a “process of reconciliation.”“I would like to make clear now and for the first time … that we understand the pain and grievance felt by those who were involved,” Mr Hague said....
Source: Der Spiegel
6-4-13
It used to be easy for foreign archaeology teams to get excavation permits in Turkey. This year, though, dozens of scientists are still waiting for government permission even though the dig season has begun. Some suspect that politics and nationalism are in play.On the surface, the mood is buoyant at the annual archaeology conference in southern Turkey. Eager academics, more than a few of them clad in khaki vests and breathable pants, engage in animated conversation as they network and discuss their pet projects. Outside, a warm sun is shining.But looks are deceiving. For many of those present, the future is filled with uncertainty. The Turkish government in Ankara has still not granted annual permits to many of the excavations that the careers of the scientists present depend on. And there is concern that the reason for the delay has much more to do with the state of Turkey's relations with the West than with the merits of the projects in question....
Source: Fox News
6-5-13
Are they righting a wrong or wronging the Wrights?The Connecticut Senate passed a bill just after midnight on Wednesday that would delete the Wright brothers from history, explicitly stripping recognition for the first powered flight from Orville and Wilbur and assigning it to someone else.“The Governor shall proclaim a date certain in each year as Powered Flight Day to honor the first powered flight by [the Wright brothers] Gustave Whitehead and to commemorate the Connecticut aviation and aerospace industry,” reads House Bill No. 6671, which now sits on the Governor’s desk awaiting passage into law....
Source: WaPo
6-5-13
PARIS — Pieces of the Iron Curtain’s most iconic symbol, the Berlin Wall, are being put up for auction in Paris after being decorated by some of the world’s top artists.Slabs of the smooth concrete that divided East and West Berlin from 1961 until 1989 totaling 60 meters (66 yards) were given to artists including France’s Daniel Buren and the late Eduardo Chillida of Spain in the 1990s to be used as canvases.The result of their unique work is going under the hammer in central Paris on Thursday, under the title “Artists of Freedom.”...
Source: WaPo
6-3-13
The sun was rising as a teenage boy swung a metal wand back and forth, back and forth. The Geiger counter hanging at his waist clicked, testifying to the radiation streaming from the ground and through his body.The White Sands Missile Range in the New Mexico desert is home to Trinity, the place where the nuclear age began on July 16, 1945. Twice a year, in April and October, the site has opened to the public. Each time, thousands of people arrive by Winnebago, motorcycle and tour bus, making a pilgrimage to check out the slight crater left by history’s first atom bomb test. Measuring just 340 feet across, the depression is underwhelming, a slight dent in the ground. A stone obelisk marks ground zero, where the bomb was detonated atop a 100-foot steel tower.The Trinity weapon, a version of which destroyed Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, used plutonium. That fuel was more far more efficient than the uranium in the bomb dropped over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, but it was thought to be less certain to work....
Source: NPR
5-31-13
The French weren't the first to make wine? Mon dieu! But as anyone who has sipped a Bordeaux, Champagne or Burgundy can tell you, the French got pretty good at it once they learned how. And thanks to some molecular archaeology, researchers can now confirm they picked up these skills as early as 425 B.C.So who taught the French the art of viniculture? Probably the ancient Italians, says the man with perhaps the coolest nickname in science research — the "Indiana Jones of alcohol," .The Eurasian grape — Vitis vinifera, the source of 99 percent of the world's wine — was first domesticated about 9,000 years ago in the mountains of the Near East, says McGovern, a biomolecular archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Later, Canaanite, Phoenician and Greek merchants all played a part in spreading that wine culture across the Mediterranean....
Source: Jackson Star-Ledger (MS)
6-3-13
Mississippi is hoping to make history again — this time with the nation's first state-sponsored civil rights museum.This fall, officials will break ground on the civil rights museum and the companion Museum of Mississippi History in hopes of having both ready in time to celebrate the state's bicentennial in 2017.There's one catch — $30 million is needed to finish the inside of the buildings, which share a common area.Under the law, the state has agreed to a 50-50 split between state and private funding for 50,000 square feet of exhibits for the museums. Archives officials estimated the acquisition and creation of the exhibits at $14-$16 million....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
6-4-13
A fleet of eight prehistoric boats deliberately sunk thousands of years ago has been discovered in a Cambridgeshire quarry.The vessels, including one which is almost nine metres long, are the largest group of Bronze Age boats ever found in one site in the UK.Many are still well-preserved and one is even able to float after 3,000 years buried in the site on the outskirts of Peterborough.Others display intricate carvings and have handles carved from oak tree trunks for lifting them out of the water. Traces of a fire lit on the surface of one boat to cook the day's catch were also found....
Source: Reuters
6-3-13
BERLIN (Reuters) - Many low-level tax inspectors in Germany's Nazi-era finance ministry were oblivious to the Holocaust and dutifully tried to contact murdered Jews whose wealth was being plundered by the ministry's top officials, according to a new book.Germans have publicly atoned for Nazi crimes in a myriad of ways over six decades, providing scores of billions of dollars in reparations to Holocaust victims, their descendants and the state of Israel. But only recently have leading government ministries come clean on their own particular Nazi past....The finance ministry's role in assisting the Nazis was long assumed as a fact but never examined in real detail until Berlin historian Christine Kuller's book "Bureaucracy and Crime", which it commissioned....
Source: History.com
5-28-13
On May 28, 1888, Jim Thorpe was born in a one-room cabin in Prague, Oklahoma. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe—an Olympic champion and football and baseball star—was perhaps the greatest all-around athlete America has ever produced. Nearly a year following his death in 1953, his widow transported his body to a small Pennsylvania hamlet that agreed to rename itself in his honor. Now amid a family feud, Thorpe’s two surviving sons are seeking to re-inter his remains on tribal lands in his native Oklahoma, and a federal judge has ruled in their favor....
Source: ABC News
5-3-13
Frank R. Lautenberg, a long-serving lawmaker, successful businessman and the last actively serving veteran of World War II in the U.S. Senate, is dead at age 89 due to complications from viral pneumonia.The Senator's office released a statement with news of his passing Monday morning.Lautenberg, a Democrat and the oldest sitting Senator, died Monday morning at 4:02 a.m. at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell hospital. He had been sick for some time and his last appearance on Capitol Hill had been in a wheel chair.A fixture on Capitol Hill, Lautenberg was the last in a long line of World War II veterans to serve in the U.S. Senate and he held the record for the number of votes cast by a New Jersey Senator. Those votes spanned two senate careers. Lautenberg was first elected in 1982 and served until a first retirement in 2000....
Source: CBS
6-2-13
Charlie Haughey's intimate pictures of soldiers surviving in the Vietnamese jungle come to light 45 years later, after being rescued from a shoebox; Lee Cowan reports.
Source: WaPo
5-29-13
JERUSALEM — Israel’s national museum has located the heir of the owner of a valuable impressionist painting that was stolen by the Nazis after a photo was discovered showing the work in the original owner’s home, the museum said Wednesday.Israel Museum spokeswoman Dena Scher said the museum purchased the “Garden in Wannsee” painting by the German-Jewish artist Max Liebermann from the owner’s heir after ownership was established. The painting is already on display in the museum and will stay there.The painting’s original owner, Max Cassirer, was a wealthy Berlin businessman from a family of art dealers. The impressionist painting, which depicts the garden of the artist’s summer residence, was confiscated by the Nazis in 1941 together with Cassirer’s other assets. After the war, it was given to a Jewish restitution organization and found its way to Israel....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
6-1-13
Sent in 1310 to King Edward II, the letter suggests Robert the Bruce was willing to offer any terms to prevent an advancing English army marching into the heart of Scotland.However, he made clear that the English would have to recognise Scottish independence and asserted his God-given authority as king of Scots, addressing Edward II as one monarch to another.The bold move appeared to pay off as Edward II took his army south again to Berwick where he remained until July 1311.When he finally returned north three years later, he was “sent homeward tae think again” after being humiliated at Bannockburn, the 700th anniversary of which is being celebrated next year shortly before the Scottish independence referendum....
Source: CBS
6-1-13
Here at CBS, we are marking the deaths of nine TV journalists killed 43 years ago this week -- covering the war in Cambodia.Six of the journalists worked for CBS News: correspondent George Syvertsen; producer Gerry Miller; cameramen Remnik Leckhi and Tomaharu Ishii; soundman Kojiro Sakai; and Sam Leng, a Cambodian interpreter and driver.
Source: Discovery
5-29-13
A grainy sonar image captured off an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati might represent the remains of the Electra, the two-engine aircraft legendary aviator Amelia Earhart was piloting when she vanished on July 2, 1937 in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator.Released by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating Earhart's last, fateful flight, the images show an "anomaly" resting at the depth of about 600 feet in the waters off Nikumaroro island, some 350 miles southeast of Earhart's target destination, Howland Island....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
5-28-13
A letter written by Rudyard Kipling where he admits to plagiarising some of his best known works, including parts of the Jungle Book, is set to be sold.The signed letter, written in 1895, admits that the writer may have helped himself ‘promiscuously’ to the works of others in his account of the Law of the Jungle, which features in the Jungle Book.The letter, addressed to an unknown woman, reads: “I have been absent from home for some days. Hence the delay in answering yours of no date, in regard to my account of the Law of the Jungle."I am afraid that all that code in its outlines has been manufactured to meet 'the necessities of the case': though a little of it is bodily taken from (Southern) Esquimaux rules for the division of spoils....
Source: Fox News
5-30-13
A British museum is about to haul 8 tons of history out of the English Channel -- the only remaining Nazi Dornier bomber from the World War II Blitz on London.The plane, one of a formation of German Dornier Do-17 that Hitler sent to the southeast coast of England in his efforts to blast the country out of World War II, has sat in a shallow grave 60 feet under water since 1940.It was lost for decades, buried beneath the time, the tides and the seafloor of Goodwin Sands, a large sandbank off the coast of Kent County, the last bit of rolling English countryside before Britain gives way to the straits of Dover, 20 or so miles of cold sea, and ultimately, France....
Source: Huffington Post
5-31-13
DALLAS -- A small nook off a dining room with just enough space for a twin bed has made a Dallas boarding house a point of fascination for the last 50 years, because of one man who occupied it for about six weeks in 1963: Lee Harvey Oswald.The house has been in Patricia Hall's family since about 1942, but she has decided that it's finally time to let it go – as long as a buyer wants to preserve it and offers the right price for the onetime home of the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy."I understand the significance of the history of this house," said Hall, 61. "It doesn't matter if you believe in a conspiracy or the lone gunman. The fact is that Lee Harvey Oswald lived here."...
