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: Discovery News
10-23-12
The world's oldest undeciphered writing system is close to being cracked thanks to a new technology and online crowdsourcing, Oxford University researchers have announced.Called proto-Elamite, the writing has its roots in what is now Iran and dates from 3,200 to 3,000 B.C. So far, the 5,000-year-old writing has defied any effort to decode its symbols impressed on clay tablets.Now a high-tech imaging device developed at the Universities of Oxford and Southampton in England might provide the necessary insight to crack the code once and for all.Comprising a dome with 76 lights and a camera positioned at the top of the dome, the Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) is able to capture extremely high quality images of ancient documents.
Source: Fox News
10-25-12
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. – It's scratchy, lasts only 78 seconds and features the world's first recorded blooper.The modern masses can now listen to what experts say is the oldest playable recording of an American voice and the first-ever capturing of a musical performance, thanks to digital advances that allowed the sound to be transferred from flimsy tinfoil to computer.The recording was originally made on a Thomas Edison-invented phonograph in St. Louis in 1878....
Source: AP
10-22-12
NEW YORK (AP) — National Geographic Society has chronicled scientific expeditions, explorations, archaeology, wildlife and world cultures for more than 100 years, amassing a collection of 11.5 million photos and original illustrations.A small selection of that massive archive — 240 pieces spanning from the late 1800s to the present — will be sold at Christie's in December at an auction expected to bring about $3 million, the first time any of the institution's collection has been sold.Among the items are some of National Geographic's most indelible photographs, including that of an Afghan girl during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a portrait of Admiral Robert Peary at his 1908 expedition to the North Pole, a roaring lion in South Africa and the face of a Papua New Guinea aborigine....
Source: AP
10-24-12
The images are haunting: naked and emaciated children at Auschwitz standing shoulder-to-shoulder, adult prisoners in striped garb posing for police-style mug shots.One of several photographers to capture such images, Wilhelm Brasse, has died at the age of 95. A Polish photographer who was arrested and sent to Auschwitz early in World War II, he was put to work documenting his fellow prisoners, an emotionally devastating task that tormented him long after his liberation.Jaroslaw Mensfelt, a spokesman at the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum, said that Brasse died on Tuesday in Zywiec, a town in southern Poland.
Source: NYT
10-24-12
Lincoln Alexander, the son of a hotel maid and railway porter who became Canada’s first black member of Parliament and first black cabinet minister, died on Friday in Hamilton, Ontario. He was 90.David C. Onley, the lieutenant governor of Ontario, announced the death.Mr. Alexander was also Canada’s first black lieutenant governor, but when he was elected to the House of Commons in 1968, he said he had tired of being called “the first Negro” anything. He sought to speak for all victims of injustice, he said. Blacks make up 2.5 percent of Canada’s population...
Source: NYT
10-24-12
Dapper as always in their bleached white shirts and matching caps, members of Rome’s municipal police force were out on the Spanish Steps one warm autumn day, trolling for offenders.“Stefano, look! There’s another eater,” one officer said to another before sauntering over to a baffled couple who had begun munching on an inoffensive-looking meal while sitting on the steps. The culprits, a couple of foreign tourists, had settled down on the landmark, one of Rome’s most famous. In their hands were the offending items: sandwiches.The officers pounced, and after much waving of hands, the couple wrapped up the sandwiches and slouched away, looking sheepish.They were in violation — unwittingly, in all probability — of a municipal ordinance that went into force this month. The measure outlaws eating and drinking in areas of “particular historic, artistic, architectonic and cultural value” in Rome’s center, to better protect the city’s monuments, which include landmarks like the Colosseum, the Pantheon and the Spanish Steps. Fines range all the way up to $650 for culinary recidivists....
Source: Tengri News
10-23-12
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will inaugurate a memorial to murdered Roma and Sinti victims of the Nazis on Wednesday, as Europe's largest minority grapples with ongoing discrimination, AFP reports. Historians say the Nazis exterminated nearly 500,000 Roma men, women and children in Europe during World War II, decimating a population with roots in Germany dating back six centuries. The memorial, given pride of place in Berlin's central Tiergarten park between the Reichstag parliament building and the Brandenburg Gate, will be unveiled after years of delays and bitter disputes over its design and cost....
Source: UPI
10-22-12
DEBNO, Poland, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- Antoni Dobrowolski, the oldest former prisoner of Auschwitz, has died in Debno, Poland, a historian said.Dobrowolski was 108....
Source: Kenilworth Weekly News
10-24-12
THE final resting place of a Kenilworth soldier killed in the First World War has been marked for the first time thanks to the rediscovery of a letter to his parents.A special memorial ceremony involving his relatives and town historians was finally held in Belgium to mark the spot where he was laid to rest.Dudley White, a 20-year-old soldier from Castle Road, was killed on October 9 1917 when his tank, Damon II, was hit by a German shell in the town square in Poelkapelle.He is recorded in history as having no known grave, but thanks to efforts of historians this is no longer the case....
Source: TCU360
10-18-12
Assistant professor of history Max Krochmal created the Texas Communities Oral History Project (TX-COHP), a program that aims to preserve the history of the civil rights movement in Fort Worth. Krochmal said he ran into problems doing research in the field because many subjects did not leave behind written records. TX-COHP was born out of his interest in the civil rights movement and the fact that many people from that era are dying. The Institute for Urban Living and Innovation at Addran College and the Center for Community Involvement & Service-Learning support the project alongside students and community partners....
Source: McGill Daily
10-22-12
The Harper government renamed a federal building in Old Montreal on Wednesday, October 10 as part of a $28 million campaign to commemorate the bicentennial of the War of 1812. Located at 400 Place d’Youville, the Édifice des douanes is now officially the Dominique Ducharme Building.“Mr. Ducharme fought both at the Battle of Beaver Dams in Upper Canada and at the Battle of the Chateauguay, and played an important role in Canada’s development,” Minister of Public Works and Government Services Rona Ambrose stated in a press release.“The building’s proximity to the Battle of the Chateauguay site gives it special historic significance for the region,” Jacques Gourde, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services, said at the October 10 naming ceremony....
Source: NPR
10-23-12
Oct 23, 2012 (Morning Edition) — The answer dates back to the 19th century and involves buggies, the Sabbath and farming.
It's Tuesday — exactly two weeks out from Nov. 6, Election Day. Why is voting day for American federal elections always a Tuesday? The answer is a bit obscure and has to do with buggies.
Let me explain.
The story starts all the way back with the Founding Fathers. "The Constitutional Convention just met for a very brief time during the summer of 1787," Senate Historian Don Ritchie says. "By the time they got finished they were exhausted and they hadn't made up their minds on a lot of things."
Source: NYT
10-21-12
PHOENIX — An excavator clawed away at a squat, battered building on the edge of downtown one morning, tearing the structure down in chunks that sounded like firecrackers as they crashed to the ground — heaps of discarded history in a city that prizes what is new.From the other side of a chain-link fence, a cadre of preservationists watched with lament. The Madison Hotel — a boardinghouse for traders, travelers and tramps dating back to Arizona’s territorial days — was coming down unceremoniously to make way for a parking lot.Its younger neighbor, the Hotel St. James, is to be next for the wrecking crew.The hotels’ demolition permits were issued midsummer, though no one seemed to have heard about it until Michael Levine stumbled upon a lead-cleanup crew stepping out of the buildings sometime in August and thought to make a call to City Hall. Mr. Levine, 44, is an artist who has made it his business to buy and renovate some of the surviving buildings in Phoenix’s vanishing warehouse district, where, he said, “it’s been all about buying low, building cheap and selling out.”...
Source: NYT
10-21-12
Mention “the Victor at Saratoga” and people may think that you are talking about a horse. Yet that so-called victor, Gen. Horatio Gates, the commander of the American forces at the Battle of Saratoga, played a crucial role in the triumph there over the British forces of Gen. John Burgoyne in October 1777.Though other figures of the War of Independence are still widely revered and studied, Gates faded from the national memory. He died in New York in 1806 and was buried at Trinity Churchyard in Lower Manhattan. Precisely where is not known.On Sunday afternoon, more than 150 people gathered at the cemetery just off Wall Street to celebrate the installation of a marker that will serve as his gravestone and to highlight his long-neglected role in American history.“This is a great day in my point of view in the history of the city of New York,” James S. Kaplan said in an address to the gathering, made up mostly of members of the Daughters of the American Revolution....
Source: MinnPost
10-22-12
...In a Politico story, Mondale recalls:“I remember when, after I lost my race for president, I went to see George. I said, ‘Tell me how long it takes to get over a defeat of this kind.’ He said, ‘I’ll call you when it happens.’ That’s the kind of guy he was, he was funny.”Added Mondale:“We were old friends. He was a very nice, warm, smart, positive, funny man and we kidded each other for all those years. I’m sorry he’s gone.”...
Source: Discovery News
10-20-12
The "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" papyrus, which may or may not be a forgery, seems to be in limbo, as the Harvard Theological Review has pulled the scientific article describing the discovery from their January 2013 issue.This withdrawal, however, doesn't mean the journal will never publish the scientific paper by Harvard historian Karen King on the supposed lost Gospel. "Harvard Theological Review is planning to publish Professor King's paper after testing is concluded so that the results may be incorporated," Kit Dodgson, director of communications at Harvard Divinity School, wrote in an email to LiveScience.Even so, the announcement has garnered both anger and elation....
Source: Discovery News
10-17-12
The remains of a 5,500-year-old tomb near Ale's Stones, a megalithic monument where, according to myth, the legendary King Ale lies buried, has been discovered by Swedish archaeologists. The discovery is the product of a geophysical investigation of the area carried out in 2006.Intrigued by a circular structure measuring about 165 feet in diameter with a rectangular feature in its center, archaeologists of the Swedish National Heritage Board decided to dig a trial trench."The outer circle was difficult to prove, but we did find vague traces at the spot, possibly imprints of smaller stones," archaeologist Bengt Söderberg told Discovery News....
Source: BBC News
10-22-12
The world's oldest undeciphered writing system, which has so far defied attempts to uncover its 5,000-year-old secrets, could be about to be decoded by Oxford University academics.This international research project is already casting light on a lost bronze age middle eastern society where enslaved workers lived on rations close to the starvation level."I think we are finally on the point of making a breakthrough," says Jacob Dahl, fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford and director of the Ancient World Research Cluster.Dr Dahl's secret weapon is being able to see this writing more clearly than ever before....
Source: SF Chronicle
10-19-12
The federal government has quietly ended a 433-year-old historical controversy by officially recognizing a cove on the Point Reyes Peninsula as the site where Sir Francis Drake landed in 1579 and claimed California for England.The mystery of where England's most famous and feared sea captain landed has long intrigued maritime scholars. Many of them claimed Drake landed in a cove near Point Reyes in what is now Marin County, but others cited what they said was evidence that Drake put ashore in spots ranging from San Francisco Bay to Alaska, Oregon, British Columbia or several other sites on the California coast....
Source: AP
10-20-12
...About 70 protesters traveled from around France for Saturday morning's demonstration in the city of Poitiers, which has symbolic meaning as the place where a French medieval ruler once drove away Arab invaders, regional prefect Yves Dassonville said by phone. After police arrived, the protesters dispersed without resistance - and three were detained to face accusations of "incitement of racial hatred" and damage to property, he said.French TV broadcast images of dozens of rowdy, waving and chanting protesters on the mosque roof next to its minaret. They unfurled a banner that read "Generation Identitaire" and demanded a referendum on immigration and mosques. The banner also bore the number 732, which Dassonville said was a reference to the year when the army of medieval French leader Charles Martel stopped an Arab invasion in Poitiers...
