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: Huffington Post
10-1-12
HARTFORD, Conn. (RNS) At age 82, Bernice Mable Graham Telian doubts she'll live long enough to see the name of her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother and 10 others hanged in colonial Connecticut for witchcraft cleared.Telian was researching her family tree when she discovered that her seventh grandmother, Mary Barnes of Farmington, Conn., was sent to the gallows at the site of the old State House in Hartford in 1663."You won't find Mary's grave. She and all these people who were hanged were dumped in a hole. Their graves aren't marked. They wanted them to be forgotten," said Telian, a retired university administrator who now lives in Delhi, N.Y....
Source: AP
10-3-12
An Austrian museum says skeletal remains found in an ancient grave are that of a woman metal worker - the first indication that women did such work thousands of years ago.The Museum of Ancient History says the grave originates from the Bronze Age, which began more than 5,000 years ago and ended 3,200 years ago....
Source: AP
10-3-12
Bosnia's war crimes court has acquitted two former Bosnian Serb policemen accused of participating in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.The court said Wednesday that prosecutors failed to prove Dragan Neskovic and Zoran Ilic committed crimes against humanity by rounding up Muslim Bosniak men for execution and then firing into the piles of bodies to make sure there were no survivors...
Source: AP
10-3-12
The $5 bill displayed for decades on Charles Fairbanks IV's wall was long a treasured family heirloom from Alaska. Now, to the surprise of the grandson of a turn-of-a-century vice president, it's also become a likely treasure trove.The rare find is expected to fetch as much as $300,000 at auction this month when a Texas auctioneer plans to put it up for bids in Dallas and online as part of the American Numismatic Association National Money Show.The bill was presented in 1905 to Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks - Theodore Roosevelt's No. 2 - and was from the First National Bank of Fairbanks, Alaska. The family has had it in their possession ever since and recently decided to auction it off through Dallas-based Heritage Auctions...
Source: Fox News
10-2-12
BOSTON – The premiere of the Smithsonian Channel's documentary on a papyrus fragment that purports to show Jesus referring to his wife has been delayed until further tests can be done amid doubts about the fragment's authenticity.Research about the fourth-century papyrus fragment was released last month by Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King. She said it didn't prove Jesus was married, only that some early Christians believed he was.The text, written in Coptic, contains a dialogue in which Jesus refers to "my wife," whom he identifies as Mary. He also says she can be his disciple....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
10-3-12
Known as the "God Letter," the correspondence offers insights into the private thoughts about religion, God and tribalism of one of the world's most brilliant minds."This letter, in my opinion, is really of historical and cultural significance as these are the personal and private thoughts of arguably the smartest man of the 20th century," said Eric Gazin, the president of Auction Cause, a Los Angeles-based premier auction agency, which will handle the sale on eBay...."The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this," wrote the German-born scientist, who in 1921 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics....
Source: Civil War News
10-1-12
RICHMOND, Va. – A federal judge dismissed the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case involving the U.S. National Slavery Museum of Fredericksburg, Va., after ruling against a motion to convert the case to a Chapter 7 liquidation.The action came after it was revealed that pledges and an anonymous donor would pay delinquent real estate taxes owed to the city, one of the museum’s two secured creditors. The bankruptcy protection filing last year was intended to keep the city from selling the land.The second secured creditor, architect Pei Partnership, is owed over $5.8 million. Pei attorney Milton Johns said negotiations have not been completed. He added he has not been told who the museum attorney will be. Sandra R. Robinson left the case after the Aug. 17 bankruptcy hearing....
Source: USA Today
10-1-12
7:08AM EST October 2. 2012 - NEW YORK — Bill O'Reilly describes himself as a journalistic "watchdog" and a "champion bloviator."He's not a historian — "not really. That's not my discipline," he says in his corner office at Fox News, home of The O'Reilly Factor, the top-rated show on cable news.But few history books can approach the popularity of O'Reilly's Killing Lincoln, which has sold more than 2 million copies since it was released a year ago. His new book, Killing Kennedy (Henry Holt), about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, could be as popular. It goes on sale Tuesday....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
9-26-12
A top-secret Nazi war dossier has come to light which reveals Hitler's chilling plans to invade Ireland during the Second World War.The document contains detailed maps and postcards of the country and has been kept by a family out of public view since the end of war.And it reveals that even though Ireland was officially neutral during the conflict, Hitler still viewed the country as a target for invasion.The Irish allowed German U-boats and submarines into their waters during the Second World War, but the booklet entitled Militargeographische Angaben uber Irland pinpoints key cities and other sites in Ireland for destruction....
Source: Fox News
10-1-12
[CLICK HERE FOR SLIDESHOW]Egyptian officials have reopened the Serapeum of Saqqara, a vast underground necropolis south of Cairo dedicated to the bulls of Apis, after 11 years and complete renovation of the historic site.
Source: Fox News
10-1-12
It's not hard for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to insist that the Holocaust never took place when there's virtually no Persian-language record of it, but an Iranian-American author is making it his mission to correct the historical record in his homeland.Ari Babaknia, a 65-year-old from Orange County, Calif., has written a four-volume book in Persian entitled "Holocaust," which he hopes will allow Iranians to learn the truth about the suffering of Jews at the hands of Nazis. Babaknia hopes to make the book available for free online within the borders of Iran.“It is not enough to sell this book," said Babaknia, a Jew who went to medical school in Iran in the 1970s and now is a fertility specialist in Newport Beach, Calif. "The power and reach of the Internet is where the real impact of this book will be....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
10-1-12
Tom Sawyer is known to generations as one of the most beloved characters in American literature, but new research into the man that inspired the fictional child shows that his real life counterpart was a hard-drinking fire fighter-turned-barkeep.Author Mark Twain was thought to have based his adventurous Southern child character on his acquaintance named Tom Sawyer, and the writer's admiration for his fire-fighting friend was so strong that he gave the character the man's name in homage.A lengthy article published by The Smithsonian details the relationship between Twain, whose real name was Samuel Clemens, and Sawyer who met in a bath house in San Francisco during the mid 19th century....
Source: NYT
10-1-12
JERUSALEM — When Eli Sagir showed her grandfather, Yosef Diamant, the new tattoo on her left forearm, he bent his head to kiss it.Mr. Diamant had the same tattoo, the number 157622, permanently inked on his own arm by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Nearly 70 years later, Ms. Sagir got hers at a hip tattoo parlor downtown after a high school trip to Poland. The next week, her mother and brother also had the six digits inscribed onto their forearms. This month, her uncle followed suit.“All my generation knows nothing about the Holocaust,” said Ms. Sagir, 21, who has had the tattoo for four years. “You talk with people and they think it’s like the Exodus from Egypt, ancient history. I decided to do it to remind my generation: I want to tell them my grandfather’s story and the Holocaust story.”...
Source: NYT
9-29-12
BELFAST, Northern Ireland — The parades to celebrate the centenary of the signing of the Ulster Covenant — the 1912 petition against home rule that helped lead to the partition of Ireland — passed peacefully on Saturday amid the biggest police operation here in more than 20 years.The Protestant parades, which drew about 30,000 marchers, took place against the backdrop of heightened sectarian violence in Belfast.Research released this month by the University of Ulster found that more than two-thirds of people living near the so-called Peace Walls separating the Protestant and Catholic communities want the barriers to remain. More than a decade after an Irish Republican Army cease-fire and the signing of the Belfast Agreement, which paved the way for a power-sharing local government, there are still more than 50 such walls around the city....
Source: Catholic Culture
10-1-12
The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano has argued in an editorial that a Coptic papyrus fragment, which appears to refer to a wife of Jesus, is “a fake.”The editorial notes that many scholars have questioned the authenticity of the purportedly ancient document, which was introduced by Harvard’s Karen King earlier this month and has received enormous worldwide publicity. Gian Maria Van, the editor of L’Osservatore Romano, said that the scholarly evidence pointed toward an “inept forgery.”...
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
10-2-12
The note is on a small, yellow piece of paper, written out in thin letters, all capitals. It is pinned to the door of the modest rowhouse in Northeast Philadelphia, where enough visitors have come in recent days to warrant a pointed warning:"WE DO NOT HAVE ANY COMMENT," it reads. "PLEASE LEAVE."The resident, a retired toolmaker named Johann "Hans" Breyer, has lived on this well-kept block for 3 1/2 decades, according to property records. His past, as a guard at Auschwitz during World War II, again came back to haunt him last month when authorities in Germany announced that he is under investigation....
Source: Yahoo News
9-28-12
The surgeon aboard the whaling vessel Hope was often covered in the blood of seals and other animals, his clothes frozen enough that he'd have to stand next to the ship's stove to thaw before undressing.A first-time sailor, he wasn't supposed to take part in the clubbing of seals, but he did, and repeatedly fell into the frigid waters, nearly freezing to death.A journal by the young man, written at age 20 in 1880, was published yesterday. The author? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.Best known for creating the ingenious detective Sherlock Holmes, Doyle was first a surgeon, and went along on the whaling ship after a friend of his backed out, according to a review of the book by the Daily Mail....
Source: NYT
9-27-12
Though EMI put considerable effort into both the sound and packaging of the remastered Beatles catalog in 2009, and then staked out a new market with its iTunes downloads in 2010, many fans of the group have argued that such newfangled ways of hearing the band are inauthentic – that the experience just isn’t the same on anything but vinyl, the format on which the albums were originally released.The arguments, heard regularly since the introduction of CDs in 1983, are familiar: many listeners find that music sounds warmer, more rounded and more natural on vinyl than in digital form, and you can’t argue with their preferences for 12-inch-by-12-inch cover art over the shrunken booklets that come with CDs, or the on-screen versions sold with the downloads.
Source: NYT
9-27-12
With “Crossfire Hurricane” about to offer an expansive view of the Rolling Stones’ 50-year history when it opens at the London Film Festival on Oct. 18, a more fine-grain look at an important moment in the group’s early history – the rarely seen 1965 film “Charlie Is My Darling” – is about to have a handful of screenings and a DVD release.The film, commissioned by the band’s manager at the time, Andrew Loog Oldham, and directed by Peter Whitehead, documents the group’s trip to Ireland in September 1965. The band, still performing with its original lineup – Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts – had released “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” as a single in Britain a few weeks earlier, nearly three months after its American release. By the time the Stones visited Ireland the record was at the top of the British charts.
Source: The Daily Beast
9-26-12
Malika Fortier doesn’t think the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan is someone to celebrate.Fortier is leading a charge against the construction of a monument in honor of Nathan Bedford Forrest in her hometown of Selma, Ala. Forrest, a Confederate general hailed by some as a Civil War hero, is believed to be the first national leader of the Klan. Fortier calls the proposed monument “boldly racist.” On Tuesday, she helped organize a protest and turned in a Change.org petition with more than 325,000 signatures to the Selma city council. Her efforts paid off; the city council reportedly voted Tuesday night to halt all work on the statue until the courts decide who owns the property where the monument would be based—the city or a Civil War historical society....
