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: NYT
9-5-12
A painting created collaboratively by all four Beatles in 1966 is being offered as part of a music memorabilia sale by Philip Weiss Auctions, in Oceanside, N.Y., on Sept. 14. The auction house estimates that the painting, now called “Images of a Woman,” will sell for between $80,000 and $120,000.The group produced the work during a visit to Tokyo in 1966, as a way to relieve the tedium of being all but locked into their hotel rooms by their security-conscious Japanese hosts. They were concerned about death threats the group had received from devotees of sumo wrestling, who regarded their engagement at the Budokan arena to be a matter of sacrilege....
Source: WaPo
9-6-12
When President Obama addresses the Democratic National Convention on Thursday night, he will try to make the case for a second term. How have other recent presidents approached this task? Below we take a look back at the past four acceptance speeches that incumbents delivered at their nominating conventions:George W. Bush, 2004: Past vs. futureDifferent as they are politically, there is some resemblance between Bush’s 2004 speech and the message Democrats have been trying to underscore in Charlotte this week. Bush argued in his speech that a vote for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) represented a step backward.“His policies of tax and spend, of expanding government rather than expanding opportunity, are the politics of the past. We are on the path to the future, and we’re not turning back,” Bush said in a speech in which he was not shy about going after his opponent....
Source: WaPo
9-6-12
Bill Clinton’s face doesn’t appear on Mount Rushmore, and he doesn’t have a monument bearing his name in Washington, D.C. That much we know.But judging by the reaction to the former president these days, it seems some are ready to mention him in the same breath as some of those bronze and stone statues.Clinton served up the best-reviewed speech of the 2012 convention season on Wednesday, cementing his status as perhaps the preeminent force in American politics nearly 12 years after his presidency ended....
Source: Yahoo News
9-6-12
One hundred and 30 years after her death, Mary Todd Lincoln will be retried for insanity.The former first lady was declared insane 10 years after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, when her son Robert Todd Lincoln had her committed."Even today, historians disagree whether the evidence against the First Lady was 'trumped up,' whether the procedures used constituted due process, and what would occur if today's modernized health laws were applied to the same facts," reads a statement from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum....
Source: WHPTV.com
9-5-12
Organizers with Gettysburg’s Seminary Ridge Museum say the facility is on track to open July 1, 2013, as part of the Civil War town’s 150th Anniversary Commemoration.Known by many as the home to the famous cupola where Union Gen. John Buford scouted the countryside as the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg unfolded, the Seminary Ridge Museum is undergoing a $15 million renovation on the campus of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg.Additionally, the building – known at the time as “Old Dorm” – was used as both a Union and Confederate hospital after the fighting on July 1, 1863. It’s been called the most important Civil War structure not owned by a public entity....
Source: AP
8-27-12
NEW YORK — The Sept. 11 museum at ground zero is offering a hand on planning commemorations elsewhere as the anniversary of the terror attacks approaches.The National September 11 Memorial & Museum released a remembrance guide online Monday. The guide includes a list of the nearly 3,000 victims of the attacks, interactive timelines, lesson plans about memorialization and ideas for sharing reflections through social media....
Source: The Atlantic
9-5-12
A Scottish fisherman has found the world's oldest message in a bottle, the Guinness Book of World Records confirmed last week. It is 98 years old, and was cast into the ocean by Captain C. Hunter Brown*, a scientist at the Glasgow School of Navigation, who was studying the currents in the North Sea.The bottle was one of 1,890 bottles released on June 10, 1914, and the 315th to be entered into Captain Brown's log, which is still kept and updated by Marine Scotland Science in Aberdeen....
Source: Alabama.com
9-5-12
FORT MORGAN, Alabama -- When Isaac lashed the Gulf Coast last week the storm gave people a glimpse into a slice of nautical history when the hurricane unveiled more of a 150-foot wooden shipwreck here than has been revealed by past storms.The ghostly remains known to locals as the "mystery shipwreck" was uncovered at a private beach off Beach Boulevard near mile marker six just south of Fort Morgan. It has been uncovered by past storms, including Hurricane Ike four years ago and Tropical Storm Ida in 2009.Historians in the past have been at odds as to the identity of the ship, with speculation that it was either a Civil War blockade ship or a Prohibition Era rum runner....
Source: WaPo
9-6-12
WASHINGTON — Lady Gaga’s famous meat dress has made its way to Washington, along with Loretta Lynn’s song about “The Pill” and other relics from music history.Lady Gaga’s dress from the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards is now dried and painted to restore its raw meat color. Beyond its shock value, though, it’s being displayed at the National Museum of Women in the Arts with an explanation of her political message....
Source: AP
9-4-12
A Philadelphia archaeology museum will indefinitely loan ancient jewelry known as "Troy gold" to Turkey in an arrangement that will allow the museum to host a future exhibit of artifacts related to King Midas, officials announced Tuesday.The deal is part of what Penn Museum officials called a landmark agreement with the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism to work more collaboratively on field work and exhibitions over the next several years."It will lead to great opportunities - for Penn, for Philadelphia and for the wider archaeological community - to experience more of Turkey's rich cultural history and heritage in the future," museum director Julian Siggers said....
Source: University of Leicester
9-5-12
The search for Richard III’s final resting place has advanced considerably with confirmation that the dig has uncovered the long-lost Church of the Grey Friars where Richard was buried.The first two trenches dug by Leicester’s archaeologists revealed tiled passageway floors at right angles to each other which are probably the remains of a cloister. A cloister is a rectangular open space, surrounded by covered walkways, often built alongside a church that has a monastic community. Friars would walk around the cloister, deep in thought or prayer, whilst remaining dry.If the floors revealed by the first two trenches represented two sides of the cloister, then our theory, revealed at a press conference on Friday, was that the large wall on the third side of the potential cloister could be the church itself. Over the weekend our archaeologists dug a third trench to the east of the first two trenches to see if the wall extended....
Source: BBC
9-5-12
A gathering is to take place at a church in rural Perthshire to mark the restoration of the gravestone of a child who would have inherited the Sikh empire.In 1865, Maharajah Duleep Singh buried his son at Kenmore Parish Church. The Maharajah was the Sikh empire's last ruler and was exiled to the UK when his kingdom was annexed by the East India Company in 1849. The event has been organised by the Anglo Sikh Heritage Trail (ASHT).At its height the Sikh Empire was over twice the size of the United Kingdom and was based around the Punjab region of India.However, a bloody war with the East India Company saw it eventually annexed and Maharajah Singh was exiled to Britain at the age of 10. His friendship with Queen Victoria however, led to the former Indian royal moving to Scotland in 1855 under the guidance of his guardian Sir John Login....
Source: AP
9-5-12
Neil Armstrong's space suit gloves and visor worn during his historic first walk on the moon are going on temporary display at the Smithsonian Institution following the pioneering astronaut's death.Both are usually kept in storage. They were designed to address the hazards of working on the lunar surface. Armstrong's helmet had two visors for moon walks, one with a gold reflective coating for UV protection and one with thermal protection.The Apollo 11 artifacts were placed on public view Tuesday at the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia. They will be exhibited for two weeks in a special display case....
Source: NYT
9-5-12
The Vietnamese government is treating some people exposed to Agent Orange, the defoliant sprayed by American troops during the Vietnam War, using a detoxification method developed by the founder of the Church of Scientology, according to doctors involved in the program.Nguyen Ba Vuong, a doctor at the Vietnam Military Medical University in Hanoi, said his facility had received “training and methods” from the Association for Better Living and Education, an organization that is financed by Scientologists and the Church of Scientology, according to the association’s Web site.
Source: Talking Points Memo
9-5-12
CHARLOTTE — Republicans are fuming after the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Dick Harpootlian, made a joke about Gov. Nikki Haley (R) here Wednesday that compared her with Eva Braun.On the floor of the Democratic National Convention, members of the South Carolina delegation gathered just before the start of Wednesday night’s session kept their distance from the quip, but stood by their party chair who is known in the Palmetto State for a sharp tongue....
Source: WaPo
9-5-12
South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian compared his state’s Republican governor, Nikki Haley, to Eva Braun, the longtime mistress of Adolf Hitler. The Coumbia State:…Harpootlian, never a loss for a quick quip, tossed a few stinging one-liners at the Wednesday delegation breakfast.On Gov. Nikki Haley participating in daily news briefings in a basement studio at the NASCAR Hall of Fame: “She was down in the bunker a la Eva Braun.”
Source: WaPo
8-31-12
Most political observers — or, any observer, really — found Clint Eastwood’s speech Thursday night really, really weird. Rachel Maddow was rendered speechless before describing it as “the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen at a political convention in my entire life, and it will be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen if I live to be 100.”It was weird, but it certainly was not unprecedented. Smithsonian Magazine does some digging and finds that there’s actually a decent amount of empty-chair debates in American political history. It stretches back to at least 1924, when progressive party vice-presidential nominee Burton K. Wheeler “took a stab at an invisible President Calvin Coolidge.”...
Source: WaPo
9-3-12
For years, John Giannetti, a former Marine captain, has lamented the lack of a memorial to the Americans who fell at the Battle of Bladensburg in 1814....By next fall, a bronze relief statue that is being designed by local artist Joanna Blake at Giannetti’s Brentwood studio is expected to be unveiled at Bladensburg Balloon Park.The $375,00 memorial, which shows a fallen Commodore Joshua Barney and two others, is one of many efforts by local residents to try to highlight the area’s links to the War of 1812, a conflict with the British that secured American independence in the post-Revolutionary War era. As celebrations are underway in the region marking the war’s bicentennial, Bladensburg and its neighboring Port Towns — communities that once profited from a thriving Anacostia River trade — are trying to capitalize on their ties to the war and attract history buffs and tourists....
Source: AP
8-31-12
BERLIN — 1946— Gruenenthal, a German pharmaceutical, is founded in Stolberg.1954 — Gruenenthal discovers and patents thalidomide.1957 — Thalidomide is first sold as Contergan in Germany. It is mainly prescribed to treat anxiety and morning sickness in pregnant women....
Source: WaPo
9-4-12
AHMADABAD, India — The owner of the “Hitler” clothing shop in western India says he will remove the sign and rename his store after hearing people’s complaints.Rajesh Shah said Tuesday he had chosen the name in memory of his grandfather, a strict disciplinarian whom the family referred to as “Hitler.”...
