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: AP
June 6, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) — World War II veterans Josephine and Murray Bussard are commemorating the 68th anniversary of D-Day in side-by-side wheelchairs at the memorial honoring their service in the war that brought them together as man and wife.The octogenarians from Springfield, Mo., were among nearly 200 veterans who were flown in from six states on Wednesday for a visit to the World War II Memorial. The Bussards made this journey two days before their 67th wedding anniversary.The veterans’ flights were arranged by the private Honor Flight Network. According to its website, the organization has flown more than 81,000 veterans to the nation’s capital since 2005 to visit the memorials for their respective wars....
Source: Salon
June 6, 2012
It’s not hard to guess the logic behind releasing “Timeline World War 2” at this time of year: It’s the quintessential dad app. For many people giving or getting a new iPad for Father’s Day, this Ballista Media/Agant Ltd. production handily illustrates the merits of the tablet medium by taking the material of a zillion History Channel documentaries and presenting it in a fresh new way.But “Timeline World War 2” is not just for dads! Yes, it focuses on the military (rather than the political or social) aspects of the conflict, but to someone (like me) who’s unlikely to read a book devoted to major battles, key tacticians, warships sunk or scuttled, weapons descriptions and so on, it may be even more interesting and enlightening than it would be to an aficionado. It’s also a beautifully-designed demonstration of the iPad’s powers as a publishing platform for nonfiction....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
June 5, 2012
Relations between Norway and Sweden are being strained with the publication of a new book, which details how Stockholm aided the Nazis during WW2 as their neighbours fought and lost a decisive battle against the German invaders.Sweden stayed neutral in the war but Norway was among the first conquests of Hitler.Now a new book shows how Sweden let the Germans use its efficient rail network to transport men and materials to the battle of Narvik, where British troops were deployed in a bid to stave off the Nazi hordes.Narvik-based journalist Espen Eidum spent three years sifting through Norwegian, Swedish and German archives to discover how the Nazis had managed to get troops and supplies to the front lines in Narvik in 1940, enabling them to turn a losing battle into a decisive victory that led to the conquest and brutal occupation of the whole country....
Source: Yahoo News
June 5, 2012
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The first doctor to reach President Abraham Lincoln after he was shot in a Washington theater rushed to his ceremonial box and found him paralyzed, comatose and leaning against his wife. Dr. Charles Leale ordered brandy and water to be brought immediately.Leale's long-lost report of efforts to help the mortally wounded president, written just hours after his death, was discovered in a box at the National Archives late last month.The Army surgeon, who sat 40 feet from Lincoln at Ford's Theater that night in April 1865, saw assassin John Wilkes Booth jump to the stage, brandishing a dagger. Thinking Lincoln had been stabbed, Leale pushed his way to the victim but found a different injury....
Source: Princeton Patch
June 6, 2012
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has named the Princeton Battlefield to its 2012 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.The annual list, released Wednesday, includes landmarks believed to be at risk of destruction or irreparable damage.Should Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study build its approved 15-unit housing development on a portion of the original battlefield, that “would radically alter the integrity of the historic landscape, which has never been built upon, burying or destroying potential archeological resources and dramatically changing the topography of the terrain - an important element of the battle and essential to interpreting the battle today,” according to a statement from the National Trust....
Source: Fox News
June 5, 2012
A trove of gold and silver coins and jewelry discovered near the Qiryat Gat in Israel was likely stashed there by a wealthy woman during the Bar Kokhba Revolt, the last Jewish-Roman war, archaeologists announced today June 5.Scientists uncovered about 140 gold and silver coins, along with gold jewelry, during an excavation that exposed rooms of a building dating to the Roman and Byzantine period. The treasure trove was wrapped in cloth and hidden in a pit in the building's courtyard.The jewelry could make even a modern gal smile; among the hoard is a flower-shaped earring and a ring holding a precious stone that is covered with a seal of a winged goddess. Two sticks of silver in the trove were likely kohl sticks, which were used type of like eyeliner in Arabia and Egypt to darken the edges of eyelids. The coins date to the reigns of emperors Nero, Nerva and Trajan, who ruled the Roman Empire from about A.D. 54 to 117; the emperors' images adorn one side of the coins....
Source: NYT
June 6, 2012
Joe Frazier’s Gym in Philadelphia and the neighborhood where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. grew up, in Sweet Auburn, Atlanta, are among the 11 important sites at risk of damage or destruction cited by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in its annual list, to be unveiled on Wednesday....
Source: NYT
June 6, 2012
LONDON — Saying she was touched and humbled by “countless kindnesses” shown to her, Queen Elizabeth II wound up a spectacular and closely scripted four-day celebration of her 60 years as monarch on Tuesday, seeming buoyed by an outpouring of support that is likely to cement her family’s place in British society for years to come.The queen, who is 86, completed the extravaganza with an address broadcast to the nation.“The events that I have attended to mark my diamond jubilee have been a humbling experience,” she said in the address, which lasted less than two minutes and was recorded in advance. “It has touched me deeply to see so many thousands of families, neighbors and friends celebrating together in such a happy atmosphere.”
Source: Independent (UK)
June 2, 2012
...1 The first words the infant Elizabeth would have heard were "Is it a boy or a girl?", said by her father, the future George VI.2 For constitutional reasons, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Cabinet Secretary were present in an adjoining room.3 The future Queen's nickname was Lizbet or Lil.4 "Even at the age of one, she had what I call 'royal manners'," one of her first nannies, Nanny Wilkins, once revealed.5 Her favourite subjects, according to one governess, were drawing and animal stories....
Source: AFP
June 5, 2012
BAGHDAD (AFP) -- Iraqi architects and historians have decried official neglect of historical buildings nationwide, many of which have fallen into disrepair and disuse, and called for greater attention to be paid to them."For many years, we have talked about the importance of maintaining historical centres and buildings spread across Iraqi cities ... but unfortunately, the government did not respond to these calls," Iraqi architect Hisham al-Medfai said at a conference of local historians and architects over the weekend."Architectural heritage in urban centres now requires an important step to maintain it," Medfai said....
Source: BBC News
June 5, 2012
Archaeologists in Bulgaria have found two medieval skeletons pierced through the chest with iron rods to supposedly stop them from turning into vampires.The discovery illustrates a pagan practice common in some villages up until a century ago, say historians.People deemed bad had their hearts stabbed after death, for fear they would return to feast on humans' blood....
Source: Chicago Sun-Times
June 5, 2012
Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th), the City Council’s resident historian, had hoped to turn the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Fort Dearborn into a “Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation” with descendants of the Native Americans involved in that deadly battle.Instead, he made matters worse — by using a term many Native Americans consider derogatory and tantamount to a racial slur.It happened Tuesday during a City Council hearing on Burke’s resolution calling for the planning to begin on an appropriate city celebration.Burke suggested that descendents of the Native Americans involved and of the occupants of Fort Dearborn may want to “smoke a peace pipe” as part of the bi-centennial celebration of the Aug. 15 battle of the War of 1812....
Source: Anchorage Daily News
June 4, 2012
Seventy years ago today, bombs fell on Dutch Harbor. The casualties and damage on a remote Aleutian islet amounted to little more than a blip in the cataclysm of World War II. To this day, educated Americans are unaware that it happened at all.But the battle permanently changed Alaska in ways that few at the time realized.In an essay in the collection "Alaska at War," historian Stephen Haycox describes Anchorage in 1940 as "a sleepy little village" with a population of about 3,500.The summer of 1940 saw the beginning of construction of a military base on what had hitherto been hay fields and birch forests north of Government Hill....Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/06/04/151036/how-wwiis-battle-of-dutch-harbor.html#storylink=cpy...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 5, 2012
Using bones from 80 sailors buried in Royal Naval hospital cemeteries, researchers were able to analyse their makeup and find out what had been on the menu.The bones came from 17th and 18th century sailors, as well as from the Mary Rose, which sunk in 1545, reports the American Journal of Phsyical Anthropology.Experts found salt beef and sea biscuits were a mainstay among those aboard the vessel and that sailors' diets changed little over the next 200 years....
Source: Huffington Post
May 28, 2012
JISH, Israel -- Two villages in the Holy Land's tiny Christian community are teaching Aramaic in an ambitious effort to revive the language that Jesus spoke, centuries after it all but disappeared from the Middle East.The new focus on the region's dominant language 2,000 years ago comes with a little help from modern technology: an Aramaic-speaking television channel from Sweden, of all places, where a vibrant immigrant community has kept the ancient tongue alive.In the Palestinian village of Beit Jala, an older generation of Aramaic speakers is trying to share the language with their grandchildren. Beit Jala lies next to Bethlehem, where the New Testament says Jesus was born....
Source: Irish Central
June 2, 2012
Up to three ships from the Ottoman Empire sailed up the River Boyne to Drogheda to deliver supplies during the famine, according to a local historian.Both the Drogheda Argus and the Drogheda Conservative newspapers reported on 'foreign ships' that docked at the town of Drogheda from May 10-14, 1847.According to the Drogheda Independent, two of the ships arrived from the Ottoman Port of Thessalonica, which is now known as Salonika. The third ship arrived from the port of Stettin. The three ships brought wheat and Indian Corn for local merchants in the area....
Source: International Business times
June 1, 2012
With the premiere of Rupert Sanders' "Snow White and the Huntsman" starring Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron, many are wondering if the folk tale popularized by the Brothers Grimm and Walt Disney -- about the girl with hair as black as ebony and skin as white as snow -- is based on a real person.Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, the authors of the original "Schneewittchen und die sieben Zwerge," or the story "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," were German scholars who collected, researched and wrote stories based on folklore in the early 1800s. The stories, which were spread by word of mouth, were treated as scholarly research, and the Grimm brothers eventually compiled more than 200 of them. One of those stories was "Snow White," and based on accounts from various people -- from peasants to aristocrats -- which drew some criticism based on how accurately the oral tradition was rendered during the transcription process.However, in 1994, a German scholar named Eckhard Sander wrote "Schneewittchen: Marchen oder Wahrheit?" which translates to "Snow White: Is It a Fairy Tale?" in an effort to debunk claims that the protagonist in Snow White never existed and was not based on historical fact....
Source: Medievalists.net
May 25, 2012
Anyone who has admired centuries-old sculptures and portraits displayed in museums and galleries around the world at some point has asked one question: Who is that?Three University of California, Riverside scholars have launched a research project to test — for the first time — the use of facial recognition software to help identify these unknown subjects of portrait art, a project that ultimately may enrich the understanding of European political, social and religious history.Funded by an initial grant of $25,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the research project — “FACES: Faces, Art, and Computerized Evaluation Systems” — will apply state-of-the-art facial recognition technology used in the fight against terrorism to solve old and vexing art historical problems, said Conrad Rudolph, professor of art history and project director....
Source: CBS News
June 4, 2012
Four decades ago, a U.S. soldier wrote home, telling of the horrors he saw in Vietnam. He was killed before he could mail the letters that were later stolen by the North Vietnamese. The letters were finally released by the Vietnamese military as part of a symbolic exchange with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, reports Wyatt Andrews.
Source: Fox News
June 4, 2012
HANOI, Vietnam – The Vietnamese government has announced it will open three previously restricted sites for excavation by the U.S. to search for troop remains from the war.The announcement from Vietnam Minister of Defense Phung Quang Thanh comes as U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and his Vietnamese counterpart participated in a first-of-its-kind joint exchange of artifacts from the war in Hanoi.A Department of Defense spokesman said in a statement the department believes Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command (JPAC) research teams will greatly benefit from access to the new sites in their search for the approximately 1,200 U.S. service members still missing in Vietnam....
