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: Telegraph (UK)
1-8-12
A wind farm is to be built at the site of one of the most important battles ever fought on English soil, despite officials admitting that the scheme will “harm the setting” of the historic location.
They say that the damage the project will cause is outweighed by the need to meet renewable energy targets, and that despite their adverse impact the turbines can go ahead because they would only last for 25 years.
Proposals for an array of 415ft turbines overlooking the site of the Battle of Naseby, the decisive clash of the English Civil War, have been opposed by heritage groups and nearby residents as well as the area’s MP and the local council, which refused permission for the project....
Source: Spiegel Online
5-8-12
The German War Graves Commission launched a campaign on Tuesday, the 67th anniversary of the end of World War II, to promote its online database as a way for relatives to trace missing soldiers. Some 40,000 are located and reburied each year across Eastern Europe and Russia -- where its teams still encounter hostility from locals who remember the murderous occupation.Some 3 million German soldiers died in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in World War II, and the fate of hundreds of thousands of them remains unknown to their relatives and descendants.On Tuesday, May 8, the 67th anniversary of Nazi Germany's capitulation and the end of the war in Europe, the German War Graves Commission launched a campaign inviting people to consult its online database, which contains information on 4.6 million soldiers killed or missing in action."People are still looking for missing relatives today. But many have given up hope. Maybe they don't know that the commission can provide answers," Martin Dodenhoeft, head of communications at the organization, said in a statement. "That is why we have started a radio campaign to tell a broad audience about this possibility offered by the Internet."...
Source: Washington Post
5-7-12
Since the sensational 1994 discovery of James Fort, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, excavations have revealed palisade walls and numerous buildings, along with remarkable clues about the Anglo-American culture that started with the landing of colonists on Virginia’s Jamestown Island in 1607.But because much of the original fort is buried underneath a Confederate earthwork called Fort Pocahontas, these discoveries forced a painful historical and archaeological trade-off. To reveal James Fort, nearly half of Fort Pocahontas has been removed.In the process, invaluable traces of America’s founding have been discovered right next to remains from the Civil War. “It’s probably the only place you would have a story like that,” says Colin Campbell, president of Colonial Williamsburg, citing the conjunction of two pivotal moments in U.S. history. “I think it’s absolutely fascinating.”...
Source: Middle East & Islamic Studies Collection Blog (Cornell)
5-10-12
Seventeen of the of the 6,000 documents documents seized from the compound of Osama bin Laden in May 2011 were released May 3, 2012. The documents – provided by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC), and totalling 175 pages in the original Arabic and 197 pages in the English translation:* Original Arabic (.zip) باللغة العربية * English Translations (.zip) باللغة الانجليزية نشرت يوم الخميس، 3 أيار/مايو، 17 وثيقة من أصل آلاف الوثائق التي عثر عليها في مجمع أسامة بن لادن في أيار/مايو 2011، بعد يوم على الذكرى الأولى لمقتل زعيم القاعدةوتصف الوثائق التي نشرها مركز مكافحة الارهاب، ويبلغ عددها 175 صفحة باللغة العربية و197 صفحة مترجمة إلى الانجليزية، آليات عمل التنظيم الداخلية ومنها خلافات داخلية ونصائح للجماعات المرتبطة بالتنظيم ومخاوف لقادة بارزين فيهThe Combating Terrorism Center at West Point website has provided the following summary:
Source: Al Arabiya News
5-6-12
Members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have desecrated a saint’s tomb in the fabled city of Timbuktu, an act condemned by Malian authorities as “unspeakable.”“Members of AQIM, supported by (the armed Islamist group) Ansar Dine, have destroyed the tomb of Saint Sidi (Mahmoud Ben) Amar. They set fire to the tomb,” an official told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that they had pledged to destroy others too.Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage site and cradle of Islamic learning, has been under the control of AQIM and Ansar Dine since the groups took advantage of a March 22 coup to take control of northern Mali....
Source: Charleston City Paper
5-9-12
This weekend we begin to make amends for a century of lost history. A two-day observance of Robert Smalls' life and work will be held in Charleston, marking the 150th anniversary of his heroic feat aboard the Planter. A historic marker will be placed on the Battery near the spot where Smalls seized the boat. It will be one of the few historical markers in the Holy City dedicated to an African American.There is no final draft of history. Each generation must come to grips with its past in its own way. It must determine for itself what is important, what is real, and what is bogus....Today, a new generation of historians is not content to challenge the old narrative of race and conflict, but is intent on a new and more inclusive narrative that will better define who we are and where we have been.Perhaps the individual most responsible for the way Charleston is telling its story today is Michael Allen, community partnership specialist for Fort Sumter National Monument, the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site, and the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor....
Source: Science Daily
5-8-12
ScienceDaily (May 8, 2012) — George Washington University Professor Jeffrey P. Blomster's latest research explores the importance of the ballgame to ancient Mesoamerican societies. Dr. Blomster's findings show how the discovery of a ballplayer figurine in the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca demonstrates the early participation of the region in the iconography and ideology of the game, a point that had not been previously documented by other researchers.Dr. Blomster's paper, Early evidence of the ballgame in Oaxaca, Mexico, is featured in the latest issue of Proceedings in the National Academies of Science (PNAS).Dr. Blomster, GW associate professor of anthropology, has spent 20 years researching the origin of complex societies in Mesoamerica. The participation of early Mixtec societies in ballgame imagery is a new aspect of his research. For the journal publication, Dr. Blomster worked with undergraduate students Izack Nacheman and Joseph DiVirgilio to create artistic renditions of the figurine artifacts found in Mexico....
Source: National Geographic
5-9-12
Around the world Wednesday, searchers were stumbling upon a gilt- and sepia-toned artifact of the Internet age—a Google doodle heralding the 138th birthday of Howard Carter, the British archaeologist who discovered the ancient Egyptian tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922.The King Tut find brought Carter overnight—and lasting—fame, but it was anything but a stroke of luck, experts say.When talking about the tomb discovery, "everyone likes to use the phrase 'stumble upon,' and that always ticks me off a little bit," said Yale University Egyptologist John Darnell....
Source: Discovery News
5-9-12
Barack Obama became the first US president Wednesday to say publicly he was in favor of same-sex marriage, in a high-stakes intervention in a pre-election debate roiling American politics.In what supporters will hail as a historic moment in civil rights history, Obama changed his stance, after previously saying he was "evolving" on gay marriage, a fiercely divisive issue in US politics."I've just concluded, for me, personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married," Obama said in an interview with ABC News....
Source: Guardian (UK)
5-6-12
The Ministry of Defence is facing a legal battle and parliamentary questions after letting a US company excavate a British 18th-century warship laden with a potentially lucrative cargo.Lord Renfrew is among leading archaeologists condemning a deal struck over HMS Victory, considered the world's mightiest ship when she sank in the Channel in 1744.In return for excavating the vessel's historic remains, which may include gold and silver worth many millions of pounds, Odyssey Marine Exploration is entitled to receive "a percentage of the recovered artefacts' fair value" or "artefacts in lieu of cash"....
Source: Syracuse Observer
5-6-12
Syracuse’s only remnant of the War of 1812 – we’re now observing its 200th anniversary – lies hidden in a grove of trees off of the East Seneca Turnpike hill in the Valley neighborhood.The Onondaga Arsenal is a neglected relic of a forgotten war in a patch of woods behind a row of homes on Arsenal Drive, just off the turnpike. It’s been there since 1812, crumbling away. Only one section of limestone wall, the northeast corner, remains. The rest fell down or was pulled down over time....
Source: AP
5-9-12
VIENNA – They were starved, tortured, and killed because they were considered inferior to the Aryan ideal set by Adolf Hitler. Then their organs were put in jars and displayed for research by the doctors accused of causing their deaths under the Nazis.Shutting the books on one of Vienna's darkest chapters, black-clad workers on Wednesday placed a small metal urn into the ground at the city's Central Cemetery. It contained what municipal officials say were the last known unburied remains of victims "treated to death" on the Austrian capital's psychiatric wards during the Hitler era.The Nazis called them "unworthy lives" — those deemed too sick, weak or handicapped to fit the Fuehrer's image of the master race....
Source: Reuters
5-9-12
(Reuters) - Mist clears to reveal white marble images from classical Greece culminating in Myron's celebrated statue of an athlete poised to launch a discus in the prologue to Leni Riefenstahl's remarkable documentary film "Olympia".The statue rotates and melts into an identical image of a contemporary discus thrower. It is succeeded by further paeans to the sculptured Greek ideal of physical beauty with pictures of a shot putter, a javelin thrower and rhythmic gymnasts.Finally, flame floods the screen followed by a bare-chested runner embarking on the first torch relay of the modern Olympics....
Source: North Jersey
5-10-12
Through help from genealogy and local historians, the descendants of a gravely injured Civil War army captain and a freed African-American slave who aided him met at the historic Hoag House on 127 Donaldson Ave. in Rutherford on May 5. Stanley Baxter, the great-great grandson of African-American Lafayette Hoag, and Arthur N. Mabbett, the great adopted grandson of Union Army Captain Alonzo Lorenzo Mabbett, traveled from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts to meet for the first time."Rutherford didn't witness any of the battles of the American Revolution or the Civil War. Nevertheless, Rutherford [a.k.a. Boiling Spring] has had an interesting, colorful history because of some of the people that moved here," Borough Historian Rod Leith said at a ceremony commemorating Historic Preservation Month held at Borough Hall....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
5-10-12
A Second World War aeroplane that crash landed in the Sahara Desert before the British pilot walked to his death has been found almost perfectly preserved 70 years later.The Kittyhawk P-40 has remained unseen and untouched since it came down on the sand in June 1942 and has been hailed the "aviation equivalent of Tutankhamun's Tomb".It is thought the pilot survived the crash and initially used his parachute for shelter before making a desperate and futile attempt to reach civilisation by walking out of the desert.The RAF airman, believed to have been Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping, 24, was never seen again....
Source: BBC News
5-8-12
Horses were domesticated 6,000 years ago on the grasslands of Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan, a genetic study shows.Domestic horses then spread across Europe and Asia, breeding with wild mares along the way, research published in the journal PNAS suggests.The work, by a Cambridge University team, brings together two competing theories on horse domestication....
Source: Science Daily
5-8-12
ScienceDaily (May 8, 2012) — Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, the Yigal Yadin Professor of Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, announced May 8 the discovery of objects that for the first time shed light on how a cult was organized in Judah at the time of King David. During recent archaeological excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortified city in Judah adjacent to the Valley of Elah, Garfinkel and colleagues uncovered rich assemblages of pottery, stone and metal tools, and many art and cult objects. These include three large rooms that served as cultic shrines, which in their architecture and finds correspond to the biblical description of a cult at the time of King David.This discovery is extraordinary as it is the first time that shrines from the time of early biblical kings were uncovered. Because these shrines pre-date the construction of Solomon's temple in Jerusalem by 30 to 40 years, they provide the first physical evidence of a cult in the time of King David, with significant implications for the fields of archaeology, history, biblical and religion studies.
Source: LiveScience
5-8-12
Leonardo da Vinci's 500-year-old illustrations of human anatomy are uncannily accurate with just one major exception: the female reproductive system.That's probably because Leonardo had a tough time finding female corpses to dissect, explains Peter Abrahams, a practicing physician at the University of Warwick Medical School in the United Kingdom.Abrahams, a clinical anatomist, has lent his knowledge to an audio tour of the exhibit of Leonardo's anatomical drawings that opened May 4 in Buckingham Palace.The Italian Renaissance artist learned anatomy as a way to improve his drawings of the human form, but he also brought a scientist's eye to the discipline....
Source: AP
5-8-12
WASHINGTON – Washington National Cathedral is preparing to dedicate a new carving of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks in a section of the church devoted to human rights.The Episcopal cathedral formally installs the new sculpture Thursday with a ceremony of evening prayer songs. The carving of Parks will join others on the cathedral's Human Rights Porch that celebrates those who struggled to bring equality and social justice to all people. Other figures include former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
5-4-12
Adolf Hitler may have believed he could divinely dictate the weather, startling new evidence has suggested.A secret psychological report, unearthed by the University of Cambridge, has found evidence of Hitler’s outlandish beliefs, including his illusion of “divinity”.The profile, which also reveals the leader “seriously contemplating the possibility of utter defeat”, discloses how he believed he was the “incarnation of the Spirit of Good”.The author admits “one would think that even German credulity would be strained by such an assumption of divinity”, but concludes the evidence “might or might not represent an illusion of divine control over the weather.”...
