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: knoxnews.com
4-24-12
MAYNARDVILLE — What was once farmland as far as the eye could see is now nearly 4,000 acres of second-growth forests with scenic lakefront views — due, in large part, to the Tennessee Valley Authority.In celebration of the Tennessee state park system's 75th anniversary, Big Ridge State Park in Maynardville hosted a small celebration Tuesday afternoon, during which a full-scale copy of a 1935 TVA map of the region was unveiled.The 4-by-11-foot map is an exact copy of the original, with added blue coloring for the proposed lakes, and will remain on permanent display in the park's main office....
Source: NineMSN (AU)
4-25-12
As Australia marks Anzac Day, historians in Singapore fear not enough is being done to preserve important World War II sites.The infamous Changi jail and nearby barracks held more than 35,000 Allied soldiers during WWII, including 15,000 Australians.With land at a premium in the island nation, Singaporean authorities have built over the top of many historic sites and destroyed wartime buildings.The key remnants of the Changi jail are a section of wall and a gate, but both are on land used for Singapore's prison constructed in 2005 and are not publicly accessible....
Source: European Jewish Press
4-25-12
BERLIN (AFP)---The German state which owns the rights to Adolf Hitler's manifesto "Mein Kampf" said Tuesday it would republish an annotated edition of the book 70 years after the Nazi dictator's suicide. After winning a court battle last month against a British publisher who planned to release parts of the anti-Semitic tract alongside commentary from historians, Bavaria said it would put out its own version by 2015. State Finance Minister Markus Soeder told German news agency DPA the decision was taken after talks with advocates and opponents of the move, and said it was aimed at "demystifying" the pages drenched in hatred and paranoid fantasy. "We want to make clear what nonsense is in there, however with catastrophic consequences," Soeder said of the book on which much of the Nazis' genocidal ideology was based....
Source: Newsday
4-24-12
KABUL, Afghanistan -- In a highly controversial move, Afghanistan's education ministry has dealt with the complexities of the last four decades of turmoil and war by simply omitting the entire period from the new history textbooks it is issuing to schools.Officials argue that the decision to pass over contentious events of recent history is an attempt to heal rifts in Afghan society and avoid further strife. But critics accuse the ministry of distorting history and protecting individuals implicated in past bloodshed, some of who now hold senior government posts.Children studying the books could be forgiven for thinking they were reading about another country.Historians see the missing parts -- from the Soviet invasion to the emergence of Islamist militias and all-out civil war -- as the key to understanding modern Afghanistan....
Source: The Register (UK)
4-23-12
Blighty's communications eavesdropping nerve centre GCHQ has issued two papers written by superboffin Alan Turing on the maths behind code-breaking.The documents, held in secret for 70 years, laid the foundations for the quick and efficient decryption of Nazi Enigma-scrambled messages - a breakthrough that lopped about two years off the duration of the Second World War.The papers were donated on Friday to The National Archive in Kew, Surrey, where they will be available to view on request. An archives spokesperson said demand to see Turing's work is high, but there is no plan to put it online....
Source: The Courier (UK)
4-23-12
General John Forbes is credited with turning the tide of American history in favour of British forces in the Seven Years War when he defeated the French, capturing a strategically important fort and founding what is now Pittsburgh.Now a memorial, gifted by the people of Pennsylvania, stands alongside the Forbes' ancestral home, Pittencrieff House. It was unveiled on Saturday.The Forbes Marker was presented by Laura Fisher, senior vice-president of the Allegheny Conference in Pittsburgh. She served as an executive director of French and Indian War 250, which celebrated the 250th anniversary of the founding of Pittsburgh in 1758.The Forbes Marker commemorates the achievements of the general, and is one of a set of five installed along the route of the 300-mile trail he created on his way to capture Fort Duquesne....
Source: Guardian (UK)
4-22-12
CROWDS gathered on a rainy morning to witness the unveiling of the world’s only memorial to the Luddites in Liversedge.The unveiling of the statue of a cropper and his daughter was the culmination of six years’ hard graft by Spen Valley Civic Society.The society bought a plot of derelict land at the junction of Knowler Hill and Halifax Road to turn into a park marking the ‘lost town’ of Liversedge.However they also decided that as 2012 marked the 200th anniversary of the Luddites’ attack at Rawfolds Mill in Liversedge, they would commemorate that pivotal moment in social history by commissioning a statue of a cropper and his daughter as the park’s centrepiece....
Source: Science Blog
4-12-12
New research marking the bicentenary of Luddism – a workers’ uprising which swept through parts of England in 1812 – has thrown into question whether it really was the moment at which working class Britain found its political voice.April 11 will mark the 200th anniversary of what was arguably the high-point of the Luddite rebellion; an assault by some 150 armed labourers on a Huddersfield mill, in which soldiers opened fire on the mob to stop them breaking into the premises, fatally wounding two attackers.It was, perhaps, the most dramatic in a series of protests which had begun the year before in Nottinghamshire, then spread to Yorkshire, Lancashire and other regions. The Luddites were angered by new technologies, like automated looms, which were being used in the textile industry in place of the skilled work of artisans, threatening their livelihoods as a result....
Source: LA Times
4-24-12
The Feb. 27 letter from the chairman of the Colorado River Indian Tribes was pleading and tough. It asked President Obama to slow the federal government's "frantic pursuit" of massive solar energy projects in the Mojave Desert because of possible damage to Native American cultural resources.The Obama administration didn't respond. But four days after Chairman Eldred Enas sent the letter, the Indians say they found an answer, delivered by spirits of the desert.Howling winds uncovered a human tooth and a handful of burned bone fragments the size of quarters on a sand dune in the shadow of new solar power transmission towers. Indians say the discovery is evidence of a Native American cremation site not detected in Southern California Edison's archaeological survey before the towers were built....
Source: Discovery News
4-23-12
A meticulous description of currency and salt production could restore Marco Polo's honor by proving that he really did go to China, a new study into the explorer's accounts of the Far East suggests."Polo was not a swindler," said Hans Ulrich Vogel, professor of Chinese studies at the German University of Tübingen.Vogel reexamines the great Venetian traveler in a new book titled "Marco Polo Was in China.""The strongest evidence is that he provided complex and detailed information about monetary conditions, salt production, public revenues and administrative geography that have been overlooked so far, but are fully corroborated in Chinese sources," Vogel told Discovery News.The historian noted that these Chinese sources were collated or translated long after Marco Polo’s time."So he could not have drawn on them. He could not even read Chinese," he said....
Source: NYT
4-21-12
Charles W. Colson, who as a political saboteur for President Richard M. Nixon masterminded some of the dirty tricks that led to the president’s downfall, then emerged from prison to become an important evangelical leader, saying he had been “born again,” died on Saturday. He was 80. The cause was complications of a brain hemorrhage, according to Prison Fellowship Ministries, which Mr. Colson founded in Lansdowne, Va. He died at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va., and lived in Naples, Fla., and Leesburg, Va. Mr. Colson had brain surgery to remove a clot after becoming ill on March 30 while speaking at a conference, according to Jim Liske, the group’s chief executive. Related link Washington Post obituary
Source: LiveScience
4-19-12
Ancient Scandinavians dragged 59 boulders to a seaside cliff near what is now the Swedish fishing village of Kåseberga. They carefully arranged the massive stones — each weighing up to 4,000 pounds (1,800 kilograms) — in the outline of a 220-foot-long (67-meter) ship overlooking the Baltic Sea.Archaeologists generally agree this megalithic structure, known as Ales Stenar ("Ale's Stones"), was assembled about 1,000 years ago, near the end of the Iron Age, as a burial monument. But a team of researchers now argues it's really 2,500 years old, dating from the Scandinavian Bronze Age, and was built as an astronomical calendar with the same underlying geometry as England's Stonehenge.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
4-18-12
Whisper it quietly on this side of Hadrian’s Wall, but a ground breaking research project has revealed that Scottish DNA is much the same as English DNA.
Not only are we not all Celts and Vikings north of the border, it appears that Bonnie Prince Charlie himself had English ancestors.
Around 1,000 people have been tested in the past four months as part of the Scotland’s DNA project, and the preliminary results reveal the “astonishing” diversity of our genetic origins.
Source: NYT
4-20-12
It has been nearly a quarter-century since Roy Fox had a regular salary. He is not a lottery winner or the recipient of some grand family fortune. He is, in short, the type of person who long ago would have been priced out by New York’s ever-climbing housing market.
But for more than two decades, Mr. Fox, a retired radio host who earns a modest pension, has been enviably situated in an airy abode with park views, burnished wood floors and historic detailing. In fact, he is the sole resident of a 29-room mansion in Jamaica, Queens, constructed before the Declaration of Independence was written — a pre-prewar, so to speak.
If paying scandalously low rent for one of the city’s 39,000 remaining rent-controlled apartments is viewed as the holy grail of New York real estate, that is only because so few are aware of the existence of an even more elusive and lustrous prize.
Mr. Fox, 72, is one of only 19 people lucky enough to seize the role of resident caretaker of a city-owned historic home, a job that comes with no salary but a perk so seemingly lavish that many are loath to admit it to their friends: they not only live in some of the city’s most splendid manors, but they also do so completely rent-free.
Source: Guardian
4-19-12
Salford's clever academics, who once took me shopping in a virtual supermarket – you sat in an armchair wearing a helmet and a glove – have now recreated the sound of Stonehenge.
We are nowhere nearer cracking the mystery of the monument as a result; but who would want to be? Apart from all the mountains of remaindered books of theories, a puzzle solved is never as gripping as a conundrum still under way.
But the four-year project by Dr Bruno Fazenda and colleagues at Huddersfield and Bristol universities, has established how the shouts, speeches, songs or sacrificial screams would have sounded, whatever material they may have contained. The method has been a painstaking piece of 'archaeoacoustics', a relatively new discipline which reveals the sound quality of buildings from the past.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
4-18-12
A trove of Chinese antiquities described by a spokesman as “a highly important part of our collection” was stolen last week from the University of Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum, The Telegraph and BBC News reported....
Source: Guardian (UK)
4-18-12
Thousands of documents detailing some of the most shameful acts and crimes committed during the final years of the British empire were systematically destroyed to prevent them falling into the hands of post-independence governments, an official review has concluded.Those papers that survived the purge were flown discreetly to Britain where they were hidden for 50 years in a secret Foreign Office archive, beyond the reach of historians and members of the public, and in breach of legal obligations for them to be transferred into the public domain.The archive came to light last year when a group of Kenyans detained and allegedly tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion won the right to sue the British government. The Foreign Office promised to release the 8,800 files from 37 former colonies held at the highly-secure government communications centre at Hanslope Park in Buckinghamshire.
Source: BBC News
4-18-12
US officials complained Kenyan students were becoming "anti-white" in the year Barack Obama's father enrolled at university, previously secret files released at the National Archives in Kew reveal.US President Barack Obama wrote with pride of his Kenyan father's studies in the US in his memoir Dream From My Father.
Source: Reuters
4-19-12
Four of the last five survivors of a U.S. World War Two bombing mission over Japan reunited on Wednesday, 70 years after the "Doolittle Tokyo raiders" shocked Japan and lifted flagging American war morale with their daring attempt. Only five of the 80 U.S. military members who participated in the raid are still alive and one could not attend the annual reunion at a Dayton, Ohio, military base because of ill health. Air Force Staff Sergeant David Thatcher, 90, remembered April 18, 1942, like it was yesterday. His plane, a B-25 bomber, had just crossed Japan's coastline on its way to Tokyo as part of a surprise attack that helped change the outcome of World War Two in the Pacific. The earlier foul weather had cleared and Thatcher, a gunner, had a clear view of a crowded beach.
Source: Fox News
4-18-12
A small bronze statue dating back nearly 2,000 years may be that of a female gladiator, a victorious one at that, suggests a new study.If confirmed the statue would represent only the second depiction of a woman gladiator known to exist.The gladiator statue shows a topless woman, wearing only a loincloth and a bandage around her left knee. Her hair is long, although neat, and in the air she raises what the researcher, Alfonso Manas of the University of Granada, believes is a sica, a short curved sword used by gladiators. The gesture she gives is a "salute to the people, to the crowd," Manas said, an action done by victorious gladiators at the end of a fight.The female fighter is looking down at the ground, presumably at her fallen opponent.The "precise real-life" details of the statue suggest the depiction was inspired by an actual person, a real woman who fought, Manas told LiveScience in an interview. [Photos: Gladiators of the Roman Empire]...
