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: LiveScience
February 22, 2012
Even with cranes, helicopters, tractors and trucks at our disposal, it would be tough to construct the Great Pyramid of Giza today. Its construction 4,500 years ago is so astounding in some people's eyes that they invoke mystical or even alien involvement. But the current theory of the building of the Great Pyramid — the notion that it was assembled from the inside out, via a spiraling internal ramp — is probably still the best construction plan.Following that plan, we could replicate the Wonder of the Ancient World for a cool $5 billion.First, let's look at the blueprint: The pyramid is 756 feet long on each side, 481 feet high, and composed of 2.3 million stones weighing nearly 3 tons each for a total mass of 6.5 million tons. Legend has it that the structure was erected in just 20 years' time, meaning that a block had to have been moved into place about every 5 minutes of each day and night. That pace would have required the (slave) labor of thousands. While traditional theories hold that the pyramid was built via a long external ramp, such a ramp would have had to wind around for more than a mile to be shallow enough to drag stones up, and it would have had a stone volume twice that of the pyramid itself....
Source: Heritage Collectors' Society
February 20, 2012
DOYLESTOWN, Pa., Feb. 20, 2012--A detailed ink drawing of a clipper ship signed by George Washington has been discovered by Tom Lingenfelter of the Heritage Collectors' Society. One of America's most successful history detectives, who recently revealed what is now known to be the only True Copy of the Original Declaration of Independence, Lingenfelter has now unearthed a schoolboy drawing signed by a 10-year-old Washington who would later become the first president of the United States and is referred to as the "Father of Our Country."The wonderfully preserved drawing is signed "March 12th, 1742, Geo. Washington." And like the image of the ship above it, the signature displays a careful and deliberate self-consciousness. While clearly revealing hints of the grace that, years later, would characterize Washington's mature autograph it is a fascinating item direct from the juvenile pen of one of America's most important historic icons.
Source: NYT
February 21, 2012
WASHINGTON — Something resembling a “fog of war” prevailed at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s headquarters in the first hours and days after the Fukushima accident began last March, the N.R.C.’s chairman said Tuesday, as the agency released a cache of transcripts of internal conference calls beginning hours after the earthquake.The N.R.C. got some of its information from the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, the utility whose Fukushima Daiichi reactors were stricken by the tsunami after the quake, but a great deal of the information came from news accounts, according to various officials whose contemporaneous assessments were captured in the transcripts.For example, on the second day of the crisis, one official referred to “unconfirmed reports of boiling” in spent fuel pools, but the reports did not say which of the six reactors were involved, a maddening ambiguity for officials who oversaw similar reactors in the United States....
Source: BBC News
February 21, 2012
Malcolm X has been honoured with a plaque in Smethwick almost 50 years after he visited the West Midlands town during heightened racial tensions.The civil rights campaigner gave interviews in 1965 in Marshall Street where white householders were lobbying the council to buy up houses to prevent black or Asian families moving in.The father-of-six was assassinated nine days later in New York.A blue plaque has been unveiled on the side of a house in Marshall Street....
Source: New Zealand Herald
February 16, 2012
It seemed appropriate that just as we approached the grim 3000-year-old fortress of Mycenae, dark clouds should suddenly gather overhead and send down a few warning drops of rain.Even though this was the setting for one of the greatest love affairs in history - the romance between Helen and Paris that launched the Greek invasion of Troy and inspired Homer's epic poems - it is a dark place with an even darker history.Legend has it that Mycenae was founded by the hero Perseus and that he hired the Cyclops, the awful one-eyed giants, to build it.Other legends tell of successive blood feuds, wars and assassinations, with grandsons killing grandfathers, nephews killing uncles, fathers sacrificing daughters, wives killing husbands and sons killing mothers, until the ruling dynasty wiped itself out....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
February 22, 2012
ACTIVISTS loyal to Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe have visited the grave of colonialist Cecil Rhodes to demand permission to exhume his remains and return them to Britain.A group of Zanu-PF supporters and veterans from the country's liberation war travelled to the remote site last week to express their anger at the continued presence of the Oxford-educated mining magnate's body in Zimbabwe.The fresh call to exhume Rhodes' remains comes nearly 110 years after the colonial pioneer was laid to rest in 1902 in the Matopos hills outside the country's second city of Bulawayo.At the time, the land lay inside Rhodesia, a British territory established in his own name by the millionaire businessman and politician.However groups loyal to Mugabe have repeatedly called for Rhodes' grave to be removed since the country gained its independence in 1980....
Source: Fox News
February 21, 2012
The transfer of 17 tons of shipwreck treasure wrested away from deep-sea explorers by the Spanish government will be made later this week from a U.S. Air Force base in Florida, officials confirmed Tuesday night.MacDill Air Force Base said in a statement that it is cooperating with Spanish government officials in the transfer of the 594,000 silver coins and other artifacts that were brought to the surface off the Portuguese coast and flown back to Tampa by Odyssey Marine Exploration in May 2007."The U.S. Air Force has an excellent relationship with the Spanish Air Force and we are working closely with them to ensure a safe and secure mission," said the brief statement, which added that Spain is sending two C-130 transport planes to haul the cargo....
Source: Focus Taiwan
February 21, 2012
Former Premier Hau Pei-tsun, a four-star general-turned- politician, has expressed concern that school textbook accounts of the history and geography of the Republic of China might be misleading the younger generation as to their knowledge about their country.In a letter to the editor of the United Daily News (UDN), Hau, who was premier from 1990-1993, voiced his worry about how his granddaughter's history and geography textbooks ambiguously describe the country's recent history and geography.In the letter, Hau questioned why the textbooks constantly use the term "Taiwan area," which he said confuses students about where their country -- the Republic of China -- lies. "It that a geographic term or a political term?" he asked....
Source: Discovery News
February 20, 2012
When John Glenn blasted off inside his Mercury capsule 50 years ago on Monday to become the first American in orbit, not everyone breathed a sigh of relief that the country had finally matched the Soviet Union's technology.Doctors were worried that Glenn, a 40-year-old Marine Corps pilot, might not be able to see in space."The doctors were literally concerned that your eyes might change shape and your vision might change enough that you couldn't even see the instrument panel," Glenn told reporters at the Kennedy Space Center last week during a series of commemorations to mark the 50th anniversary of his flight."They were enough concerned about it we actually put a little miniaturized eye chart on the top of instrument panel," he said....
Source: KSL
February 16, 2012
PROVO — As The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints finalizes plans to build a temple within the walls of the fire-ravaged Provo Tabernacle, history from an even earlier building at the site is being studied. Little by little, archaeologists and students from BYU are working in cooperation with the Church History and Temple departments of the LDS Church to unearth Provo's first Tabernacle — a building known as "the old meetinghouse." Through their efforts, the students have discovered some of Provo's early history and find some of it surprising....
Source: Daily Pleasantville
February 20, 2012
NORTH WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. – Gen. George Washington established several headquarters in the Hudson River Valley during the Revolutionary War, but one such historic location in Westchester’s North White Plains has been left to wither away over the decades.In past years, Westchester County officials have considered preserving the Elijah Miller House in North White Plains, where North Castle historians say Washington established a headquarters during the Battle of White Plains in 1776. Although the house, which the county opened to the public in 1918 and deemed a National Historic Site in 1976, is decrepit and quickly deteriorating, two local residents said they would like to see it saved.“I’d love to see it restored, but I don’t think the county has the funds,” said Steve Puchir, operations manager of Wallauer’s in North White Plains. “I think it might be a good project for somebody like a Boy Scout troop or a Girl Scout troop to undertake.” He added that such a project wouldn’t be the best undertaking for the county, given the current state of the economy and that fact that it probably wouldn’t be “a money-maker.”...
Source: Minnesota Public Radio
February 19, 2012
ST. PAUL, Minn. — This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Dakota war in Minnesota. Over the next nine months we'll hear more about what led to the conflict that ended in December 1862, when 38 Dakota Indians were hanged in Mankato. It was the largest mass execution in U.S. history.As we head into the somber commemoration of the Dakota War this year, we thought it appropriate to call in historian Annette Atkins to help us learn more about Minnesota's first governor, Henry Sibley, his times, and the events that laid the groundwork for the war.Atkins said the "really painful" chapter in Minnesota history began with two treaties drawn up in 1851 between the government and the Dakota in what the Dakota erroneously assumed to be good faith land-for-money swaps."Those treaties in 1851 were really a disaster, from so many points of view. One outrage of those treaties was that, at the concludion of the signing of those treaties, the Indians were led from one signing table to another signing table," Atkins said. "And at that table, where many of them thought were just another set of treaty papers, were in fact what have come to be called the traitor papers, in which they were pretty effectively swindled out of much of the money they had agreed to receive."...
Source: NYT
February 20, 2012
WARSAW — For all that Poland has accomplished since the fall of the Iron Curtain, it has long resisted fully coming to terms with its Communist past — the oppression, the spying, even the massacres. Society preferred to forget, to move on.So it may come as a surprise that Poland and many of its neighbors in Central and Eastern Europe have decided the time is right to deal with the unfinished business. Suddenly there is a wave of accounting in the form of government actions and cultural explorations, some seeking closure, others payback.A court in Poland last month found that the Communist leaders behind the imposition of martial law in December 1981 were part of a “criminal group.” Bulgaria’s president is trying to purge ambassadors who served as security agents. The Macedonian government is busy hunting for collaborators, and Hungary’s new Constitution allows legal action against former Communists....
Source: CBS News
February 20, 2012
John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth, creating one of the most historic events in modern history. Now, 50 years later, Glenn celebrates the occasion by looking to the future of space exploration.(video)
Source: LiveScience
February 19, 2012
New evidence has emerged to support the controversial claim that Hitler had a son with a French teenager, the French magazine LePoint reported on Friday.The man, Jean-Marie Loret, claimed to be the Fuhrer's son in 1981, when he published an autobiography called "Your Father's Name Was Hitler." He died four years later aged 67, not being able to prove his family line.But Loret's Paris lawyer, François Gibault, told the French magazine that a number of photographs and documents can now support the claim.He also revealed how Loret got to know about his parentage....
Source: Today's Zaman
February 20, 2012
A historic monastery where an apostle of Jesus Christ is said to have performed miracles is close to caving in and needs immediate repairs, the leader of Greek Cyprus' Orthodox Christian Church said Monday.Archbishop Chrysostomos II urged Greek Cypriot pilgrims not to travel to the Apostolos Andreas - or Saint Andrew - monastery in Turkish Cyprus for fear it could collapse. He said if Turkish Cypriot authorities didn't act fast, he would dispatch restoration crews to prop up the monastery's crumbling central archway, possibly stoking tensions on the divided island. Chrysostomos account was immediately disputed by Turkish Cypriot officials, who say authorities are keen to protect the island's cultural heritage and a restoration program is already under way....
Source: NYT
February 20, 2012
Living plants have been generated from the fruit of a little arctic flower, the narrow-leafed campion, that died 32,000 years ago, a team of Russian scientists reports. The fruit was stored by an arctic ground squirrel in its burrow on the tundra of northeastern Siberia and lay permanently frozen until excavated by scientists a few years ago.This would be the oldest plant by far that has ever been grown from ancient tissue. The present record is held by a date palm grown from a seed some 2,000 years old that was recovered from the ancient fortress of Masada in Israel.Seeds and certain cells can last a long term under the right conditions, but many claims of extreme longevity have failed on closer examination, and biologists are likely to greet this claim too with reserve until it can be independently confirmed. Tales of wheat grown from seeds in the tombs of the pharaohs have long been discredited. Lupins were germinated from seeds in a 10,000-year-old lemming burrow found by a gold miner in the Yukon. But the seeds, when later dated by the radiocarbon method, turned out to be modern contaminants.
Source: BBC News
February 18, 2012
Facebook, YouTube and even texting will be the salvation of many of the world's endangered languages, scientists believe.Of the 7,000 or so languages spoken on Earth today, about half are expected to be extinct by the century's end.Globalisation is usually blamed, but some elements of the "modern world", especially digital technology, are pushing back against the tide.North American tribes use social media to re-engage their young, for example.Tuvan, an indigenous tongue spoken by nomadic peoples in Siberia and Mongolia, even has an iPhone app to teach the pronunciation of words to new students....
Source: WaPo
February 19, 2012
CARROLLTON, Ga. — In an unnoticed 1992 speech, Newt Gingrich in a single utterance took aim not only at a beloved conservative icon but also at a core tenet of the conservative movement: that government must be limited.Ronald Reagan’s “weakness,” Gingrich told the National Academy of Public Administration in Atlanta, was that “he didn’t think government mattered. . . . The Reagan failure was to grossly undervalue the centrality of government as the organizing mechanism for reinforcing societal behavior.”
Source: NYT
February 19, 2012
ATLANTA — Drive through any state in the Deep South and you will find a monument or a museum dedicated to civil rights.A visitor can peer into the motel room in Memphis where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was staying when he was shot or stand near the lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., where four young men began a sit-in that helped end segregation.Other institutions are less dramatic, like the Tubman African American Museum in Macon, Ga., where Jim Crow-era toilet fixtures are on display alongside folk art.But now, a second generation of bigger, bolder museums is about to emerge.Atlanta; Jackson, Miss.; and Charleston, S.C., all have projects in the works. Coupled with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which breaks ground in Washington this week, they represent nearly $750 million worth of plans....
