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: Secrecy News
February 1, 2012
A handful of historical intelligence satellite images were declassified last month to coincide with a new display of the GAMBIT and HEXAGON spy satellites at the National Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.The GAMBIT and HEXAGON satellites were formally declassified last September on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the National Reconnaissance Office. At that time, the NRO released voluminous documentation on the development of those satellites. But the associated imagery, which is held by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, was not released. Now a small number of satellite images have been made public.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
January 18, 2012
It’s a World War II campaign largely forgotten, a coastal reign of terror Joe Hoyt and a team of marine archaeologists are determined to bring into sharp focus 70 years later.During the first six months of 1942, German U-boats, often hunting in wolf packs, sank ship after ship just miles off the East Coast of the United States, concentrating their ambushes along North Carolina, where conditions were most favorable. From the beaches, civilians could see the explosions as the submarines sank more Allied tonnage in those months than the entire Japanese Navy would destroy in the Pacific during the entire course of the war.German submariners dubbed it the “American Shooting Season.” While estimates of the carnage vary according to where boundaries are drawn, one survey concluded that 154 ships were sunk and more than 1,100 lives lost off the North Carolina coast in that period....
Source: NY Daily News
February 1, 2012
OK, they aren't exactly knee-slappers, but 3,500 years ago, the six riddles found on an ancient tablet in Iraq could well have been quite the howlers — and may even contain the oldest "Yo Mama" joke known to man.The cuneiform chucklers, believed to be written by a Babylonian student circa 1,500 B.C., were carved on a damaged tablet, discovered in 1976 by an archaeologist, J.J. van Dijk. The tablet has since vanished, but van Dijk preserved what was written on it. Michael Streck and Nathan Wasserman studied the riddles and published their findings in the noted journal Iraq, published by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq.The riddles' subject matter is earthy - sex, beer, and, of course, humor at the expense of mom....
Source: NYT
January 31, 2012
The tip of a girl’s 40,000-year-old pinky finger found in a cold Siberian cave, paired with faster and cheaper genetic sequencing technology, is helping scientists draw a surprisingly complex new picture of human origins.The new view is fast supplanting the traditional idea that modern humans triumphantly marched out of Africa about 50,000 years ago, replacing all other types that had gone before.Instead, the genetic analysis shows, modern humans encountered and bred with at least two groups of ancient humans in relatively recent times: the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia, dying out roughly 30,000 years ago, and a mysterious group known as the Denisovans, who lived in Asia and most likely vanished around the same time....
Source: Reuters
January 31, 2012
(Reuters) - Germany this week returned an ancient pre-Islamic sculpture looted during Afghanistan's civil war, giving hope to Kabul's cultural mavens that the rest of its stolen treasures will also make their way home.Eight figures, one missing a torso and others without noses, make up the 30-cm high (12 inches) limestone antiquity from the second century AD, a reminder of Afghanistan's rich classical past as a confluence of cultures on the crossroads of Asia.Faces turned to their left, they are believed to be audience members watching Buddha on his throne in the ancient kingdom of Gandhara, which stretched across part of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Foreign Ministry said....
Source: Discovery News
January 30, 2012
In a recent debate Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said that he would like to beat the Chinese back to the moon. He has even been so bold as to propose setting up a manned base by 2020, driven by empowering private industry to take the initiative.It's ironic to hear moon travel still being debated 40 years after the last Apollo landing in 1972. Between then and now, NASA's small space shuttle fleet filled in for space travel, but astronauts could only venture as far a low earth orbit -- at an altitude much shorter than the distance the early pioneers covered in settling the West.If there were no Apollo crash program to beat the Soviets to the moon, would we have planned to go to the moon eventually? But this time with a commitment of staying? Or would we never go?...In the 1960s the X-15 experimental rocket planes were already flying to the edge of space. This would have evolved into a fleet of orbital planes and lifting bodies and the next logical step in aerospace history.
Source: Discovery News
January 27, 2012
NASA marked a trio of space tragedies with ceremonies at the Kennedy Space Center on Friday and at Arlington National Cemetery on Thursday, commemorating the astronauts who lost their lives in accidents.Forty-five years ago, Apollo 1 astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee climbed aboard their capsule for a routine pre-launch test. A fire broke out in the cabin, dooming the astronauts. The accident, traced to a design flaw, delayed America's foray to the moon for almost two years.Saturday marks the 26th anniversary of the Challenger disaster. Astronauts Dick Scobee, Michael Smith, Judy Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, Greg Jarvis and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe died following the breakup of the space shuttle 73 seconds after liftoff on the cold winter morning of Jan. 28, 1986....Tragedy struck again on Feb. 1, 2003, when the shuttle Columbia was destroyed 16 minutes before its scheduled touchdown in Florida following a 16-day research mission. The shuttle had been damaged by a piece of insulation that fell off the fuel tank during liftoff and damaged the ship's left wing....
Source: Yahoo News
January 31, 2012
A newly discovered letter from a freed former slave to his onetime master is creating a buzz. Letters of Note explains that in August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee wrote to his former slave Jourdan Anderson, requesting that Jourdan return to work on his farm.In the time since escaping from slavery, Anderson had become emancipated, moved to Ohio where he found paid work and was now supporting his family. The letter turned up in the August 22 edition of the New York Daily Tribune. Some excerpts:
Source: Yahoo News
January 30, 2012
George Washington wasn't only America's first president, he was also almost its first zombie. After Washington died from an illness in December 1799, his family nearly accepted an offer from a physician who believed he could bring America's first commander in chief back to life.The website io9 writes that physician William Thornton is best remembered as the first designer of the U.S. Capitol. But he also proposed reviving George Washington's deceased body using a combination of blankets, an air pump and lamb's blood....
Source: Guardian (UK)
January 31, 2012
Archaeologists are notoriously nervous of attributing ritual significance to anything (the old joke used to be that if you found an artefact and couldn't identify it, it had to have ritual significance), yet they still like to do so whenever possible. I used to work on a site in the mid-1980s – a hill fort in Gloucestershire – where items of potential religious note occasionally turned up (a horse skull buried at the entrance, for example) and this was always cause for some excitement, and also some gnashing of teeth at the prospect of other people who weren't archaeologists getting excited about it ("And now I suppose we'll have druids turning up").The Brodgar complex has, however, got everyone excited. It ticks all the boxes that make archaeologists, other academics, lay historians and pagans jump up and down. Its age is significant: it's around 800 years older than Stonehenge (although lately, having had to do some research into ancient Britain, I've been exercised by just how widely dates for sites vary, so perhaps some caution is called for). Pottery found at Stonehenge apparently originated in Orkney, or was modelled on pottery that did....
Source: BBC News
January 31, 2012
The Sheriff of Nottingham has said he is confident a £25m medieval village tourist attraction could still be built at the foot of Nottingham Castle.Plans were put forward as part of the Sheriff's Commission two years ago.The aim of the commission was to suggest how the city could make more of the legend of Robin Hood.Several investors registered an initial interest in the plans but everything went on hold when the country entered a recession, Councillor Leon Unczer said....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 1, 2012
The discovery, hailed as one of the most remarkable in recent times, was made during conservation work and is believed to reveal how the famous sitter would have looked at the time."This sensational find will transform our understanding of the world's most famous picture," said Art Newspaper which published the findings.The Prado painting was long thought to be one of dozens surviving replicas of the masterpiece made after Leonardo's death but it is now believed to have been painted by one of his key pupils working alongside the master.The Louvre original, displayed behind glass, is obscured by cracked darkened varnish, making the woman appear much older than her true age. Because of its fragility, cleaning and restoration is thought to be too risky....
Source: AP
January 31, 2012
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentina said it doesn't seek another war over the Falkland Islands, and accused Britain of militarizing their sovereignty dispute by announcing Tuesday that it is sending an advanced warship to the islands along with Prince William "in the uniform of a conquistador."The assignment of Prince William, a Royal Air Force helicopter pilot, for a six-week military mission in the Falklands in February and March has been a sore point for Argentina. It has sought to reclaim the South Atlantic archipelago that it calls the Malvinas Islands ever since Britain seized the islands some 180 years ago.
Source: Reuters
February 1, 2012
BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Steps away from Budapest's ornate Parliament building, hidden in a basement studio on a leafy street, art dealer Peter Pinter was holding the third of his hugely successful auctions, entitled 'Going once, going twice... gone for good.'What Pinter is offering - communist-era art, paintings, sculptures and posters - has gone beyond tourist kitsch and become popular with serious collectors, including locals. Price tags in the thousands of dollars are not uncommon."It's retro, it's fashionable," Pinter told Reuters before the auction. "Some people have an urge to do away with this part of their past. Others harbor strong nostalgia toward these objects... You can see people are very intrigued by them."...
Source: AP
January 31, 2012
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The U.S. Forest Service says it will re-authorize a permit for a 57-year-old statue of Jesus that had been facing eviction from a northwestern Montana ski resort.The agency faced a firestorm of criticism from religious groups, the state's congressman and residents after it decided last fall to boot the Jesus statue from its hillside perch in the trees....
Source: Huffington Post
January 31, 2012
LAKELAND, Fla. -- The Newt Gingrich campaign has a robocall out in Florida claiming that Mitt Romney once took kosher food away from Holocaust survivors.The allegation made in the call, obtained by anti-robocall activist Shaun Dakin, is undoubtedly targeted at Florida's large Jewish and elderly populations.The text of the call:As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney vetoed a bill paying for kosher food for our seniors in nursing homes. Holocaust survivors, who for the first time, were forced to eat non-kosher, because Romney thought $5 was too much to pay for our grandparents to eat kosher. Where is Mitt Romney's compassion for our seniors? Tuesday you can end Mitt Romney's hypocrisy on religious freedom, with a vote for Newt Gingrich. Paid for by Newt 2012....
Source: Florida Independent Alligator
January 31, 2012
The president of the Gainesville Tea Party said she "would probably disagree" with the Tennessee Tea Party's push to remove slavery from textbook references that make the Founding Fathers look bad."If they're asking for an accurate rendition of what happened, then yes, I'll support what they have to do, but I do not support a whitewash," said Laurie Newsom, president of the Gainesville Tea Party.According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the Tennessee Tea Party wants to remove material from textbooks so "no portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers."Steven Noll, a UF American history professor, said he believes calling for the removal of slavery from textbooks is disparaging, dismissing and disrespectful....
Source: CBS News
January 31, 2012
It's been nearly a half-century since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.But new information from that day in Dallas has just been released -- audiotape of conversations between Air Force One and Washington.For the first time, the complete audio record of the flight back from Dallas to Washington is available to the public online, from the National Archives, for free.It helps to fill in the record of that day of sorrow, confusion and fear."Gonna put Mrs. Rose Kennedy on the line now," one voice can be heard saying....
Source: ESPN
January 31, 2012
The persuasive power of President Lyndon B. Johnson is the stuff of Washington legend. Selling ice to Eskimos is nothing. As the Senate majority leader and again as president, LBJ sold civil rights legislation to a Senate controlled by Southern segregationists.But 40 years ago, in the winter of Johnson's life, when he had returned to his beloved Texas, he couldn't sell the Longhorns to one of the top recruits in the state. The running back went to Texas' archrival and fulfilled the potential that had prompted Longhorns coach Darrell K. Royal to enlist LBJ in the first place.Recorded in the files of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin is the story of how the recruit, Joe Washington of Port Arthur, and his family refused an invitation from Johnson to go to the famed LBJ Ranch and meet the former president. Washington, a 5-foot-9 scatback, went to Oklahoma, where he became an All-American and, as a junior, finished third in the 1974 Heisman Trophy vote. After 10 years in the NFL, he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame....
Source: CS Monitor
January 30, 2012
Sequences of explosive volcanic eruptions in the tropics were the likely trigger for the Little Ice Age, according to a new study.The research attempts to answer two longstanding questions swirling around the roughly 400-year span of slightly cooler-than normal temperatures: Exactly when did it begin? And what was its initial trigger?Previous estimates for the onset of the Little Ice Age range from as early as the late 1200s to as late as the 1500s, the research team notes. Globally, temperatures averaged a modest 0.6 degrees Celsius, or about 1 degree Fahrenheit cooler than usual.
