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Romney: Business background ought to be required to be president

hnn — Wed, 30 May 2012 20:03:59 +0000

At a campaign rally in Las Vegas yesterday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney touted the idea of making anyone who does not have a business background as ineligible for the White House as if they had been born in Kenya....

Romney’s amendment would come as quite a shock to the last person to earn the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) graduated from the Naval Academy in 1958 and served more than two decades in the United States Navy, including more than five years as an prisoner of war. After retiring from the Navy at the rank of captain, McCain turned to politics and was elected to the House in 1983 and to the Senate in 1987. Because McCain devoted his life to serving his country, rather than to working in business, the Romney amendment would disqualify him from the White House.

Source:

ThinkProgress

Source URL:

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/05/30/492036/the-romney-amendment-eisenhower-roosevelt-and-mccain-are-too-unqualified-to-be-president/?mobile=nc

Date:

5-30-12

No longer boxed in, CARE packages evolve into online aid

hnn — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:12:06 +0000

The CARE package, a national icon after World War II, has come out of retirement -- retooled for the 21st century.

The cardboard boxes stuffed with lard, egg powder, canned meat and other food essentials were a critical part of U.S. humanitarian aid to war-ravaged Europeans in the 1940s. Similar boxes were part of the war against hunger in Korea, Vietnam and other nations. But in 1967, the official CARE packages ended.

Now the CARE package has been resurrected to mark its 65th anniversary. This time, however, it's a virtual package that funds modern tools to fight global poverty, such as education and health care....

Source:

Star Tribune

Source URL:

http://www.startribune.com/local/155180765.html

Date:

5-29-12

Flute’s Revised Age Dates the Sound of Music Earlier

hnn — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:06:34 +0000

In hillside caves of southwestern Germany, archaeologists in recent years have uncovered the beginnings of music and art by early modern humans migrating into Europe from Africa. New dating evidence shows that these oldest known musical instruments in the world, flutes made of bird bone and mammoth ivory, are even older than first thought.

Scientists led by Thomas Higham of the University of Oxford in England reported last week that improved radiocarbon tests determined that animal bones found with the flutes were 42,000 to 43,000 years old. This is close to the time when the first anatomically modern humans were spreading into Central Europe, presumably along the Danube River valley....

Source:

NYT

Source URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/science/oldest-musical-instruments-are-even-older-than-first-thought.html?_r=3

Date:

5-29-12

War criminal dies after 60 years of eluding extradition

hnn — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:33:36 +0000

Germany: A Nazi war criminal who escaped from a Dutch jail and lived as a fugitive in Germany for 60 years has died at the age of 90, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre has said.

Klaas Carel Faber, number two on the centre’s list of most wanted Nazi criminals, was sentenced to death in 1947 in the Netherlands for the killings of at least 11 people at a staging post for Dutch Jews being taken to concentration camps....

Source:

Irish Times

Source URL:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2012/0529/1224316866299.html

Date:

5-29-12

Obama 'misspoke' over Nazi death camp says WHouse

hnn — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:32:59 +0000

The White House tried to head off a diplomatic spat with Poland after President Barack Obama mistakenly called a Nazi facility used to process Jews for execution as a "Polish death camp."

The linguistic faux pas overshadowed Obama's posthumous award of America's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to Jan Karski, a former Polish underground officer who provided early eyewitness accounts of the Nazi purge against Jews.

"Before one trip across enemy lines, resistance fighters told him that Jews were being murdered on a massive scale, and smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself," Obama said....

Source:

AFP

Source URL:

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-misspoke-over-nazi-death-camp-says-whouse-061459268.html

Date:

5-30-12

Jamaica seeks heritage status for sunken city

hnn — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:31:48 +0000

Once known as the wickedest city in the world when it was the playground of British buccaneers and explorers in the 17th century, little now remains of Port Royal....

However, a campaign supported by the Jamaican government was launched this week to secure Unesco world heritage status for the sunken city to put it firmly back on the map.

A seven-mile spit of golden sand arcs around Kingston bay protecting the capital. At the far end of the spit lies the small fishing village of Port Royal, which was once a bustling city and key British outpost in the 1600s.

The port, which boasted a population of 7,000 and was comparable to Boston during the same period, was a playground for buccaneers like Henry Morgan, who docked in search of rum, women and boat repairs....

Source:

Telegraph (UK)

Source URL:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/jamaica/9299361/Jamaica-seeks-heritage-status-for-sunken-Port-Royal.html

Date:

5-30-12

65 years on, WWII soldier's love note on a tree is revealed to wife he carved it for

hnn — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:22:20 +0000

They married in secret a few days before he went to war.

Frank Fearing had no idea if he would ever see young Helen again, but he made her a solemn promise. Everywhere the American GI went with his unit, he would carve their names into a tree.

The first was on Salisbury Plain, where he was stationed before joining the push towards Berlin in the wake of the D-Day invasion. The rest were spread across France and Germany, carved whenever time allowed.

Helen Fearing never knew if it was just a romantic bluff, or if he had simply made up the story to impress her.

But they clearly didn’t reckon on the determination of British student Chantel Summerfield and her remarkable archaeological quest....

Source:

Daily Mail (UK)

Source URL:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2151578/American-WWI-veterans-wife-gets-love-message-carved-British-tree-1945-archaeology-student-traces-graffiti-back.html

Date:

5-29-12

Mystery of missing U.S. World War 2 pilot downed over South Pacific island jungle solved after 31 years

hnn — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:20:50 +0000

The mystery of how a U.S. World War 2 fighter pilot met his grisly end after crashing in a South Pacific island jungle has been revealed - after 31 years of painstaking work.

Lt Moszek Murray Zanger was initially believed to have been shot and killed immediately after being captured by the Japanese following his 4,000ft parachuting out of his Corsair.

He had collided midair with his wingman while out on patrol over Rabaul, Papua New Guinea.

But a dogged forensic investigation has discovered he was in fact beaten, tried to flee in an inflatable dinghy and was captured by a Japanese Navy patrol boat....

Source:

Daily Mail (UK)

Source URL:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2151581/Mystery-missing-U-S-World-War-2-pilot-downed-South-Pacific-island-jungle-solved-31-years.html

Date:

5-30-12

Greek experts find Roman wrecks nearly a mile deep

hnn — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:18:08 +0000

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Two Roman-era shipwrecks have been found in deep water off a western Greek island, challenging the conventional theory that ancient shipmasters stuck to coastal routes rather than risking the open sea, an official said Tuesday.

Greece's culture ministry said the two third-century wrecks were discovered earlier this month during a survey of an area where a Greek-Italian gas pipeline is to be sunk. They lay between 1.2 and 1.4 kilometers (0.7-0.9 miles) deep in the sea between Corfu and Italy.

That would place them among the deepest known ancient wrecks in the Mediterranean, apart from remains found in 1999 of an older vessel some 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) deep off Cyprus....

Source:

Yahoo News

Source URL:

http://news.yahoo.com/greek-experts-roman-wrecks-nearly-mile-deep-210340288.html

Date:

5-30-12

Mountains yield hundreds of WWII-era planes

hnn — Tue, 29 May 2012 21:48:24 +0000

Nothing James Browne learned in flight school prepared him for “The Hump,” a perilous, Himalayan no-man’s land that became a graveyard for hundreds of fearless WWII-era fliers who battled Japanese fighters, impossible weather and a supply route from hell.

Somewhere high above the Himalayas, the aircraft’s wings iced over. The best guess is that it stalled out and dropped like a rock, landing in the rugged mountain jungle, its location a mystery that would endure for more than 70 years. Browne, who grew up in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka, Capt. John Dean, the pilot and a veteran of the legendary Flying Tigers, and a Chinese crewman were listed as missing in action.

The plane was one of hundreds to go down in the rugged and remote mountain region fliers dubbed “The Hump” by American fliers who dodged Japanese fighter planes, steering their unarmed and rickety aircraft for 20-hour stretches with unreliable instruments in winds that could reach 200 mph. Experts believe more than 700 planes crashed trying to surmount the Hump, making the Himalayan region an inaccessible tomb of legendary fliers and rusted fuselages....

Source:

Fox News

Source URL:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/05/24/rugged-mountains-yield-hundreds-wwii-era-plane-crashes-lost-hump-airmen/?test=latestnews

Date:

5-24-12

Iran claims book will cause Christianity to "collapse"

hnn — Tue, 29 May 2012 21:46:13 +0000

A leather-bound religious text, thought to date from the fifth century but discovered only 12 years ago, will cause the collapse of Christianity worldwide, claims Iran.

The book, written on animal hide, apparently states that Jesus was never crucified and that he himself predicted the coming of the Prophet Muhammad, according to the the Iranian press.

Written in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, the gospel even predicts the coming of the last Islamic messiah, the report adds....

Source:

Daily Mail (UK)

Source URL:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2149227/Gospel-Barnabas-cause-Christianitys-collapse-Iran-claims.html

Date:

5-24-12

Jesus 'died on Friday, April 3, 33AD'

hnn — Tue, 29 May 2012 21:44:23 +0000

Jesus died on Friday, April 3, 33AD, according to an investigation which matches his death to an earthquake.

The investigation, from the International Geology Review, looked at earthquake activity around the Dead Sea, which is around 13 miles from Jerusalem.

The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 27, says that as Jesus lay dying on the cross, an earthquake shook the area, scattering graves and making the sky go dark....

Source:

Daily Mail (UK)

Source URL:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2149750/Jesus-died-Friday-April-3-33AD-claim-researchers-tie-earthquake-data-gospels-date.html

Date:

5-25-12

Tapes hold N. Ireland murder secrets

hnn — Tue, 29 May 2012 21:42:46 +0000

Belfast, Northern Ireland (CNN) -- Audio recordings locked inside a college library in the United States might help solve a decades-old murder mystery, but the release of those tapes could damage the fragile peace in Northern Ireland.

In December 1972, the widow Jean McConville was taken from her home in Belfast and her 10 children.

"They came about tea time and they dragged her out of the bathroom and dragged her out," remembers McConville's daughter, Helen McKendry, who was then a teenager....

Source:

CNN.com

Source URL:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/25/world/europe/wus-n-ireland-secrets/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Date:

5-25-12

Washington religion letter goes public

hnn — Tue, 29 May 2012 21:41:08 +0000

Washington (CNN) – After sitting in storage for nearly a decade, George Washington’s signature statement on religious liberty will go on display this summer in the city where freedom of religion was enshrined in the Constitution: Philadelphia.

America’s first president wrote the letter to a Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790, assuring American Jews that their freedom of religion would be protected. The document will go on display this summer for the first time since 2002 in an exhibition at Philadelphia’s National Museum of American Jewish History.

For nine years, the letter has been kept out of public view, in storage at a sterile Maryland office park a few hundred feet from FedEx Field, where the Washington Redskins play. CNN took an inside look at the document in September.

Source:

CNN

Source URL:

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/23/after-decade-in-storage-washington-letter-on-religious-freedom-will-go-public/

Date:

5-23-12

Melungeon DNA Study Reveals Ancestry

hnn — Tue, 29 May 2012 21:37:46 +0000

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- For years, varied and sometimes wild claims have been made about the origins of a group of dark-skinned Appalachian residents once known derisively as the Melungeons. Some speculated they were descended from Portuguese explorers, or perhaps from Turkish slaves or Gypsies.

Now a new DNA study in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy attempts to separate truth from oral tradition and wishful thinking. The study found the truth to be somewhat less exotic: Genetic evidence shows that the families historically called Melungeons are the offspring of sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin.

And that report, which was published in April in the peer-reviewed journal, doesn't sit comfortably with some people who claim Melungeon ancestry.

"There were a whole lot of people upset by this study," lead researcher Roberta Estes said. "They just knew they were Portuguese, or Native American."...

Source:

Source URL:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/24/melungeon-dna-study-origin_n_1544489.html

Date:

5-24-12

Forensic scientist looks into death of Richard I

hnn — Tue, 29 May 2012 21:28:58 +0000

A renowned French forensic scientist has launched an investigation into the death of Richard the Lionheart, examining a tiny sample of the 12th century monarch's heart to try to understand what germ killed him.

Richard I died from an infection at the age of 42 after being poorly treated for a crossbow wound during a siege of a French castle.

Philippe Charlier, who previously helped dispel claims that Napoleon was poisoned to death by his British captors, has been given exclusive access to a tiny sample of the heart of the crusading English king

King Richard, famed for his bravery, brutality and bad temper, ruled England from 1189 to his death in 1199.

Source:

Telegraph (UK)

Source URL:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9288283/French-forensic-scientist-investigates-death-of-Richard-the-Lionheart.html

Date:

5-24-12

Huge ancient civilization’s collapse explained

hnn — Tue, 29 May 2012 18:47:02 +0000

The mysterious fall of the largest of the world's earliest urban civilizations nearly 4,000 years ago in what is now India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh now appears to have a key culprit — ancient climate change, researchers say.

Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia may be the best known of the first great urban cultures, but the largest was the Indus or Harappan civilization. This culture once extended over more than 386,000 square miles (1 million square kilometers) across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges, and at its peak may have accounted for 10 percent of the world population. The civilization developed about 5,200 years ago, and slowly disintegrated between 3,900 and 3,000 years ago — populations largely abandoned cities, migrating toward the east.

Source:

LiveScience

Source URL:

http://news.yahoo.com/huge-ancient-civilization-collapse-explained-123449804.html

Date:

5-29-12

Birthplace of Memorial Day?

hnn — Sun, 27 May 2012 18:17:24 +0000

The custom of strewing flowers on the graves of fallen soldiers has innumerable founders, going back perhaps beyond the horizon of recorded history, perhaps as far as war itself. But there is the ancient practice and there is Memorial Day, the specific holiday, arising from an order for the annual decoration of graves that was delivered in 1868 by Maj. Gen. John A. Logan, the commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, a group made up of Union veterans of the Civil War.

According to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, roughly two dozen places claim to be the primary source of the holiday, an assertion found on plaques, on Web sites and in the dogged avowals of local historians across the country.

Yet each town seems to have different criteria: whether its ceremony was in fact the earliest to honor Civil War dead, or the first one that General Logan heard about, or the first one that conceived of a national, recurring day.

Source:

NYT

Source URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/us/many-claim-to-be-memorial-day-birthplace.html?_r=1

Date:

5-26-12

Shift in traditional university publishing

hnn — Sat, 26 May 2012 11:42:05 +0000

The University of Missouri will soon be without a university press. The university announced last week that it would phase out its press, beginning in July. The news was made public in a larger statement about the university's shifting strategic priorities.

Such announcements about other university presses have often spurred protests and attempts to save them, but so far at least, the news about the Missouri press has been greeted quietly.

One close observer of scholarly publishing, Peter Brantley of the Internet Archive, noted in a blog post for Publishers Weekly that "the impact of such closures is mediated by how the academic community handles the larger transformations in publishing." He wrote that while closing university presses might lead to "a diminution of the number of outlets for scholarly work, it could just as easily be a more positive bellwether for a healthy shift in emphasis from one model of scholarly publishing to another."...

Source:

Chronicle of Higher Ed

Source URL:

http://chronicle.com/article/Planned-Shutdown-of-U-of/132026/

Date:

5-25-12

Soviet WWII sub found at Baltic Sea bottom

hnn — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:44:27 +0000

A World War II-era Soviet submarine has been found on the bottom of the Tallinn Bay by an Estonian hydrographical ship.

“The object was marked on the sea maps as an unidentified obstacle,” said the press service of the Water Transport Department. “The expedition discovered it was actually a submarine.”

The scientists took beautiful photos of the sub that helped identify it as a Soviet Malyutka type submarine, said Estonian underwater archaeologist Vello Mäss....

Source:

Russia Today

Source URL:

http://www.rt.com/news/prime-time/wwii-sub-baltic-sea-discovery-152/

Date:

5-24-12

Romney defies Mormon history in Ark.

hnn — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:42:20 +0000

CARROLLTON, Ark. — On the wildflower-studded slopes of the Ozarks, where memories run long and family ties run thick, a little-known and long-ago chapter of history still simmers.

On Sept. 11, 1857, a wagon train from this part of Arkansas met with a gruesome fate in Utah, where most of the travelers were slaughtered by a Mormon militia in an episode known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Hundreds of the victims’ descendants still populate these hills and commemorate the killings, which they have come to call “the first 9/11.”

Many of the locals grew up hearing denunciations of Mormonism from the pulpit on Sundays, and tales of the massacre from older relatives who considered Mormons “evil.”...

There aren’t many places in America more likely to be suspicious of Mormonism — and potentially more problematic for Mitt Romney, who is seeking to become the country’s first Mormon president. Not only do many here retain a personal antipathy toward the religion and its followers, but they also tend to be Christian evangelicals, many of whom view Mormonism as a cult....

Source:

WaPo

Source URL:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romneys-mormon-faith-tangles-with-a-quirk-of-arkansas-history/2012/05/20/gIQAKHVFeU_story.html

Date:

5-20-12

What History Can Explain About Greek Crisis

hnn — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:37:47 +0000

FLORENCE -- The decision to suspend Greece from the common currency became inevitable when it emerged that Athens had fiddled with the accounts yet again amid chronic economic weakness, forfeiting what credibility in the international arena it still had left.

That was in 1908.

After diluting the gold content in its coins, Greece left the Latin Monetary Union, whose founding members included France, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland. More than a century later, history may repeat itself, albeit in vastly different circumstances.

From the dual currency economy of 14th-century Florence to the monetary union of Austria-Hungary and Argentina's abandoned dollar peg, the past is littered with examples of countries' weighing the costs and benefits of different monetary regimes....

Source:

NYT

Source URL:

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/world/what-history-can-explain-about-greek-crisis-637048/

Date:

5-22-12

Golden Gate Bridge Turns 75

hnn — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:33:14 +0000

Source:

PBS Newshour

Source URL:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june12/goldengate_05-23.html

Date:

5-23-12

Memories of war captured on video

hnn — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:30:11 +0000

NATICK — Frank Rines Jr. sat in a studio at the Morse Institute Library. Lights glared and the camera rolled. Questions flowed, and soon Rines, better known by his buddies as Bud, was in a time machine, transported across oceans and decades.

Wearing a sweater and jacket, Rines, 92, a chief radio officer in the US Merchant Marine during World War II, looked quite comfortable, considering the task.

He was being asked, as one of the recent contributors to the Natick Veterans Oral History Project, to recall the details of his service over some 22 voyages, including about 15 “lucky crossings’’ of the Atlantic Ocean when it was infested with German U-boats....

Source:

Boston Globe

Source URL:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012/05/24/natick_veterans_oral_history_project_records_stories_of_bravery_sacrifice/

Date:

5-24-12

Mugabe Attributes Zanu-PF Violence to History

hnn — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:29:04 +0000

Robert Mugabe has reportedly blamed Zimbabwe's current problems on historical influences, in a meeting Wednesday with the visiting United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay.

The UN Human Rights chief met with Mugabe at his state house offices and told reporters the ZANU PF leader had admitted the country currently faces problems. But he blamed historical influences for the ongoing political and economic crisis .

Pillay was invited by government for a week-long mission to assess the human rights situation in the country. She had already met with civil society groups and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvngirai on Tuesday....

Source:

allAfrica

Source URL:

http://allafrica.com/stories/201205240067.html

Date:

5-23-12

Roster From Ben Franklin’s Fire Department Found

hnn — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:38:58 +0000

Politician, printer, inventor, diplomat, author, scientist—Benjamin Franklin will forever be remembered as a man of many talents. But not everyone knows the founding father was also a volunteer firefighter who at age 30 established Philadelphia’s first fire department. Tom Lingenfelter, president of the Heritage Collectors’ Society in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, recently announced his discovery of a relic from this fascinating phase of Franklin’s career: a document listing his name and those of the Union Fire Company’s other members, thought to date to 1736.

Born in Boston in 1706, Franklin left home and moved to Philadelphia at age 17. His adoptive hometown still bears numerous traces of his extraordinary legacy, from the University of Pennsylvania to America’s first lending library, the Library Company of Philadelphia. One of the city’s most central and successful public figures from a very young age, Franklin cofounded the Union Fire Company, an all-volunteer brigade, in 1736....

Source:

History.com

Source URL:

http://www.history.com/news/2012/05/23/roster-from-ben-franklins-fire-department-found/

Date:

5-23-12

Harvard alumni association apologizes for including Unabomber's remarks in class directory

hnn — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:37:46 +0000

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Harvard University’s alumni association says it regrets including the Unabomber’s references to his convictions in a directory for his 50th class reunion this week.

Ted Kaczynski graduated in 1962 and is in prison for killing three people and injuring 23 others during a nationwide bombing spree between 1978 and 1995. He lists his occupation as “prisoner” and his awards as “eight life sentences.”...

Source:

New Haven Register

Source URL:

http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2012/05/23/news/doc4fbd8ea08ee2e642046508.txt

Date:

5-23-12

Suppressed Huston WWII film restored

hnn — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:33:46 +0000

More than 65 years after it was suppressed by the Army, a powerful and controversial John Huston documentary about soldiers suffering from the psychological wounds of war has been restored by the National Archives and debuts Thursday on the Web.

“Let There Be Light” portrays GIs just back from the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific — trembling, stuttering, hollow-eyed and crying. Using a noir style, Huston filmed dozens of soldiers in unscripted scenes from their arrival at an Army psychiatric hospital on Long Island through weeks of often successful treatment, culminating in their release to go home.

The restoration “reveals the film’s full force,” said Scott Simmon, a film historian and English department chairman at the University of California, Davis....

Source:

WaPo

Source URL:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/john-huston-film-about-ww-ii-soldiers-that-army-suppressed-is-restored/2012/05/23/gJQA7LS3lU_story.html?hpid=z4

Date:

5-23-12

Gravesites of veterans in shocking disrepair

hnn — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:31:27 +0000

The final resting places for many of the men and women who fought America’s wars have fallen into shocking disrepair, with neglect, theft and vandalism prompting veterans groups to question the nation's commitment to honoring its dead soldiers.

Advocates say smaller federal, state, county and private cemeteries that contain the graves of service members are often poorly kept, marked by crumbling headstones, overgrown with weeds and littered with debris. Perhaps even worse, many veterans' gravesites have been targets of vandalism and theft.

“It’s a pattern that you’re seeing across the country right now," said Tim Tetz, national legislative director for the American Legion. "You have cemeteries being expanded or added to with less or the same number of people caring for the grounds.”...

Source:

Fox News

Source URL:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/05/24/around-nation-gravesites-veterans-in-shocking-disrepair/

Date:

5-24-12

Twinkle Twinkle makes list!

hnn — Thu, 24 May 2012 03:43:42 +0000

Every year, the Library of Congress designates 25 sound recordings "cultural and historic treasures" and it preserves the best available copy for future generations. This year's choices, announced Wednesday, include an 1888 hand-cranked recording of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"; Prince's "Purple rain," "A Charlie Brown Christmas"; and one that caught our ears….

Edward R. Murrow was the narrator for "I Can Hear It Now," a Columbia Records recording that was selected by the Library of Congress as a cultural and historical treasure, announced May 23, 2012.

Source:

CBS News

Source URL:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57440432/library-of-congress-honors-columbia-recording/?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.1

Date:

5-23-12

In New Jersey, Memorial for ‘Comfort Women’ Deepens Old Animosity

hnn — Wed, 23 May 2012 12:11:45 +0000

Two delegations of Japanese officials visited Palisades Park, N.J., this month with a request that took local administrators by surprise: The Japanese wanted a small monument removed from a public park.

The monument, a brass plaque on a block of stone, was dedicated in 2010 to the memory of so-called comfort women, tens of thousands of women and girls, many Korean, who were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese soldiers during World War II.

But the Japanese lobbying to remove the monument seems to have backfired — and deepened animosity between Japan and South Korea over the issue of comfort women, a longstanding irritant in their relations....

Source:

NYT

Source URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/nyregion/monument-in-palisades-park-nj-irritates-japanese-officials.html?_r=2

Date:

5-18-12

Auction claims it's selling vial with Reagan blood

hnn — Tue, 22 May 2012 21:52:47 +0000

LONDON (AP) — A Channel Islands auction house says it's selling a vial that allegedly contains blood residue from Ronald Reagan — a move denounced Tuesday by the late U.S. president's family and his foundation.

The vial being auctioned online was used by the laboratory that tested Reagan's blood when he was hospitalized after a 1981 assassination attempt in Washington, the PFCAuctions house said.

Reagan's son Michael condemned the auction but said he was confident it was not his father's blood....

Source:

Source URL:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5inHit7oUOJdlXoiTrak5aL1NP3lg?docId=2d0ba67ad82a43c593c0761073f79ebd

Date:

5-22-12

Worcestershire woman campaigns to restore war memorials

hnn — Tue, 22 May 2012 21:11:13 +0000

A Worcestershire woman is campaigning for the restoration of eight memorials throughout the county.

Amateur historian Sandra Taylor has spent the past 13 years researching more than 10,000 names on local war memorials, many of which are decaying.

Ms Taylor is part of a group that is trying to fund restoration work in time for the centenary of the outbreak of World War I in two years time....

Source:

BBC News

Source URL:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-18160728

Date:

5-22-12

NMHM reopening on 150th anniversary

hnn — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:25:41 +0000

The smashed bullet that killed Lt. Henry H. Waite of the 6th Maine regiment is there. So is the one that claimed Pvt. James Bainham of the 125th New York. And the one that killed Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States.

Scores of deformed slugs pulled from the flesh of the Civil War’s victims sit like grimy jewels in these glass cases, not far from trays of splintered bones and punctured skulls damaged in the conflict.

There’s more than war in the Defense Department’s refreshed and relocated National Museum of Health and Medicine, which will celebrate its grand reopening in Silver Spring on Monday.

The arthritic skeleton of Peter Cluckey sits in its wooden chair, as it has for decades, a macabre but longtime feature of the 150-year-old museum of medical oddities and scientific history....

Source:

WaPo

Source URL:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/skulls-bones-and-bullets-in-refurbished-military-medical-museum-opening-monday/2012/05/20/gIQAwT10dU_story.html

Date:

5-20-12

Cultural Treasures Crushed In Italy Quake

hnn — Tue, 22 May 2012 14:20:13 +0000

A powerful quake hit northern Italy on Sunday, killing seven people, injuring dozens, and leaving at least 5,000 homeless.

The magnitude 6.0 quake to hit the country since 2009, when a tremor in the Abruzzo region killed nearly 300 people, the magnitude-6.0 earthquake was followed by more than 100 aftershocks in 24 hours.

The quake struck at around 4 a.m. local time in the flatlands of the Emilia Romagna region, hitting an area between the historic cities of Bologna, Modena and Ferrara, a Unesco World Heritage site....

Source:

Discovery News

Source URL:

http://news.discovery.com/history/cultural-damage-italy-quake-120521.html

Date:

5-21-12

NASA's Bold 'Plan X' Changed Spaceflight History

hnn — Tue, 22 May 2012 14:14:08 +0000

On May 21, 1965, NASA released the Gemini 4 press kit. It opened with the standard mission description, in this case for a four-day orbital flight that would send commander Jim McDivitt and pilot Ed White around the Earth 62 times to evaluate "the effects of extended spaceflight on crew performance and physical condition."

Then there was an intriguing page that hinted at something bigger: "No decision has been made whether in the Gemini 4 mission the crew will engage in extravehicular activity... A decision to undertake the extravehicular test can be made as late as the day before the launch." The possibility of an EVA on Gemini 4 came as a surprise not only the American people that day, but to many within NASA as well.

EVAs, colloquially known as spacewalks, were one of the three main program goals for NASA's Gemini program designed to support the Apollo program. If NASA was going to send men all the way to the moon, there was no point in having them sit inside and look out the window. They were going outside....

Source:

Discovery News

Source URL:

http://news.discovery.com/space/nasas-bold-plan-x-120521.html

Date:

5-21-12

'Cursing stone' found on Isle of Canna

hnn — Tue, 22 May 2012 14:12:41 +0000

A stone discovered by chance on the Isle of Canna is Scotland's first known example of a bullaun "cursing stone", experts have revealed.

Dating from about 800 AD, the stones are associated with early Christian crosses - of which there is one on the isle.

It was found in an old graveyard by a National Trust for Scotland (NTS) farm manager.

The stone is about 25cm in diameter and engraved with an early Christian cross....

Source:

BBC News

Source URL:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-18130259

Date:

5-19-12

1812 bicentennial sites, events all over US

hnn — Tue, 22 May 2012 14:07:04 +0000

Pity the War of 1812. Its bicentennial is at hand and events are planned for all over North America, from Canada and the Great Lakes to the Mid-Atlantic and the South. But good luck finding someone who can explain in 10 words or less what the war was about.

Some historians see the war as a last gasp by England to control its former colonies, and it's sometimes called the Second War of Independence. At the time, Americans viewed the war "as an opportunity for us to throw off Britain once and for all," said Troy Bickham, author of a new book out in June called "The Weight of Vengeance: The United States, the British Empire and the War of 1812."

But in Canada, the War of 1812 is seen as an attempted land grab by the U.S. The U.S. invaded Canada and at one point controlled Toronto, but the British, seeking control of the Great Lakes, won Detroit and other important ports....

Source:

Source URL:

http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2012/05/21/war-1812-bicentennial-sites-events-all-over-us/?intcmp=features

Date:

5-21-12

Queen's English: changes through the years

hnn — Tue, 22 May 2012 14:05:39 +0000

The notion of “Queen’s English” is usually applied to our pronunciation. Taking the term at its most literal, our monarch’s own sounds are enlightening when it comes to language change during her reign. Phoneticians have noted subtle but distinct changes in Her Majesty’s voice over the past 60 years, amounting to a more democratic style of pronunciation. Evidence from a detailed acoustic analysis of royal Christmas broadcasts suggests that Estuary English, a term coined in the Eighties to describe the apparent spread of London’s sound patterns to counties adjoining the river, might well have had an influence on Her Majesty’s vowels.

If in 1952 the royal complaint may have been “I’ve lorst thet bleck het”, then today those o’s and a’s would undoubtedly be more rounded. In the same way, “orf” was left behind and “off” ushered in, “veddy” became “very”, and a y sound no longer followed the s in such words as super. Such conservative sounds, once the norm, are almost never heard these days, except in caricatures of formal old-fashioned speech. It is the Queen’s English that even the Queen no longer speaks....

Source:

Telegraph (UK)

Source URL:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/the_queens_diamond_jubilee/9280753/The-Queens-English-changes-through-the-years.html

Date:

5-21-12

First Americans: New theory

hnn — Sun, 20 May 2012 20:53:51 +0000

WHEN and how did the first people arrive in the Americas?

For many decades, archaeologists have agreed on an explanation known as the Clovis model. The theory holds that about 13,500 years ago, bands of big-game hunters in Asia followed their prey across an exposed ribbon of land linking Siberia and Alaska and found themselves on a vast, unexplored continent. The route back was later blocked by rising sea levels that swamped the land bridge. Those pioneers were the first Americans....

In the past five years, however, a number of discoveries have posed major challenges to the Clovis model. Taken together, they are turning our understanding of American prehistory on its head.

Source:

NYT

Source URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/opinion/sunday/who-arrived-in-the-americas-first.html

Date:

5-19-12

Bronze-Age 'Facebook' Stone Conveyed 'Likes'

hnn — Sun, 20 May 2012 15:54:19 +0000

A Bronze Age version of Facebook has emerged from granite rocks in Russia and northern Sweden, revealing a thousands-of-years-old timeline filled with an archaic version of the Facebook "like."

Using computer modeling, Mark Sapwell, a Ph.D. archaeology student at Cambridge University, analyzed some 3,500 rock art images from Nämforsen in Northern Sweden and Zalavruga in Western Russia.

"Although this rock art has been documented from the early 1900s, the modeling has allowed a unique look at the interesting way these images have been arranged and accumulated over time," Sapwell told Discovery News....

Source:

Discovery News

Source URL:

http://news.discovery.com/history/bronze-age-facebook-120518.html

Date:

5-18-12

Romney praises Clinton and Obama praises Reagan

hnn — Sun, 20 May 2012 15:53:35 +0000

WASHINGTON — It says something about American politics that it has come to this: For the record, Bill Clinton does not actually support Mitt Romney for president no matter how many times Mr. Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, cites him in his speeches.

And for that matter, just for clarity, Ronald Reagan certainly would not be supporting President Obama, either.

Source:

NYT

Source URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/us/politics/on-stump-romney-is-fond-of-bill-clinton-and-obama-praises-reagan.html

Date:

5-18-12

Lockerbie bomber dies at 60

hnn — Sun, 20 May 2012 14:06:34 +0000

Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the 1988 bombing of an American jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, has died in Libya, family members told news agencies on Sunday, nearly three years after Scotland released him on humanitarian grounds, citing evidence that he was near death with metastatic prostate cancer. He was 60. .

The death of Mr. Megrahi, who always insisted he was innocent, foreclosed a fuller accounting of his role, and perhaps that of the Libyan government under Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, in the midair explosion of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people, including 189 Americans.

Source:

NYT

Source URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/world/africa/abdel-basset-ali-al-megrahi-lockerbie-bomber-dies-at-60.html?_r=1&hp

Date:

5-20-12

New written Scots language found

hnn — Fri, 18 May 2012 20:54:30 +0000

The ancestors of modern Scottish people left behind mysterious, carved stones that new research has just determined contain the written language of the Picts, an Iron Age society that existed in Scotland from 300 to 843.

The highly stylized rock engravings, found on what are known as the Pictish Stones, had once been thought to be rock art or tied to heraldry. The new study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, instead concludes that the engravings represent the long lost language of the Picts, a confederation of Celtic tribes that lived in modern-day eastern and northern Scotland.

"We know that the Picts had a spoken language to complement the writing of the symbols, as Bede (a monk and historian who died in 735) writes that there are four languages in Britain in this time: British, Pictish, Scottish and English," lead author Rob Lee told Discovery News....

Source:

Discovery News

Source URL:

http://news.discovery.com/history/ancient-scotland-written-language.html

Date:

3-31-12

History's first prank phone call was way back in ... 1884?

hnn — Fri, 18 May 2012 15:40:16 +0000

Unless it turns out that Alexander Graham Bell didn't really want to see Watson - that he was just goofing on the guy - then the first documented prank phone call would appear to have occurred about eight years after that famous 1876 exchange ... and at the expense of an undertaker in Providence, R.I.

This little-known nugget of telecommunications history comes from the Feb. 2, 1884 edition of The Electrical World, via Google Books, and was unearthed by Paul Collins, an associate professor of English at Portland State University, who is perhaps better known as The Literary Detective....

Source:

NetworkWorld

Source URL:

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/historys-first-prank-phone-call-was-way-back-1884

Date:

5-16-12

Forgotten time capsule found at Virginia Historical Society

hnn — Thu, 17 May 2012 21:14:04 +0000

The historians of 100 years ago had an idea what the future should know about them. And they hid it on May 20, 1912, in the cornerstone of the new Confederate Memorial Institute on the Boulevard.

The building, soon to be known as Battle Abbey, and the Confederate Memorial Association that built it were subsumed over the years into the Virginia Historical Society....

Then the 100th anniversary of the building inspired some research by Nelson D. Lankford, vice president of the society and editor of its Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. He discovered a list of items placed in a box in the cornerstone.

Did they still exist?

Absolutely....

Source:

Richmond Times-Dispatch

Source URL:

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/news/2012/may/17/tdmet01-an-unexpected-look-at-1912-ar-1920378/

Date:

5-17-12

IOC refuses to mark Munich anniversary

hnn — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:42:45 +0000

In 1996, then-International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch discussed the recent war in the Balkans, and the need to rebuild Sarajevo. What he didn’t commemorate, or even mention—and what, the IOC announced today, won’t be commemorated, or even mentioned, in any official capacity at this summer’s Games in London on the 40th anniversary—is the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Despite an official Israeli request, the IOC will not do, well, anything, except, in the words of President Jacques Rogge, to offer the following thoughts: “What happened in Munich in 1972 strengthened the determination of the Olympic Movement to contribute more than ever to building a peaceful and better world by educating young people through sport practiced without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit.”...

Source:

Tablet Magazine

Source URL:

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/100027/why-has-only-israel-requested-a-moment-of-silence

Date:

5-17-12

Palestine Poster Project reveals attempts to entice settlers to Israel

hnn — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:30:24 +0000

Dan Walsh’s incredibly rich Palestine Poster Project Archives includes much in the way of protest, but it also contains a trove of rare Zionist/Israeli posters from the 1920s through the ’50s, largely before partition. The ones excerpted here are from the Mahmoud Darwish Memorial Gallery, which includes a collection of Zionist Worker agency posters calling for increased development of Palestine.

The affairs of the workers of Eretz Israel should be in the hands of the workers of Eretz Israel, 1935.

Source:

Salon

Source URL:

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/selling_zionism_in_the_1920s/

Date:

5-17-12

Donna Summer -- the Queen of Disco -- Dies at 63

hnn — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:25:38 +0000

May 17, 2012 -- The woman known as the Queen of Disco, Donna Summer, died today at the age of 63 after a battle with cancer.

Summer, a five-time Grammy Award winner, shot to fame in the ‘70s with iconic hits produced by famed disco producer Giorgio Moroder, according to Rolling Stone. Her hits in the ‘70s, "Bad Girls" and "Hot Stuff" were followed by hits in the ‘80s like “She Works Hard for the Money” and “This Time I Know It’s for Real.” With her ‘80s hits she was also able to move into the MTV era with memorable music videos....

Source:

Discovery News

Source URL:

http://news.discovery.com/history/donna-summer-dies-120517.html

Date:

5-17-12

200-Year-Old Shipwreck Found Off Gulf Coast

hnn — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:23:03 +0000

Ocean researchers exploring the depths of the Gulf of Mexico have discovered a wooden shipwreck laden with anchors, navigational instruments, glass bottles, ceramic plates, cannons and boxes of muskets.

Resting on the sea bottom in about 4,000 feet of water, some 200 miles offs the northern Gulf Coast shore, the wooden-hulled vessel "is believed to have sunk as long as 200 years ago," the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said in a statement.

"Artifacts in and around the wreck and the hull's copper sheathing may date the vessel to the early to mid-19th century," said Jack Irion, a maritime archaeologist with the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management....

Source:

Discovery News

Source URL:

http://news.discovery.com/history/shipwreck-gulf-120517.html

Date:

5-17-12