News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
Kindness might once have been considered something of a soft topic, but it has begun to be taken seriously within academic research. When developmental psychologist Robin Banerjee ... surveyed past research, he found just 35 papers on kindness in psychology journals in the whole of the 1980s. In the past decade, there were more than 1,000. But there is still plenty to discover. One morning, people walking down a street in the Canadian city of Vancouver were asked to take part in an experiment. They were given an envelope containing either a $5 or $20 note. Half the people were instructed to spend the money on themselves. The other half were instructed to use the money to buy a present for someone else or to donate the money to charity. Whether they had $5 or $20 made no difference. The people who had spent it on someone else felt significantly happier than those who treated themselves. This is just one of many studies which has found that acting kindly can improve your wellbeing. In a meta-analysis, Oliver Scott Curry ... found that behaving kindly can have a small to medium effect on our wellbeing. On the BBC radio programme The Kindness Test ... neuroscientist Dan Campbell-Meiklejohn told me that this can seem counterintuitive. "Kindness can cost us, yet we experience a sense of reward in parts of our brain when we are kind to others, just as we do when eat yummy food or have a pleasant surprise. These parts of the brain become active and motivate us to do them again and again."
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
MIT researchers have developed a portable desalination unit, weighing less than 10 kilograms, that can remove particles and salts to generate drinking water. The suitcase-sized device, which requires less power to operate than a cell phone charger, can also be driven by a small, portable solar panel, which can be purchased online for around $50. It automatically generates drinking water that exceeds World Health Organization quality standards. The technology is packaged into a user-friendly device that runs with the push of one button. Unlike other portable desalination units that require water to pass through filters, this device utilizes electrical power to remove particles from drinking water. Eliminating the need for replacement filters greatly reduces the long-term maintenance requirements. This could enable the unit to be deployed in remote and severely resource-limited areas, such as communities on small islands or aboard seafaring cargo ships. It could also be used to aid refugees fleeing natural disasters or by soldiers carrying out long-term military operations. "This is really the culmination of a 10-year journey that I and my group have been on. We worked for years on the physics behind individual desalination processes, but pushing all those advances into a box, building a system, and demonstrating it in the ocean, that was a really meaningful and rewarding experience for me," says senior author Jongyoon Han, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and of biological engineering.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
American officials and analysts globally are raising alarm about a new Defense Department office that will handle the U.S. government's examination of unidentified flying objects, warning that the move indicates the military wants to end a brief spell of transparency and shove UFO reports back into a closet. The Pentagon quietly announced ... that it had formed the esoteric-sounding Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group. It serves as the follow-on to a government-wide effort earlier this year to document and analyze reports of encounters with unidentified objects – "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" or UAPs in Pentagon jargon – predominantly from military pilots. The new office, which reports to the undersecretary of defense for Intelligence and Security, will now oversee the entire government's study of UFOs, focusing on sightings within restricted military airspace. Some researchers characterize the Pentagon's latest move as an "insulting" attempt to run around specific efforts by civilian organizations and leaders in Congress to exercise greater oversight over the government's study of UFOs. "It represents a brazen step towards completely stifling the burgeoning demand from both the public and Congress for increased UFO transparency," says Peter Whitley, a ... member of the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, which considers itself one of the largest and oldest of its kind. "Clearly, the DOD is attempting to ... shut the door on further disclosure of any kind."
Note: For undeniable evidence of a major cover-up around UFOs for many decades, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
Capitol Hill lawmakers said Wednesday that UFOs could pose a pressing threat to America's national security, as the pols emerged from a highly classified briefing with Navy and FBI officials on the unexplained phenomena. Ahead of the release of a highly anticipated Pentagon report on unidentified flying objects before month's end, members of the House Intelligence Committee received a hush-hush sneak preview inside a SCIF, or "sensitive compartmented information facility." As for the existence of extraterrestrial life, the lawmakers largely left the secrets inside the surveillance-proof room, declining to tell reporters what they learned. But some did voice concerns that the UFOs – which may be espionage assets controlled by America's foreign adversaries, in a possible explanation just slightly less terrifying than the vanguard of an alien invasion – could pose a danger to national security. "We take the issue of unexplained aerial phenomena seriously to the extent that we're dealing with the safety and security of US military personnel or the national security interests of the United States, so we want to know what we're dealing with," said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY). Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) said that, if anything, the landmark report shows that UFOs are finally being taken seriously. "The stigma is gone," he said. "Now that's as big a change in policy as I've witnessed about this issue in my lifetime. So the fact that they are taking this sort of thing seriously for the first time, I think, is important."
Note: For undeniable evidence of a major cover-up around UFOs for many decades, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
Exactly how regular matter first transmuted into the organised self-replicating assemblies of molecules that we call life on Earth is the focus of ongoing scientific research. But a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications strengthens theories that hold the basis of life came from outer space. Using new techniques of chemical analysis, Japanese researchers have now shown all the amino acids necessary to form DNA and RNA, the genetic basis of life can be found in small meteorites that fall to Earth. These "nucleobases" are not examples of extraterrestrial life, but instead the result of chemistry taking place on asteroids while in space, which may then have seeded Earth with the necessary prebiotic material to help the development of life. That material, the study authors write, may have "contributed to the emergence of genetic properties for the earliest life on Earth." "The absolute abundance of nucleobases of extraterrestrial origin could be enough for further chemical reactions on the early Earth," said Yasuhiro Oba ... the lead author of the new study. Scientists running simulations of the chemistry taking place on interstellar asteroids seemed to find more evidence supporting the idea that genetic material could form in space, according to Dr Oba. He believes it's likely the prebiotic chemistry from multiple sources was important to the origins of life – it's possible terrestrial and extraterrestrial chemistry made their own contributions.
Note: Explore a highly intriguing essay by WTK founder Fred Burks on alien involvement in our world. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.
Could our universe have been created in a petri dish? Avi Loeb seems to think so. The Harvard astronomer posits that a higher "class" of civilization may have conjured up our universe in a laboratory far, far away. "Since our universe has a flat geometry with a zero net energy, an advanced civilization could have developed a technology that created a baby universe out of nothing through quantum tunneling," Loeb writes in an op-ed published by Scientific American last year. This theory, he suggests, would unite two seemingly opposite notions: the idea that a higher power might be driving our fate, and the secular concept of quantum gravity (a field of physics that seeks to work gravity into the theory of quantum mechanics–something that, to the bane of physicists everywhere, we haven't been able to do yet on Earth). Primarily, this theory hinges on a far-off advanced civilization's ability to meld both quantum mechanics and gravity and subsequently identify and recreate all of the universe's ingredients. Loeb ... has devised a framework that breaks advanced civilizations down into classes based on their ability to "reproduce the astrophysical conditions that led to its existence." Earthlings would fall into class C because ... we would not be able to recreate our current conditions should the sun suddenly die. A class A civilization, like our proposed creators, would be able to, say, generate large amounts of dark energy and, as Loeb suggests, create "baby universes" ... that could potentially spawn life.
Note: Explore a highly intriguing essay by WTK founder Fred Burks on alien involvement in our world. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.
The future is decidedly not female for California mosquitoes, or at least that's what researchers hope to achieve when they unleash up to 2.4 billion genetically altered males into the West Coast state starting this summer in an attempt to control the booming populations. The Environmental Protection Agency announced last month that biotech firm Oxitec had received approval to expand its existing pilot program in Florida into California's Central Valley, a campaign that would run through 2024 and release a maximum of 2.4 billion over that time span. By expanding the share of male offspring born each season, it would decrease the chances of female biting mosquitoes from spreading deadly diseases like Zika, dengue and yellow fever. Researchers at Oxitec paired a special protein to the male so that when it mates with a biting female, the only viable offspring that results are more non-biting males. The targeted group is the Aedes aegypti mosquito. California has not yet noted an uptick in the diseases the pests are capable of spreading.
Note: Why does California want to gamble with this risky intervention in nature when these diseases are not even a significant problem there? The release of these GMO mosquitoes in Florida provoked fierce local opposition. Oxitec received millions from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation when initially testing these bugs in the wild. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on GMOs from reliable major media sources.
As inflation shot to a new peak in March, cost increases exacted a deep toll on the economy. But for many of the US's largest companies and their shareholders it has been a very different story. A Guardian analysis of top corporations' financials and earnings calls reveals most are enjoying profit increases even as they pass on costs to customers, many of whom are struggling to afford gas, food, clothing, housing and other basics. The analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission filings for 100 US corporations found net profits up by a median of 49%, and in one case by as much as 111,000%. Those increases came as companies saddled customers with higher prices and all but ten executed massive stock buyback programs or bumped dividends to enrich investors. In earnings calls, executives detailed how even as demand and profits rose post-vaccine, they passed on most or all inflationary costs to customers via price increases, and some took the opportunity to add more on top. Margins – the share of sales converted into profits – also improved for the majority of the companies. The Guardian's findings are in line with recent US commerce department data that shows corporate profits rose 35% during the last year and are at their highest level since 1950. Inflation, meanwhile, rose to 8.5% year over year in March. The Guardian's data ... objectively shows a massive "transfer of wealth" from consumers, who pay higher prices, to shareholders and investment firms.
Note: Meanwhile global poverty has skyrocketed. Do the billionaires really care? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
In 1981, Malcolm Forbes, the eccentric and fabulously wealthy magazine publisher, came to his editors with a request: Could they pull together a special issue about the 400 richest Americans? The resulting reporting project took a year, dozens of flights and thousands of interviews. At the top of the very first Forbes 400 list was Daniel K. Ludwig, a shipping magnate, estimated by the magazine to be worth more than $2 billion. Adjusted for inflation, that's now at least $5.8 billion, a fortune that would land Ludwig in a seven-way tie for the 182nd spot on the last Forbes 400 list, alongside Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx; Gary Rollins, chief executive of Rollins, Inc., which owns several pest-control companies; and who could forget Peter Gassner, the head of a cloud-software company called Veeva. Since 1987, Forbes has published another list, which started smaller but has grown to be much larger: the World's Billionaires List. The magazine just published this year's edition, with a staggering 2,668 names. The task of gathering information for both lists is overseen by Kerry Dolan, an editor at Forbes, in a highly collaborative effort that involves at least 92 different reporters from all over the organization, including from the company's many internationally licensed editions – Russia, Poland, Mexico and more. The 2022 World's Billionaires list ... grew by 573 names compared with the last prepandemic list, in 2020. That year, the world was minting new billionaires at a rate, Forbes noted, of about one every 17 hours.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.
For 40 years the United States Public Health Service has conducted a study in which human beings with syphilis, who were induced to serve as guinea pigs, have gone without medical treatment for the disease and a few have died of its late effects, even though an effective therapy, was eventually discovered. The study was conducted to determine from autopsies what the disease does to the human body. It is too late to treat the syphilis in any surviving participants. The experiment, called the Tuskegee Study, began in 1932 with about 600 black men mostly poor and uneducated, from Tuskegee, Ala., an area that had the highest syphilis rate in the nation at the time. Four hundred of the group had syphilis and never received deliberate treatment for the Venereal Infection. A control group of 200 had no syphilis and did not receive any specific therapy. As Incentives to enter the Program, the men were promised free transportation to and from hospitals, free hot lunches, free medicine for any disease other than syphilis and free burial after autopsies were performed. The Tuskegee Study began 10 years before penicillin was found to be a cure for syphilis and 15 years before the drug became widely available. Yet, even after penicillin became common, and while its use probably could have helped or saved a number of the experiment subjects, the drug was denied them. Senator William Proxmire ... called the study "a moral and ethical nightmare."
Note: Read more about the disturbing history of government and industry experiments on human guinea pigs. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
Kenton Lee was working at an orphanage in Kenya when he noticed a little girl with the ends of her shoes cut off and her toes sticking out. It was then that he came up with the idea for The Shoe That Grows. "For years the idea of these growing shoes wouldn't leave my mind," he told BuzzFeed News. Lee and his team at first tried to give the idea to companies like Nike, Crocs, and Toms, to no avail. Eventually they found a "shoe development company" called Proof of Concept who agreed to help them with the design. The shoe is made out of a high quality soft leather on top, and extremely durable rubber soles similar material to a tire, Lee said. They expand through a simple system of buckles, snaps, and pegs. The shoes are predicted to last a minimum of five years, and expand five sizes in that time. The small size will fit preschoolers through fifth graders, while the large will fit fifth through ninth graders. "I had no idea how important shoes were before I went to Kenya," Lee said. "But kids, especially in urban areas, can get infections from cuts and scrapes on their feet from going barefoot, and contract diseases that cause them to miss school." The 30-year-old ... said he wanted to put these kids in the best possible position to succeed in their lives. "If I can provide a kid with protection so they stay healthy and keep going to school, I'll have done my part." Donors can either buy shoes to distribute themselves, or buy a pair of shoes and choose one of five American nonprofit organizations to distribute them.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
We've all heard stories about extraordinary climbers. These are people who defy the stakes in an attempt to beat the odds every time they summit a mountain that others have only seen in photos. Whereas the average hiker has seen upwards of only 10,000 feet, extreme athletes and professional alpinists have explored the summits of mountains towering well over 18,000 feet. For some, the ultimate summit sits at a harrowing height of 29,032 feet. It's unimaginable: A temperature so cold that few living organisms can survive its inhospitable conditions. A lack of oxygen at its highest peak, where not even a helicopter can reach those who might be stranded. Despite all of those dangers, one woman holds the world record for surviving this not once, but nine times. That remarkable woman is Lhakpa Sherpa, a Nepali native born in the small Himalayan village of Balakharka who is about to reset her own record this year. Lhakpa Sherpa currently holds the Guinness World Record for the female climber with the most successful ascents of Everest to date. This is a record that she has held consistently for more than two decades now. Lhakpa is one of 11 children, five of whom have summited Everest. It was here that her love began, and it would become a lifelong affair with the mountains that she grew up admiring every single day. As an adult, Lhakpa is a single parent of three children, with whom she also shares her love for mountain climbing and hiking.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
In Rambouillet, a small French town around 30 miles (50km) south-west of Paris, a soft blue light emanated from a row of cylindrical tubes. Members of the public ... were invited to bathe in the glow for a few minutes. Soon, the same azure glow will illuminate the nearby, tree-lined Place AndrĂ© ThomĂ© et Jacqueline ThomĂ©-PatenĂ´tre, located just across from the aptly named La Lanterne performance hall, at night. These ethereal experiments are also underway across France. But unlike standard streetlamps, which often emit a harsh glare and need to be hooked up to the electricity grid, these otherworldly lights are powered by living organisms through a process known as bioluminescence. This phenomenon – where chemical reactions inside an organism's body produce light – can be observed in many places in nature. Organisms as diverse as fireflies, fungi and fish have the ability to glow through bioluminescence. The turquoise blue glow bathing the waiting room in Rambouillet ... comes from a marine bacterium gathered off the coast of France called Aliivibrio fischeri. The bacteria are stored inside saltwater-filled tubes, allowing them to circulate in a kind of luminous aquarium. Since the light is generated through internal biochemical processes that are part of the organism's normal metabolism, running it requires almost no energy. "Our goal is to change the way in which cities use light," says Sandra Rey, founder of the French start-up Glowee, which is behind the project in Rambouillet.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Guns overtook car crashes to become the leading cause of death for US children and teenagers in 2020. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that over 4,300 young Americans died of firearm-related injuries in 2020. While suicides contributed to the toll, the data shows that homicides form the majority of gun-related deaths. More than 390 million guns are owned by US civilians. According to the research - which was published this week in the New England Journal Medicine - the rise in gun-related deaths among Americans between the ages of one and 19 was part of an overall 33.4% increase in firearm homicides nationwide. The overall rate of gun deaths of all reasons - suicide, homicide, unintentional and undetermined - among children and teenagers rose by 29.5%, more than twice that of the wider population. "We continue to fail to protect our youth from a preventable cause of death," said a research letter. The rate of gun-related deaths per 100,000 residents rose among both men and women and across ethnic demographics between 2019 and 2020, with the largest increase among black Americans. In past years, gun-related deaths were second only to car crashes as the leading cause of death among young Americans. Incidents of drug overdoses and poisonings rose 83.6% between 2019 and 2020, and now are the third leading cause of death in that age group.
Note: Could frustration caused by the lockdowns have anything to do with this? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
The 25 richest Americans, including Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Elon Musk, paid a "true tax rate" of just 3.4% between 2014 and 2018, according to an investigation by ProPublica, despite their collective net worth rising by more than $400bn in the same period. The report by the non-profit news organization exposes the US tax system as income and wealth inequality continues to widen. ProPublica used Internal Revenue Service data to dive into the tax returns of some of America's wealthiest and most prominent people. It found that in 2007 Bezos, the founder of Amazon and already a billionaire, paid no federal taxes. In 2011, when he had a net worth of $18bn, he was again able to pay no federal taxes – and even received a $4,000 tax credit for his children. ProPublica created what it called a "true tax rate" for the wealthiest 25 Americans by comparing federal income tax paid between 2014 and 2018 to how their net worth increased on Forbes' well-regarded rich list over the same period. "The results are stark," ProPublica wrote. "According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401bn from 2014 to 2018. "They paid a total of $13.6bn in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That's a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%." By contrast, the median American household paid 14% in federal taxes. The top income tax rate is 37% on incomes over $523,600 for single filers.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.
In 2013, [Southern California Edison] announced that San Onofre [Nuclear Generating Station] would be decommissioned. Activists realized that all of the high-level radioactive waste that had accumulated at the plant over the course of its lifetime – 1,600 tons of spent fuel rods – would remain at the site for the foreseeable future. Although the federal government is legally responsible for disposing of commercial spent nuclear fuel in a permanent underground repository, there has been no plan for fulfilling that obligation since the Obama administration halted the project at Nevada's Yucca Mountain in 2010. There are currently about 80 locations in 35 states – mostly at operational and decommissioned nuclear plants – where spent fuel is being stored indefinitely. Among scientific experts and government officials, there is broad consensus that the optimal solution is to eventually bury nuclear waste in a deep geological repository. But that is a long-term goal, and in the near future, [U.S. Rep. Mike] Levin and many others are pushing for "consolidated interim storage." This would mean that the spent fuel scattered at sites across the country would be moved to one or more facilities, in appropriate settings, that would be devoted entirely to safely storing the fuel until a geological disposal facility is ready. "Frankly we have a real problem in the U.S., not just at San Onofre," Levin told me. "San Onofre is just the symptom. The actual problem is that we've got nowhere to move it to."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on nuclear power from reliable major media sources.
In a political career rife with flip-flops, few rank as high as Donald Trump's 180 on Saudi Arabia. For more than a decade, Trump had held up the kingdom as a prime example of U.S. foreign policy cozying up to nefarious allies of convenience. Almost immediately upon being sworn in, though, Trump shifted in a more Saudi-friendly direction. He held fast to that posture even after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was implicated in the gruesome murder of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. He proceeded to override Congress's objections to U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen and pressed forward with arms deals it had rejected. Trump's solicitousness of the Saudis appeared to help them more than it helped us, and it ran decidedly counter to his "America First" foreign policy. The New York Times reported Sunday that Trump's son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner secured a $2 billion investment for his Affinity Partners private equity firm from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince. This despite the fund's advisers heavily criticizing the proposed deal. The Times noted that ethics experts said the investment could appear as payback for Kushner's help in the White House. The serious reservations raised by the fund's advisers heighten questions about why the deal would go through. It's also a remarkable development amid Trump's long-running, concerted and highly contentious (even among Republicans) attempts to curry favor with, and apologize for, the Saudis.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
Preliminary results from two experiments suggest something could be wrong with the basic way physicists think the universe works, a prospect that has the field of particle physics both baffled and thrilled. Tiny particles called muons aren't quite doing what is expected of them in two different long-running experiments in the United States and Europe. The confounding results – if proven right – reveal major problems with the rulebook physicists use to describe and understand how the universe works at the subatomic level. "We think we might be swimming in a sea of background particles all the time that just haven't been directly discovered," Fermilab experiment co-chief scientist Chris Polly said. "There might be monsters we haven't yet imagined that are emerging from the vacuum interacting with our muons and this gives us a window into seeing them." The rulebook, called the Standard Model, was developed about 50 years ago. The United States Energy Department's Fermilab announced results Wednesday of 8.2 billion races along a track outside Chicago that ... have physicists astir: The muons' magnetic fields don't seem to be what the Standard Model says they should be. This follows new results published last month from the European Center for Nuclear Research's Large Hadron Collider that found a surprising proportion of particles in the aftermath of high-speed collisions. If confirmed, the U.S. results would be the biggest finding in the bizarre world of subatomic particles in nearly 10 years.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.
Levels of vaccine hesitancy among physicians may be higher than expected, with 1 in 10 primary care doctors not believing that vaccines are safe, according to a new survey. Among 625 physicians, 10.1% did not agree that vaccines were safe; 9.3% did not agree that vaccines were effective; and 8.3% did not agree that they were important, Timothy Callaghan, PhD, of Texas A&M School of Public Health [said]. The high proportion of hesitancy among primary care doctors "was certainly a surprise for us," Callaghan told MedPage Today. "We found that concerns about vaccines in general were far more widespread in the physician population than we might have expected." Confidence in vaccines among physicians was still higher than in the general public, as were rates of COVID-19 vaccination, with only 5.2% still unvaccinated at the end of the survey in May 2021. But high levels of vaccine uptake among doctors could have more to do with employer regulations or perceived risks of their workplace environment, Callaghan said. Callaghan and colleagues conducted their survey from May 14 to May 25, 2021 among 625 physicians in family medicine, internal medicine, or general practice. They were asked how strongly they agreed with questions about safety, effectiveness, and importance of vaccines, among other factors. Only 67.4% strongly agreed that vaccines are safe, just 75% strongly agreed they are effective, and only 76% strongly agreed they're important, the researchers found.
Note: For more on this, explore this article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.
Walking up Prospect toward Memorial Stadium, your eyes will likely flit past it. But that unassuming gray building was once the "Tomb" of Berkeley's most hated secret society, and it was so putrid the city eventually stepped in to shut it down. Skull and Keys was founded in the 1890s by a group of UC Berkeley fraternity members, most prominent among them writer Frank Norris. It was modeled after the famed Skull and Bones secret society at Yale, and like them, invited select members from other fraternities to join. Their primary activities were drinking and causing trouble. Each year during initiation, crowds gathered to watch the Skull and Keys lads parade through town in costumes. In 1920, Skull and Keys members impersonated specific female students, shaming them by name in what the Daily Californian memorably called "a smut carnival." The university would ban Skull and Keys for a few years, relent and let them back, and then ban them again after another transgression. The death knell tolled for Skull and Keys in the late 1970s. On the night of April 20, 1977 – Adolph Hitler's birthday – several members walked over to the campus' Jewish community center and chanted "Hitler was right" and "kill the Jews" outside. In February 1979, tensions reached a boiling point. Neighbors could no longer tolerate the Tomb, site of weekly drinking-and-vomiting soirees. The property did not belong to the university. The campus had no control over the matter. So residents went to the city, which finally agreed to shut the place down.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on secret societies from reliable major media sources.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.