After Storms Kill Hundreds, South Tries to Regroup By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and KIM SEVERSON TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — As President Obama prepared to visit Alabama on Friday, which was at the epicenter of a region that endured storms that killed hundreds across the South, people from Texas to Virginia searched through the rubble of their homes, schools and businesses for survivors. Nearly 300 people across six states died in the storms, with the vast majority — 213 people — in Alabama. This college town, the home of the University of Alabama, has in some places been shorn to the slab, and accounts for at least 36 of those deaths. Thousands have…

Thursday, Apr. 28, 2011 How the Monarchy Allows Britannia to Make Waves By Tristram Hunt At the Portmeirion pottery works at Stoke-on-Trent, in Staffordshire, the kilns are fired up to get out the Kate and William commemorative cups and saucers. And so too at the Tangshan Hengrui Ceramics factory outside Beijing, where tens of thousands of “happy couple” plates are in production. At the TUI travel agency in Hanover, Germany the guided “Will and Kate Royal Wedding Tour” has done good business enticing tourists into London this balmy April. And at Franklin Mint in Philadelphia, the “Kate Middleton Royal Engagement Vinyl Doll” is proving a lucrative product line. This is…

April 28, 1925: T.S. Eliot accepts a job at Faber and Faber publishers Previous DayApril 28CalendarNext Day Poet T.S. Eliot accepts a position as editor at Faber and Faber publishers. The job allows Eliot, who is already recognized as a major poet, to quit his job as a bank clerk at Lloyd’s Bank in London. He holds the publishing position until his death, in 1965. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a well-established family. His grandfather had founded Washington University in St. Louis, his father was a businessman, and his mother was involved in local charities. Eliot took an undergraduate degree at Harvard, studied at the Sorbonne, returned…