Breaking News

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.

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• 
• SOURCE: History.com
  7/17/19
  

  The Amazing Handmade Tech That Powered Apollo 11’s Moon Voyage

  A surprising number of the Apollo spacecraft’s critical parts ended up being crafted and assembled by hand, by a vast battalion of little-known and little-heralded workers back on earth.

• 
• SOURCE: Politico Magazine
  7/17/19
  

  The Racist History of Tipping

  by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

  Lawmakers will vote on the Raise the Wage Act, which would boost the minimum wage across the country to $15 an hour by 2024. This would be a crucial step toward the first federal minimum wage increase in more than a decade.

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  7/16/19
  

  Did we mishear Neil Armstrong’s famous first words on the Moon?

  by Melissa Michaud Baese-Berk

  I recently conducted a study on ambiguous speech, using Armstrong’s famous quote to try to figure out why and how we successfully understand speech most of the time, but also make the occasional mistake.

• 
• SOURCE: Historians for Peace and Democracy
  6/14/19
  

  Why the United States is not a true democracy

  by Van Gosse

  Since the Civil War, a series of constitutional amendments, acts of Congress, and Supreme Court decisions have extended the right to vote, but always through negative prohibitions on what a state or locality may do.

• 
• SOURCE: Chris Riback’s Conversations
  7/5/19
  

  Explaining Putin’s World: A Conversation with Angela Stent

  How is today’s polarized, disrupted world one in which Russia can thrive?

• 
• SOURCE: History
  7/11/2019
  

  Why Civil Rights Activists Protested the Moon Landing

  In 1969, NASA was spending millions on the Apollo space program. Some argued that money could be better spent.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/15/2019
  

  Behind Trump’s ‘go back’ demand: A long history of rejecting ‘different’ Americans

  From that drive to encourage blacks to go back where they came from to waves of nativist attacks on Catholics, Jews, Asians and Hispanics in nearly every generation that followed, “go home” rhetoric is as American as immigration itself.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/10/2019
  

  The Racist History Behind Facial Recognition

  When will we finally learn we cannot predict people’s character from their appearance?

• 
• SOURCE: Scientific American
  7/11/2019
  

  Viking History Is Melting Away in Greenland

  Climate change is already rotting archaeological sites in the Arctic, and Norse Viking-era settlements are at high risk

• 
• SOURCE: ZD Net
  7/12/2019
  

  Now Microsoft wants to use AI to save history

  Microsoft creates a program that aims to use AI to preserve the world's cultures in the face of globalisation.

• 
• SOURCE: History
  7/12/2019
  

  The U.S. Deported a Million of Its Own Citizens to Mexico During the Great Depression

  Up to 1.8 million people of Mexican descent—most of them American-born—were rounded up in informal raids and deported in an effort to reserve jobs for white people.

• 
• SOURCE: ABC News
  7/13/2019
  

  Film airing on PBS recalls city's dark deportation history

  The filming of "Bisbee '17," a documentary about what happened July 12, 1917, was a history lesson for residents recruited to play historical figures in the production filmed exactly 100 years later that weds documentary and collective performance.

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  7/15/2019
  

  Alan Turing, Computing Genius And WWII Hero, To Be On U.K.'s New 50-Pound Note

  It will include a quote from Turing: "This is only a foretaste of what is to come and only the shadow of what is going to be."

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  7/14/2019
  

  The surprising history of impeachment and what it means for Trump

  Frank Bowman III, a law professor at the University of Missouri, is out with the definitive history of impeachment in his new book, "High Crimes and Misdemeanors; A History of Impeachment for the Age Of Trump."

• 
• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  7/14/2019
  

  The Hidden History of Liberty Island

  Before the statue and long before the brand-new museum, there were pirates, real-estate ventures and public executions

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  7/14/2019
  

  Here's the story of the slave trader who Tennessee's governor is honoring

  Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed a proclamation officially declaring July 13 "Nathan Bedford Forrest Day," thus honoring the former Confederate general, slave trader and early leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

• 
• SOURCE: History Channel
  July 12, 2019
  

  The U.S. Deported a Million of Its Own Citizens to Mexico During the Great Depression

  Up to 1.8 million people of Mexican descent—most of them American-born—were rounded up in informal raids and deported in an effort to reserve jobs for white people.

• 
• SOURCE: The Washington Post
  July 13, 2019
  

  Ted Cruz criticizes Tenn. governor for day honoring Confederate general and KKK leader

  Ted Cruz took to criticizing Tenessee for celebration of a Confederate general and KKK Grand Wizard. 

• 
• SOURCE: Politico Magazine
  July 11, 2019
  

  Why Trump’s Census Play Is Blatantly Unconstitutional

  by Bruce Ackerman

  We owe Congress’ control of the Census not just to the Constitution, but to Republicans doing the right thing in the 1920s. Now Trump wants to roll it all back.  

• 
• SOURCE: Reuters
  7/8/19
  

  Japan, South Korea raise stakes in dispute over forced labor. History helps explain the conflict.

  The countries share a bitter history dating to Japan’s colonization of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945, which saw forced use of labor by Japanese companies and the use of “comfort women”, a Japanese euphemism for girls and women, many of them Korean, forced to work in its wartime brothels.