Where History is Making News Around the World

If history doesn't really matter, as so many people, taking their cue from Henry Ford, seem to believe, what do they make of all the events in the news that are directly related to history? This is the question they seldom seem to ask themselves. Of the historical anniversaries of which so much is routinely made, of the tensions between nations arising from disputes about history, of the many arguments about the content of student textbooks--of these things they express a determined insouciance that is downright breathtaking.

One measure of the extent of this indifference can be found on this map, which charts a select list of the news stories posted on HNN during the single month of June 2005. Each star on the map represents a different news story. Mouse over any star to see a short explanation. (Clicking on the star will bring up the original link from which the story was drawn except in those cases where the link became outdated.) As with our Breaking News page, descriptions of events are taken directly from the websites where the news is found; quotation marks are dispensed with in such cases.

Like HNN's Breaking News page, the map features only those news stories reported in the English-language press. The result is that the map is heavily skewed toward news stories that draw the attention of English-speaking readers, leading to a heavy concentration of stars in the United States and Western Europe, with a sprinkling of stars in Asia. Click here to view the lists of media sources HNN interns use to track news stories featured on the Breaking News page.