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.
Source: Australian
January 30, 2008
Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin today announced the apology would be the first item of business for the new parliament.
Ms Macklin today said the apology was the “first, necessary step to move forward from the past”.
“The apology will be made on behalf of the Australian Government and does not attribute guilt to the current generation of Australian people,” she said.
Source: Sacramento Bee
January 28, 2008
A statue of "Chief Lemee," who was actually an Indian park employee who danced in Miwok and Plains Indian regalia for visitors, occupies a place at the Yosemite park museum, as does a photo showing the ceremony. Members of the Paiute tribe contend the display, as well as others, are historically inaccurate.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 30, 2008
Germany is going through an unprecedented wave of self-recrimination as it marks the 75th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's rise to power.
Despite the rapidly decreasing number of people who were alive during the Nazi era, this week, Bernd Neumann, the German minister of culture, announced that building would start on two new memorials.
One will honour the gipsies deported to their deaths. The other, costing £400,000, will feature a video of gay men and lesbians kissing, in
Source: NYT
January 29, 2008
Many historians have assumed that Europe’s deadliest plague, the Black Death of 1347 to 1351, killed indiscriminately, young and old, hardy and frail, healthy and sick alike. But two anthropologists were not so sure. They decided to take a closer look at the skeletons of people buried more than 650 years ago.
Their findings, published on Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that the plague selectively took the already ill, while many of the otherwis
Source: NYT
January 29, 2008
If Sputnik 1 was the beep-beep-beep heard round the world, Explorer 1 announced itself 50 years ago this week by the collective sigh of relief from an anxious American public.
It was late in the evening, Jan. 31, 1958, almost four months after the Soviet Union stunned the world on Oct. 4 with the launching of Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite. A second, larger Sputnik soon followed, carrying a canine passenger.
The first American attempt, with the modest Van
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
January 29, 2008
At a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing today, witnesses discussed
the feasibility and advisability of legislating reforms to the state
secrets privilege.
The state secrets privilege has been used by the executive branch to
block discovery in civil litigation when the government believes that
there is an unacceptable risk of disclosure of sensitive national
security secrets. But on several occasions, the mere assertion of the
privilege has led to termination of the lawsuit. It ha
Source: AP
January 28, 2008
NEW YORK - A state archivist was charged Monday with stealing hundreds of artifacts — documents representing "the heritage of all Americans," according to the history buff who found some of them on eBay — to pay his household bills.
Daniel Lorello, 54, is accused of taking the rare items from the New York State Library, including Davy Crockett Almanacs, Currier and Ives lithographs and the 1865 railroad timetable for Abraham Lincoln's funeral train. Authorities believe he
Source: http://www.ananova.com/news
January 28, 2008
A new study says that 1812 was the worst year ever for Britain.
We had been at war with France for nearly 20 years which pushed taxes to record levels, while a series of disastrous harvests meant the cost of living had never been so high.
Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was shot dead in the House of Commons and America declared war on us in a dispute over trade with France.
King George III was mad and his unpopular son George, later to be George IV, ruled a
Source: http://europe.courrierinternational.com
January 28, 2008
Poland's ministry of education will join with the educational ministries of the German states to introduce a joint German-Polish history book. Wojciech Rogacin explains: "In Polish history books, the typical German is a barbaric aggressor, someone who for thousands of years only thought about how best to snatch our territory and keep the Polish people down. There is not a word about the rich German culture found also in Polish areas or German science or industry. And it's the same in German
Source: http://europe.courrierinternational.com
January 28, 2008
Poland's ministry of education will join with the educational ministries of the German states to introduce a joint German-Polish history book. Wojciech Rogacin explains: "In Polish history books, the typical German is a barbaric aggressor, someone who for thousands of years only thought about how best to snatch our territory and keep the Polish people down. There is not a word about the rich German culture found also in Polish areas or German science or industry. And it's the same in German
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
January 27, 2008
History was one of Gordon B. Hinckley's passion. He lived it. He read it. He engaged it.
No other LDS president so balanced his attachment to the past with his devotion to the future.
During his nearly 13-year tenure at the top of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Hinckley oversaw the building of temples in Palmyra, N.Y., where the church was founded in 1830 and in Winter Quarters, Ill., where the Mormons rested for a season before beginning their lo
Source: http://www.titusvilleherald.com
January 25, 2008
On Friday afternoon, Titusville High School revived a scene from the city's history 69 years ago, when investigative journalist Ida Tarbell and historian and author Dr. Paul Giddens were invited to the school by the Titusville Historical Society Jan. 25, 1939, for a dinner in their honor.
THS faculty, staff and students used articles printed about the evening in 1939 editions of The Titusville Herald to help recreate the finer details of the dinner -- from who was in attendance to t
Source: NYT
January 29, 2008
In its latest effort to right itself, the Smithsonian Institution has accepted a finding that its business unit is plagued by poor internal communication, diffuse organization and inadequate oversight.
A 70-page report released Monday by a task force charged with looking into the Smithsonian’s revenue-generating activities paints “a picture of an institution unnecessarily divided against itself, a division that persists despite recently improved communication efforts,” said Marshall
Source: NYT
January 29, 2008
Making his seventh and final State of the Union address, President Bush proposed a short list of initiatives Monday that more than anything else underscored the White House’s growing realization that his biggest political opponents now are time and an electorate already looking beyond him.
This address lacked the soaring ambitions of Mr. Bush’s previous speeches, though it had its rhetorical flourishes. He invoked the “miracle of America” but for the most part flatly recited familia
Source: NYT
January 29, 2008
Most countries celebrate the best in their pasts. Germany unrelentingly promotes its worst.
The enormous Holocaust memorial that dominates a chunk of central Berlin was completed only after years of debate. But the building of monuments to the Nazi disgrace continues unabated.
On Monday, Germany’s minister of culture, Bernd Neumann, announced that construction could begin in Berlin on two monuments: one near the Reichstag, to the murdered Gypsies, known here as the Sint
Source: Boston Globe
January 27, 2008
The grounds of the Paul Revere House, Boston's oldest building and a historic Colonial landmark, are getting an examination. But there will be no probing; the procedure is noninvasive.
Using a technology called ground penetrating radar, Allen Gontz, an assistant professor of environmental, earth, and ocean sciences at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, began a series of soil tests at the North End site on Tuesday. He is looking for gas lines, water pipes, and deep features l
Source: AP
January 28, 2008
A long-time state archivist was accused on Monday of stealing hundreds of historic artifacts and documents from the New York State Library, including two Davy Crockett Almanacs, and selling some on eBay.
Daniel Lorello, 54, an archives and records management specialist in the state Education Department since 1979, was arraigned Monday on charges of grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and scheme to defraud.
He was released on his own recognizance and
Source: AP
January 28, 2008
A cottage three miles from the White House in which Abraham Lincoln likely paced the floors while contemplating the end of slavery was until now largely unknown to the public.
Few District-area residents knew it was still standing on the grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home, and tourists searching for Lincoln sites in the nation's capital were far more likely to stop at the Lincoln Memorial or Ford's Theatre, where the 16th U.S. president was assassinated.
But in
Source: WaPo
January 28, 2008
On a rainy day 52 years ago, the cover was blown on one of the biggest espionage plots of the Cold War. Soviet and East German forces announced that they had found a quarter-mile-long tunnel that the CIA had burrowed into East Berlin as part of a massive wiretapping operation.
Though the audacious project had come to a crashing end, news of the discovery generated unrestrained glee across the Atlantic at CIA headquarters. America's spymasters were thrilled by the world's response: a
Source: BBC
January 28, 2008
Women who worked the land during World War II to keep Britain supplied with food and timber can now apply for a badge commemorating their efforts.
The badge is the first official recognition of the contribution made by members of the Women's Land Army (WLA) and the Women's Timber Corps (WTC).
Members of the WLA - also known as the Land Girls - and the WTC have campaigned for recognition for decades.
Ex-Land Girl Hilda Gibson, 83, said the badge was a "
