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: Baltimore Sun
October 12, 2007
Turkey, which is a key supply route to U.S. troops in Iraq, recalled its ambassador to Washington yesterday and warned of serious repercussions if Congress labels the killing of Armenians by Turks a century ago as genocide.After the House Foreign Affairs Committee endorsed the genocide measure, the summons of the ambassador for consultations was a further sign of deteriorating relations between two longtime allies and the potential for new turmoil in a troubled region.
Source: The Age
October 11, 2007
Prime Minister John Howard has described the "neglect" of history teaching in Australian schools as "shameful", announcing that he would make the subject compulsory for all students in years 9 and 10.
Mr Howard said students would be made to attend 150 hours of Australian history lessons over two or three years from 2009.
The history guide, to be distributed across the nation, says it is intended for study in years nine and 10, but the first three of
Source: Newsweek
October 15, 2007
She was born into a profoundly dysfunctional family. Her father married six times—and essentially ordered hits on two of his wives, including her mother (whose major crime may have been giving birth to a daughter instead of a son). Jealous relatives plotted against her. As a teenager, she was locked up in a tower. If she were alive today, she could write a best-selling memoir about her abusive childhood and appear on "Oprah." Instead, Elizabeth I became one of the most powerful and res
Source: MSNBC
October 11, 2007
French archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old wall painting underground in northern Syria which they believe is the oldest in the world.
The painting, which measures about six feet by six feet, was found at the Neolithic settlement of Djade al-Mughara on the Euphrates, northeast of the city of Aleppo, said team leader Eric Coqueugniot.
"It looks like a modernist painting. Some of those who saw it have likened it to work by (Paul) Klee. Through carbon dat
Source: NYT
October 11, 2007
People started waiting at the Union Square Barnes & Noble at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, five hours before former President Jimmy Carter was scheduled to begin signing his latest book. By 5, the event was filled to capacity. In the line that snaked through the fourth floor was a couple who had dressed their toddler in a T-shirt that declared, “I’m nuts about Jimmy Carter,” and a man who had bought 50 copies of Mr. Carter’s “Beyond the White House: Waging Peace, Fighting Disease and Building Hope” (
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
October 2, 2007
If high school juniors' answers to a World War II questionnaire were strung together, here's how history would look:
World War II took place in 19-something, when Theodore Roosevelt was president and the Germans claimed to be the best race.
Hoping to aid Third World countries, the United States joined the war to stop racism and end the dispute over Jews.
The head of the Nazis was a killer named Hitler whose evil partner, Mussolini, was president of the USSR. Ultimately, the
Source: AP
October 1, 2007
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The state is paying more than $737,000 to renovate the First White House of the Confederacy, a state-owned historical site that has been closed since repair work began in July.
Officials with the White House Association of Alabama, which is dedicated to preserving the property, expect it to reopen early next year in time for the February observance of Jefferson Davis' inauguration as president of the Confederacy.
Source: AP
October 8, 2007
Haitians learn it in school, but it's virtually unknown in the U.S.: In the Revolutionary War's bloody siege of Savannah, hundreds of Haitian soldiers were there for the colonies.
That contribution to American independence has been honored with a monument dedicated Monday in Savannah's Franklin Square. Life-size bronze statues of four soldiers now stand atop a granite pillar 6 feet tall and 16 feet in diameter.
"This is a testimony to tell people we Haitians didn't come
Source: Bangor Daily News
October 6, 2007
History is hiding in the murky waters of the Penobscot River.
Artifacts from the Penobscot Expedition of 1779 - the largest Revolutionary War naval expedition and worst naval defeat in United States history until Pearl Harbor - offer a peek into the country’s beginnings.
The battle, which ended with the loss of between 30 and 40 commissioned naval ships and sloops of war by the hands of their own crews, left everything from smoking pipes and shoe buckles to swivel guns
Source: http://www.todayszaman.com
October 8, 2007
Archaeologists discovered the tomb of a young couple locked in an embrace during their work in Hakemi Use in the Bismil district of the southeastern province of Diyarbak?r on Saturday.
Archaeologists assert that the couple, who presumably died some 8,000 years ago, is likely to set a record as the oldest embracing couple in the history of archaeology. Diyarbak?r was witness to an extraordinary discovery when archaeologists revealed the tomb of the couple near the township of Tepe i
Source: http://www.int.iol.co.za
October 10, 2007
Mural paintings dating back 11 000 years have been found in a building on a bank of the River Euphrates in northern Syria, a French archaeologist said on Tuesday.
Eric Coqueugniot said they were the oldest murals found in the Middle East.
"Geometric paintings - black, white and red - have been found on the wall of a house in Jadeh," he said, adding that they were discovered in late September in a circular house with a diameter of about seven metres.
Source: LiveScience
October 9, 2007
Ancient Greek craftsmen didn't need fancy math to cobble together the first catapult, a new study of ancient texts suggests. Archimedes' laws and theories just helped make the weapon better.
The first catapult in Europe flung into action around the fourth century B.C., prior to the invention of mathematical models that revolutionized ancient technologies, said Mark Schiefsky, a Harvard University classics professor who led the study.
"It seems that the early stages
Source: AP
October 10, 2007
Archeologists in Portugal have found more than 4,500 Roman coins bundled together inside the wall of a blacksmith's house dating from the fourth century.
Antonio Sa Coixao, who is leading excavations in Coriscada in northeastern Portugal, said Wednesday by telephone the 4,526 copper and bronze coins were inside a hollow wall.
Source: AP
October 10, 2007
Archaeologists have discovered a Roman cemetery from about 300 A.D. in suburban Copenhagen with about 30 graves, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
"It is something special and rare in Denmark to have so many (ancient Roman) graves in one place," archaeologist Rune Iversen was quoted as saying by the Roskilde Dagblad newspaper.
The graveyard's exact location in Ishoej, southwest of downtown Copenhagen, was being kept secret until the archaeologists from the near
Source: AP
October 10, 2007
A U.S. congressional panel defied President George W. Bush on Wednesday and approved a measure calling the killings of Armenians early in the last century genocide. Bush had warned this would damage U.S. goals in the Middle East.
The measure that would recognize the killings of Armenians as a genocide had been strongly opposed by Turkey, a key NATO ally that has provided support to U.S. efforts in Iraq.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee's 27-21 vote now sends the meas
Source: NYT
October 11, 2007
Turkey reacted angrily today to a House committee vote in Washington on Wednesday that condemned the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey during World War I as an act of genocide, calling the decision “unacceptable.”
In a rare and uncharacteristically strong condemnation, President Abdullah Gul criticized the vote by the House Foreign Relations Committee and warned that the decision could work against the United States.
“Unfortunately, some politicians in the United Sta
Source: JTA
October 9, 2007
The first and only team in 70 years is conducting field research on Jewish folklore in the historic region of Podolia, the only place in the Pale of Settlement where Jewish life survived the Holocaust intact.
The visiting scholars from St. Petersburg aren’t here to dwell on Jewish demise, however. They have come to document Jewish life in what expedition leader Valery Dymshits calls “the last Jewish city in the Soviet Union,” Mogilev-Podolsky.
As recently as the early 1
Source: NYT
October 10, 2007
... [His] Jehovah-like Daddy dominates the early chapters of “My Grandfather’s Son,” Justice Thomas’s selectively revealing, often harshly self-critical memoir. It’s a strange hybrid. The book begins as a moving evocation of a difficult childhood in the Deep South and, as Justice Thomas works his way though college and law school, takes on the outlines of an inspirational American success story.
The tone changes when Justice Thomas, fed up with liberal policies on race, accepts Ron
Source: AP
October 10, 2007
A first edition book by 18th-century writer Phillis Wheatley, who published her first poem when she was 13, was acquired by the University of South Carolina.
There are roughly 100 first editions of Wheatley's "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," Patrick Scott, director of rare books and special collections at the university's Thomas Cooper Library, said Thursday.
Wheatley, who was born in 1753 in Africa, was kidnapped by slave traders and sold on
Source: Voice of America
October 9, 2007
A new book explores how global warming is linked to the worst mass extinctions in earth's history. In Under a Green Sky, paleontologist Peter Ward recounts how a sharp CO2 rise accelerated dramatic environmental changes in the past, and what that can tell us about our future.
