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: History Today
September 27, 2007
A new national heritage police authority in Cambodia is enlisting the help of international security agencies to stop looting at its ancient sites. The Angkor Wat temples were protected by Unesco after years of fighting ended in the 1990s but remote sites have suffered extensive looting. US special agents and Cambodia’s agencies have been meeting to share expertise.
Source: History Today
September 28, 2007
Papers declassified at the [UK] National Archives reveal British and American authorities opposed the harsh Soviet prison regime forced on Nazi deputy Rudolf Hess. Files show Britain argued against attempts to turn Berlin’s Spandau prison, jointly run by the four victorious Allied powers, into a gulag. Cold War tension further escalated in 1974 when Hess, who committed suicide 13 years later, was thought to have cancer. British governor Robert de Burlet stated: "Whatever horrors the Germans
Source: Reuters
October 1, 2007
A federal judge on Monday tossed out part of a 2001 order by President George W. Bush that lets former presidents keep some of their presidential papers secret indefinitely.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the U.S. Archivist's reliance on the executive order to delay release of the papers of former presidents is "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with law."
Criticized by historians, the November
Source: Anita Hill in an op ed in the NYT
October 2, 2007
ON Oct. 11, 1991, I testified about my experience as an employee of Clarence Thomas’s at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
I stand by my testimony.
Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” He may even be entitled to feel abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the Supreme Court.
But I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.
Source: NYT
October 2, 2007
Sixteen years after the remains of more than 400 enslaved and free Africans were unearthed in Lower Manhattan, a new monument will open to the public on Friday to honor a place once called the Negroes Burial Ground.
The memorial, the African Burial Ground National Monument, designates the burial site of the remains, which were discovered in 1991 by workers excavating the foundation for the Ted Weiss Federal Building at 290 Broadway.
Commissioned by the federal governmen
Source: Editor & Publisher
October 1, 2007
CHICAGO The second annual Gay History Project, a package of features centered on October's Gay History Month, will run in more than 30 gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) newspapers, the project's founder and coordinator, Philadelphia Gay News Publisher Mark Segal said Monday.
Print circulation of the papers that have agreed to carry the articles tops 700,000 -- it "the largest GLBT media promotion in the history of the gay press," according to Segal.
Source: BBC
October 2, 2007
Falklands veterans, relatives of the fallen and VIPs were at the unveiling of a Welsh national monument.
The ceremony in Cardiff's civic centre marked 25 years since 255 British servicemen died retaking the islands.
The monument was created from five tonnes of Mount Harriet granite rock, located by veteran Andy "Curly" Jones, from Libanus, near Brecon, Powys.
Source: BBC
October 2, 2007
Historic monuments agency Cadw has won its bid to preserve a huge coal tip near Wrexham for its heritage value. Councillors voted not to remove the tip at the former Bersham Colliery in Rhostyllen which closed 21 years ago.
The decision followed a plea by Cadw to keep the tip because of its importance to the "appreciation of the development of north east Wales."
Wrexham's planners recommended removing the 6m tonnes of shale, which could be sold on to the build
Source: BBC
October 2, 2007
A twinning project between Aberdeen and a German town has united wartime memories in a book.
Older writers from Aberdeen and Regensburg combined to launch the book recording their experiences of World War II.
Representatives from both countries launched Connections - Verbindungen at the Gordon Highlanders Museum in Aberdeen on Tuesday.
The memoirs are written in both German and English.
The project began after English tutor Frank Cefali from Regensbu
Source: International Herald Tribune
October 2, 2007
Sixty-two years after dying of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Anne Frank continues to haunt countless readers of her diary, with its youthful exuberance, dry humor and shattering hints of the violence that would sweep away her world. But fewer people know of the soaring chestnut tree that gave comfort to Anne while she and her family hid for more than two years during the German occupation....
In recent years, fresh ills have befallen the tree: fungi have turned alm
Source: NJ Star Ledger
September 23, 2007
Gov. James E. McGreevey's downfall came at the hands of a former staffer named Golan Cipel. But in the state Archives, which keeps the papers of governors and their aides dating to the 1700s, there is no record of Cipel's work.
Early in his tenure, McGreevey was stung by the revelation that a key staffer on his transition team was an ex-convict. But there is no record of anything that occurred at McGreevey's transition office.
There are no gubernatorial calendars, no da
Source: Chicago Tribune
October 2, 2007
[The anger of the sailors aboard the USS Liberty, the ship attacked by Israel during the 6 Day War (Israel has always said it was a mistake)] has been stoked by the declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel, including some quoted in this article for the first time, which strengthen doubts about the U.S. National Security Agency's position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots -- communications, according to
Source: Baltimore Sun
September 30, 2007
In a county that has museums for boats, rural art and duck decoys, John T. Lee Sr. says there is a noticeable omission in Harford's repertoire.
For more than 10 years, Lee has advocated for establishing a museum dedicated to African-American history in Harford County.
"We haven't had anything that our people can really associate with and feel good about, where people can look and say 'That's my uncle, my grandfather,' and make them feel proud and really learn the h
Source: AFP
September 27, 2007
Lucky fat ladies, porcelain pigs, ceramic musicians and giant Buddhas are crammed into Hong Kong's antique boutiques, but some experts, backed by Chinese law, say many of them shouldn't be here at all.
By a curious twist of history and geopolitics, Hong Kong has become the legitimate outlet for ill-gotten treasures of Chinese history, a legal market for illegally obtained objets d'art that can and do command huge sums.
On Hollywood Road, Hong Kong's famed strip of art a
Source: Times (UK)
October 2, 2007
Grim evidence of how the Incas “fattened up” children before sacrificing them to their gods has emerged from a new analysis of hair from two 500-year-old mummies preserved near the summit of a volcano.
The remains of the 15-year-old girl known as the “Llullaillaco Maiden” and the seven-year-old “Llullaillaco Boy” revealed that their diets changed markedly in the 12 months up to their deaths, shedding new light on the rituals of the ancient Andean civilisation.
The resea
Source: Independent
October 1, 2007
When the Neolithic farmers and hunters of Skara Brae first built their stone houses on Orkney, they were careful to place their settlement more than a mile from the coast to avoid their homes being pounded by the harsh winter storms that sweep across the Bay of Skaill.
Some 5,000 years later, the custodians of Europe's most complete prehistoric village no longer have the luxury of land to shelter them from the sea. Slowly but surely, erosion has brought the sea ever closer to the gr
Source: http://www.nature.com
September 27, 2007
The discovery of an adze fashioned from Hawaiian basalt on a Tuamotu atoll in French Polynesia provides the first material evidence that ancient voyagers made an 8,000-kilometre round trip from the South Pacific to Hawaii and back again.
More than 2,000 years ago, seafarers from Samoa and Tonga ventured eastward to settle on more remote archipelagos in the Pacific Ocean, including the Cook Islands, Tahiti, and the Marquesas Islands, colonizing most of these places by 900 AD. Eventua
Source: AP
September 29, 2007
The Smithsonian Institution's maintenance backlog has grown to $2.5 billion as the museum complex faces problems such as corrosion of historic airplanes and leaky pools at the National Zoo, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released Friday.
The GAO noted some progress in addressing maintenance issues since its last report in 2005. But it urged the Smithsonian to more thoroughly consider alternatives to government funding — including charging admission — to addres
Source: Fox News
October 1, 2007
Officials at Grambling State University were meeting Monday after the school newspaper ran photographs of adults at a campus-run elementary school putting a noose around at least one child's neck.
Kindergarten and first-grade students at Alma J. Brown Elementary School were being taught why nooses are a symbol of racism, an article from the historically black university's student newspaper said.
The article said the children also were being taught about the "Jena S
Source: WSBTV.com (Atlanta)
October 1, 2007
Nazi hunters have tracked a suspected World War II concentration camp guard to Lawrenceville.
Members of the Justice Department's elite Nazi tracking force said Paul Henss, 85, served as a prison guard and attack dog handler at the notorious Dachau and Buchenwald Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany.
"It is not 100% true, what they charge me," said Henss Monday afternoon. Henss appeared confused as he tried to answer a barrage of questions from reporters Monday
