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: Inside Higher Ed
August 7, 2007
The Advanced Placement program offers curriculums and testing in 37 areas — chemistry and calculus, art history and Latin literature, Chinese language and culture and European history, to name just a few. But there is no AP in African-American history.
Some school district officials have recently suggested that such an AP program be created — but the College Board is skeptical. College Board officials say their doubts have nothing to do with the significance of African-American hist
Source: http://www.bizjournals.com
August 7, 2007
The planned New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe received a $1 million gift from the Messengers of Healing Winds Foundation.
The gift is the largest ever made in New Mexico by the Santa Fe-based foundation, which focuses on supporting environmental programs, animal dignity and fine arts, education and social service projects in New Mexico, northwest Iowa, South Dakota and southern Florida.
The gift will help build exhibitions at the new 95,000-square-foot New Mexico Hi
Source: Times (UK)
August 7, 2007
The future of history as an A level subject is at risk as pupils choose “soft options” such as media studies over traditional academic subjects, the head of an examiners’ body has said.
Katherine Tattersall, of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors, gave warning that the subject could disappear from some schools because it was no longer compulsory for pupils over 14.
Ms Tattersall said that history was one of the subjects that was threatened by alternative A
Source: AP
August 7, 2007
A year after adding books to its growing entertainment lineup, Starbucks Corp. said Tuesday it will soon begin selling its third pick, a collection of 50 stories in an oral history project compiled on book and CD.
Edited by Peabody Award winner Dave Isay, "Listening Is An Act of Love: A Celebration of American Lives from the StoryCorps Project" will go on sale at Starbucks' more than 6,500 company-operated U.S. stores beginning Nov. 8, the company said.
First-
Source: http://uscnews.sc.edu
June 28, 2007
A theory put forth by a group of 25 geo-scientists suggests that a massive comet exploded over Canada, possibly wiping out both beast and man around 12,900 years ago, and pushing the earth into another ice age.
University of South Carolina archaeologist Dr. Albert Goodyear said the theory may not be such "out-of-this-world" thinking based on his study of ancient stone-tool artifacts he and his team have excavated from the Topper dig site in Allendale, as well as ones found
Source: http://www.24dash.com/
August 1, 2007
Herefordshire Council is implementing its plans to preserve the Rotherwas Ribbon archaeological find and protect it for future generations.
A full council meeting confirmed that work on the Rotherwas Relief Road had been stopped around the site since the discovery in April of the Bronze Age ribbon of fire-cracked stones.
The council also determined that no irreversible action be taken that could prejudice its preservation for future generations.
Source: http://www.echoroukonline.com
August 2, 2007
An important archaeological discovery has been made recently in the region of Batna (east of Algeria) which consists in prehistoric frescos that date back to some 3500 years.
Local experts are asking for the immediate intervention of the minister of culture to send international searchers to probe in the matter, because of the importance this unprecedented historical discovery. The province of Batna is famously known by its outdoor historical sites such as Timgad, Ouazana and Imedg
Source: http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk
August 7, 2007
Archaeologists have discovered a large group of ancient rock art in Perthshire, which they hope will shed more light on the area’s prehistoric inhabitants.
A team working on National Trust for Scotland (NTS) land as part of the Ben Lawers Historic Landscape Project found the previously undiscovered ‘cup-and-ring’ style markings on a hillside overlooking Loch Tay and Kenmore. The carvings could date back to Neolithic times and be up to 5,000 years old.
Source: http://www.irishexaminer.com
August 7, 2007
ANTI-M3 motorway protesters yesterday mounted a dawn vigil to defend a heritage site near the historic Hill of Tara.
Protect Tara supporters were triggered by speculation that the authorities were going ahead with plans to dismantle and “preserve as record” the so-called royal temple at Lismullin in Co Meath.
Feelings have run high, with heritage defenders claiming a priceless world treasure would be lost for ever if the motorway scheme goes ahead in its present form.
Source: http://www.thinkspain.com
August 7, 2007
Heartless vandals have destroyed cave paintings dating back thousands of years with graffiti.
Fluorescent yellow paint was sprayed over carvings, thought to be around 8,000 years old, inside the Cova de la Clau in Palma de Gandia, last week.
However, they left a 16,000-year-old engraving of a horse in the Cova del Parpalló untouched.
Source: http://www.womensenews.org
August 7, 2007
On Aug. 26 U.S. women mark the 87th anniversary of the 19th Amendment giving them the right to vote. By some measures there is plenty to celebrate. Women have turned out to vote at a higher rate than men since the 1980s.
In the 2006 midterm election 2 million more young women voted than in the previous comparable cycle, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, which credits the rise i
Source: WaPo
August 7, 2007
Should the government encourage assimilation?
The Bush administration is taking steps to do that. The Task Force on New Americans, created by executive order last year, recently presented initiatives that supporters say will help immigrants "become fully American."
Among the government initiatives is a Web site to direct immigrants to information on benefits, English classes and volunteer work. Another site offers resources for English and citizenship-test tea
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 7, 2007
Adolf Hitler's newly discovered record collection has revealed that he listened in private to the Jewish musicians and Russian composers branded "subhuman" by his regime.
The Nazi dictator's musical tastes have been revealed after nearly 100 of his gramophone discs were found in a dacha outside Moscow.
For the most part, the collection is fairly predictable - dominated by recordings of Wagner, Beethoven and Bruckner. But a sprinkling of Tchaikovsky, Borodin an
Source: NYT
August 7, 2007
TIMBUKTU, Mali — Ismaël Diadié Haïdara held a treasure in his slender fingers that has somehow endured through 11 generations — a square of battered leather enclosing a history of the two branches of his family, one side reaching back to the Visigoths in Spain and the other to the ancient origins of the Songhai emperors who ruled this city at its zenith.
"This is our family’s story,” he said, carefully leafing through the unbound pages. “It was written in 1519.”
Th
Source: Press Release--Alisa Giardinelli, Swarthmore College
August 6, 2007
The Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College is the new home for a rare collection of papers belonging to a central yet largely unknown figure in the effort to win women the right to vote. The papers of Mariana Wright Chapman, the president of the New York State Suffrage Association in the 1890s, had not been available to the public before their arrival at Swarthmore earlier this year.
Among the Chapman Collection are dozens of letters from famous women's rights advo
Source: Automotive News
April 6, 2007
Building an assembly plant in southeastern Indiana is no problem for Honda. But staffing it is another matter.
The Japanese automaker's challenge is hiring a diverse work force in an almost completely white rural area.
Honda wants to attract minority workers to a community known as one of about 10,000 "sundown towns" in the United States. Such towns once warned blacks not to "let the sun go down" on them -- meaning blacks could work but not live ther
Source: Las Vegas Sun
August 7, 2007
Art historians had known of the Van Gogh drawing, stored at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. But they had always wondered whether it was a copy of a completed painting.
Now, at last, the painting itself has been discovered - concealed under another painting in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Van Gogh Museum said Friday. The work, "Wild Vegetation," painted in June 1889, was discovered in an x-ray of "The Ravine," which Van Gogh painte
Source: Cambridge Evening News
August 7, 2007
Historians at Cambridge University have taken seven years to painstakingly extract 320-year-old stories of freak weather, bishops behaving badly and prisoners being held without trial. The 900,000-word eyewitness account of life in Restoration England is taken from a diary which required a specialist code-breaker to decipher and some have claimed rivals Samuel Pepys.The Entring Book diary of Roger Morrice, a Cambridge alumnus and former clergyman, was written in his own 17t
Source: AFP
August 7, 2007
A new analysis of the dental fossils
of human ancestors suggests that Asian populations
played a larger role than Africans in colonizing
Europe millions of years ago, said a study released
Monday.
The findings challenge the prevailing"Out of Africa"
theory, which holds that anatomically modern man first
arose from one point in Africa and fanned out to
conquer the globe, and bolsters the notion that Homo
sapiens evolved from different populations in
different parts of the globe.
Source: Live Science
August 7, 2007
North Americans have always taken the heat for killing off millions of American bison during the early 1800s. A new study, however, pins the blame on Europeans.Europe's advanced tanning expertise drove the large, iconic mammal to near extinction in the United States, according to a a review of international trade records, diaries and other historical documents conducted by University of Calgary environmental economist M. Scott Taylor.
"The story of the buff
