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: Telegraph (UK)
July 14, 2007
A painting by Sir Winston Churchill of his Chartwell estate near Westerham in Kent fetched 1 million pounds at Sotheby's in London yesterday, a world record auction price for a work by Britain's wartime prime minister.
The 76in x 63.5in (193cm x 161cm) landscape was painted in the war years of the early 1940s, about 20 years after Churchill moved into the much-modified Elizabethan manor house. The picture was bought by a private collector.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 14, 2007
It is one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century. But today an expedition is heading for a remote South Pacific island that they believe holds the key to finally solving the 70-year-old puzzle of the missing aviator Amelia Earhart.
Fifteen members of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (Tighar) will hunt for evidence that the American pilot and her navigator, Fred Noonan, may have crash-landed on a reef and died as castaways on the long-uninhabited atoll of
Source: NYT
July 14, 2007
Trying to build popularity, many public libraries across the country have been looking more like big chain bookstores, offering comfortable easy chairs, coffee bars and displays of the latest best sellers.
But the new library in this growing Phoenix suburb has gone a step further. It is one of the first in the nation to have abandoned the Dewey Decimal System of classifying books, in favor of an approach similar to that at Barnes & Noble, say, where books are shelved in “neighb
Source: CNN
July 13, 2007
All of Egypt's royal mummies will get identity checks after scientists found one was wrongly identified as a pharaoh, Egypt's chief archaeologist said.
Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said on Thursday he would use computed tomography, or CT, scanning and DNA to test more than 40 royal mummies at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
In June, the mummy long thought to have been King Tuthmosis I was found to be a young man who died from a
Source: National Security Archive
July 13, 2007
Throughout the 1960s and most of the 1970s, while the U.S. government conducted its space reconnaissance program under a veil of absolute secrecy, officials debated whether information about the program (including the "fact of" its existence and certain photographs) should be disclosed to other elements of the government, public, allies, and even the Soviet Union, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and archival research and posted today by the Nation
Source: http://thinkprogress.org
July 13, 2007
Yesterday in an interview with right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) praised President Bush’s policies in Iraq and predicted that Bush will be remembered by historians as a great President:
HEWITT: Oh, that’s fascinating. Last question, how do you think history’s going to evaluate George W. Bush?
LIEBERMAN: Well, I personally believe look, mistakes were made, and I know the polls are down, but I think on the largest issue of our time, which is the
Source: CNN
July 13, 2007
Shaded by a massive 400-year-old oak tree and perched above the rippling waters of the Pedernales River, it was known as the "Texas White House."
President Lyndon Johnson served barbecue to world dignitaries at the ranch in the rolling hill country 70 miles west of Austin, and first lady Lady Bird Johnson lived there for three decades after her husband died.
With her death Wednesday at the age of 94, the National Park Service will soon take over the 4,000 squ
Source: AP
July 13, 2007
Jerusalem's mayor has asked the Turkish government to return a 2,700-year-old tablet uncovered in an ancient subterranean passage in the city, suggesting that it could be a "gesture of goodwill" between allies.
Known as the Siloam inscription, the tablet was found in a tunnel hewed to channel water from a spring outside Jerusalem's walls into the city around 700 B.C. — a project mentioned in the Old Testament's Book of Chronicles. It was discovered in 1880 and taken by th
Source: Reuters
July 13, 2007
MASYAF, Syria (Reuters) - Nestled at the foot of Syria's coastal mountains, an ancient citadel has been put on the tourist map by restoration and excavation that revealed mysteries of the medieval Assassins sect, once based here.
Saladin, the great Muslim leader, laid siege to Masyaf castle in the 12th century. But he thought twice before launching an assault on the Assassins, who had a reputation for mounting daring operations to slay their foes.
"Anyone who tried
Source: National Geographic News
July 12, 2007
Seven skeletons discovered in a remote New Mexico canyon were victims of a brutal massacre that may have been part of an ancient campaign of genocide, archaeologists say.
The victims—five adults, one child, and one infant—were members of an obscure native culture known as the Gallina, which occupied a small region of northwestern New Mexico around A.D. 1100 (see New Mexico map).
The culture suddenly vanished around 1275, as the last of its members either left the region
Source: NYT
July 13, 2007
Britain’s most senior judge, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, announced on Thursday that, starting Jan. 1, the wigs would no longer be worn in most trial courts; neither would gowns. Ending (at least for now) a long, hot debate over whether and how to modernize and simplify the elaborate standards of formal court dress, Lord Phillips, the Lord Chief Justice, decided to dispense with the wigs and with court robes entirely in all civil and family cases, and to simplify them in criminal court.
Source: NYT
July 12, 2007
A Mexican judge issued an injunction on Thursday that could prevent former President Luis Echeverria from facing trial for his alleged role in a 1968 massacre of leftist students.
Echeverria, 85, has been under house arrest since late last year after a Mexican court ordered him to be tried over the so-called Tlatelolco massacre.
Echeverria's lawyer Juan Velasquez told Reuters a federal judge had granted him a type of injunction commonly used in Mexico on the grounds tha
Source: AP
July 11, 2007
Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady who championed conservation and worked tenaciously for the political career of her husband, former President Lyndon B. Johnson, died Wednesday, a family spokeswoman said. She was 94.
Lady Bird Johnson returned home late last month after a week at Seton Medical Center, where she'd been admitted for a low-grade fever. Her husband died in 1973.
She died at her Austin home of natural causes about 4:18 p.m. CDT, said Elizabeth Christi
Source: WaPo
July 13, 2007
Even as the Nixon administration was plotting in 1971 to destroy John F. Kerry, then the young, charismatic leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the president's top political strategist apparently didn't get the memo.
Instead, the operative, Murray Chotiner, wrote his own note advocating that the Republican Party recruit Kerry. Kerry did go to Yale University, after all; he must be one of them, Chotiner surmised. "He is a Yale graduate and is inclined toward the 'establi
Source: Guardian
July 13, 2007
A hot wind stirred up the desert sand. Fida ag Muhammad, a wispy man with a blue-grey turban, hurried across the street. Reaching a mud-brick building, he quickly unlocked its corrugated iron door and pushed it open. A beam of soft early-morning light pierced the darkness. On a metal table covered with a red bath towel sat half a dozen leather-bound manuscripts. Carefully untying the string around a small, weathered pouch, Muhammad pulled back its flaps to reveal a sheaf of yellowed papers. Thei
Source: Guardian
July 13, 2007
Files on millions of victims of Stalinist repression, including those who perished in the Soviet Union's infamous gulags, have been declassified, Russia's federal security service announced yesterday.
The documents, dating from 1920 to 1950, are expected to shed new light on some of the most notorious excesses of the post-revolutionary and Stalinist eras, including Stalin's forced collectivisation of agriculture in the early 1930s, in which up to 10 million people died.
Source: Earth Times
July 12, 2007
Thousands of marchers will be holding a gay rally outside a landmark department store in downtown Hamburg this summer, celebrating the fact that in Germany the mayors of the two largest cities, Berlin and Hamburg, are gay and that same-sex couples can form legally recognized unions. But few of these marchers will be aware of newly released documents revealing that the Gestapo staged a lightning raid on this very department store 70 years ago this summer, hauling off about 40 store employees on s
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
July 13, 2007
On July 12, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved its version of the fiscal year ‘08 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill. The bill included $10 million for the NHPRC, the same amount passed by the House. Unlike the House, the Senate Committee Report language does not direct how the funding should be allocated between grants and administrative costs. The House bill allocated $8 million for grants and $2 million for administrative costs.
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
July 13, 2007
The U.S. Department of Education recently announced the award of $116 million for 122 new grants to improve the quality of American history education. The grants are being awarded to school districts in 40 states nationwide.
The Teaching American History (TAH) grant program supports three-year projects to improve teachers’ knowledge and understanding of traditional American history through intensive, on-going professional development.
Source: AP
July 13, 2007
A Hindu clergyman made history by offering the Senate’s morning prayer, but only after police officers removed three shouting protesters from the visitors’ gallery. The clergyman, Rajan Zed, director of interfaith relations at a Hindu temple in Reno, Nev., gave the brief prayer that opens each day’s Senate session. As he stood at the lectern, two women and a man began shouting “this is an abomination” from the gallery. They were arrested and were charged with disrupting Congress. The man told a
