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: International Herald Tribune
June 18, 2007
The Holocaust has always been marked by numbers. There was the numbering of arms in death camps and the staggering death toll where the words six million became both a body count and a synonym for an unspeakable crime.
After the Holocaust, Germany performed the necessary long division in paying token reparations to survivors. More recently, Swiss banks and European insurance companies have concealed bank account and policy numbers belonging to dead Jews. Only with the Holocaust have
Source: Boston Globe
June 18, 2007
Legend has it that Yale University's ultrasecret Skull and Bones society swiped the remains of American Indian leader Geronimo nearly a century ago from an army outpost in Oklahoma, and now Geronimo's great-grandson wants the remains returned.
Harlyn Geronimo, of Mescalero, N.M., wants to prove the skull and bones that were purported spirited from the Indian leader's burial plot in Fort Sill, Okla., to a stone tomb that serves as the club's headquarters are in fact those of his grea
Source: Tahlequah Daily Press
June 18, 2007
In a year riddled with history-making tribal events, the Cherokee Nation added yet another first to its roster: a formal, public debate between candidates for principal and deputy chief.
Candidates included incumbent Principal Chief Chad Smith and Stacy Leeds, and incumbent Deputy Chief Joe Grayson Jr. and Raymond Vann. The event, sponsored by the Cherokee Phoenix, was held at the Tahlequah Armory Municipal Center, with over 300 people in attendance...
Source: CNN
June 18, 2007
Cambodia offers plenty of Khmer Rouge "killing fields" attractions. There is a grisly genocide museum complete with torture instruments and former mass graves that draw camera-toting tourists.
But for the country's school children, the Khmer Rouge remain off the curriculum, leaving students virtually clueless about how the now-defunct communist group became a killing machine in late 1970s.
Now that knowledge gap may at least be partially filled through the new
Source: Scotsman
June 18, 2007
IT IS known by superstitious actors as "the Scottish play", but a pair of historians are now questioning how much William Shakespeare's Macbeth actually belonged to England's most famous playwright.
In a radio programme to be aired today, Scots historian Fiona Watson and literary expert Molly Rourke claim the story of Macbeth was penned by a Scottish monk on St Serf's Island in the middle of Loch Leven 400 years before William Shakespeare even drew breath.
Source: The Guardian
June 18, 2007
Experts in Berlin's wartime bunkers have announced the discovery of a forgotten Nazi military school buried under a man-made hill on the western edge of the city.
The army academy, designed by Nazi architect Albert Speer, is encased in the Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain), a 116-metre (380ft)-high mound in Berlin which was constructed from the 26m cubic metres of the capital's wartime rubble.
The unfinished building, for which Nazi leader Adolf Hitler laid the foundation
Source: Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
June 18, 2007
The Oversight Committee has been investigating whether White House officials violated the Presidential Records Act by using e-mail accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee and the Bush Cheney ‘04 campaign for official White House communications. This interim staff report provides a summary of the evidence the Committee has received to date, along with recommendations for next steps in the investigation...
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History
June 13, 2007
On June 13, 2007, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, by voice vote, approved (H.R. 1255) and a companion bill (S. 886), the “Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007.” The bills are now ready for consideration on the Senate floor. However, we have learned that a temporary hold has been put on the bill to allow concerns expressed by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and some other Republicans to be addressed before proceeding with floor action.
On March 14, 2007, by
Source: NYT
June 15, 2007
To the casual observer, Europeans -- who often seemed short, even to me (I'm 5-foot-7), when I first began traveling a lot in the 1970s -- now often seem tall by American standards. And that casual observation matches what careful researchers have found.
The data show that Americans, who in the words of a recent paper by the economic historian John Komlos and Benjamin Lauderdale in Social Science Quarterly, were ''tallest in the world between colonial times and the middle of the 20t
Source: Washington Post
June 17, 2007
Up on the surface, the signs of the trouble at the Jefferson Memorial are small: A few blacktop patches over uneven seams in some concrete. A cordoned-off section where the sea wall has slipped below the front plaza. The "tilt meter" boxes that visitors can't see unless they know where to look.
Underground, though, the problems may be huge: Slowly, almost imperceptibly, parts of the complex seem to be sinking into the mud.
It's probably not endangering the maj
Source: New Jersey Star-Ledger
June 17, 2007
Newly released files from the lynching of two black couples more than 60 years ago contain a disturbing revelation: The FBI investigated suspicions that a three-term governor of Georgia sanctioned the murders to sway rural white voters during a tough election campaign.
The 3,725 pages obtained by the Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act do not make conclusions about the still-unsolved killings at Moore's Ford Bridge. But they raise the possibility that Eugene Talmad
Source: The Guardian
June 17, 2007
They gave us the word "person" and invented a symbol of iron rule later adopted by the fascists. Some even argue it was they who really moulded Roman civilisation.
Yet the Etruscans, whose descendants today live in central Italy, have long been among the great enigmas of antiquity. Their language, which has never properly been deciphered, was unlike any other in classical Italy. Their origins have been hotly debated by scholars for centuries.
Genetic research
Source: Washington Post
June 17, 2007
Japan's Supreme Court has rejected appeals by dozens of Chinese seeking compensation for being forced into slave labor during World War II, their lawyer said Saturday. It was the second such decision in days by Japan's top court.
The 42 former Chinese laborers had sought $6.89 million in damages from the Japanese government and 10 companies they worked for, including major contractors and mining operators. The lawsuit was originally filed in 1997, and only half the laborers are st
Source: International Herald Tribune
June 15, 2007
[A group of] women, some from western Germany, others from the former communist east, have been meeting...once a month since 1996. They share memories, celebrate birthdays and above all struggle to have their past recognized.
"We are Germany's forgotten wartime prisoners," said Edith Protze, 79.
All of them had been seized at random by Red Army soldiers during the spring of 1945 and transported across Russia to Siberia, where they spent years in labor camps. A
Source: BBC News
June 17, 2007
Fifty seven years ago, the author Ernest Hemingway inaugurated a big game fishing competition in Cuba. Held almost annually and despite tensions between the US and Cuba, the four-day event is still proving popular.
Like all the best fishing stories, mine began in a bar.
One evening in Havana I was introduced to a man called Stewart, an affable commercial manager in a London building firm. It turned out he was part of the English team i
Source: BBC News
June 17, 2007
A Roman road has been found by workers building a controversial £840m natural gas pipeline across Wales.
The historic roadway was discovered in the Brecon Beacons, on the path of the 190-mile (320km) National Grid pipe from Milford Haven to Gloucestershire. Neil Fairburn, archaeology project manager for National Grid, said the road was found as digging began, but the pipe would still have to cross it.
A local community councillor said
Source: BBC News
June 17, 2007
Vienna-based historian Dr Barry McLoughlin never expected to find an Irish name while researching the fate of Austrians who died in Stalin's purges in the Soviet Union of the 1930s.
But when the name Patrick Breslin appeared in a Moscow News newspaper article in 1989, it was to begin a journey of discovery which would tell the tragic stories of three of Stalin's victims. Millions died in the purges, but few realised that among them were a number of
Source: The Montreal Gazette
June 16, 2007
You wouldn't think that a rusty old barrel is much of an attraction. But the one that sits near the entrance of the U.S. National Second World War Museum in New Orleans manages to draw crowds. Why? Because it represents the death knell for Nazi Germany's attempt to make a nuclear weapon.
This particular barrel was one of 29 aboard a ferry crossing Lake Tinnsjo in Norway on its way to Germany. The "Hydro" was sunk by Norwegian saboteurs in 1944 and the barrel languished at
Source: Philadelphia Daily News
June 16, 2007
TULSA, Okla. - A concrete vault encasing a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere buried a half-century ago may have been built to withstand a nuclear attack but it couldn't beat back the natural onslaught of moisture.
At a Friday ceremony complete with a couple of drum rolls, crews removed a multilayered protective wrapping caked with red mud, revealing a vintage vehicle that was covered in rust and wouldn't crank.There were a few bright spots, literally: shiny chrome w
Source: Charlotte Observer
June 16, 2007
Most politicians would love a chance to edit their page in the history books. Gov. Mike Easley's staff actually did.
Last year, members of Easley's press office heavily rewrote an entry on him in a book by state-employed historians on North Carolina's governors. Over several drafts, they deleted a reference to a failed U.S. Senate bid, speculation that he dislikes campaigning and a note that he had a boyhood reputation "for making mischief." They added a quote from Easley
