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: http://www.sys-con.com
June 7, 2007
SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and the Computer History Museum (CHM), based in Silicon Valley, today announced that the museum has acquired a new collection of rare computers and related items, made possible by a $250,000 donation from SAP. Determined to be of high quality and historical importance, this collection was found in a remote warehouse in northwestern Germany and was scheduled for destruction before CHM intervened. The donation, managed by the Corporate Social Responsibility team within SAP Globa
Source: http://www.tallahassee.com
June 6, 2007
It was appropriate that the NAACP's 29th annual Freedom Fund & Awards Banquet include a talk about Frenchtown.
Local historian Ann Roberts spoke of the history of the community that started in the 1700s as a 6-by-6-mile stretch of land that developed into a prominent black enclave, full of thriving business up until the end of segregation.
Later, the area became a magnet for crime, drugs and prostitution.
But don't despair, Roberts said. “The best is ye
Source: http://in.news.yahoo.com
June 7, 2007
Publishing houses cannot afford to forget anniversaries. Their dates with history are marked by glossy, sepia-tinted hardbounds and gala launches. The year 2007-that marks the 150th anniversary of the 1857 Uprising and the 60th year of independent India- is just the right time to package nationalism and sell history.The sexagenarian country has spawned quite a few books, including historian Ramachandra Guha's magnum opus India After Gandhi and India 60, an anthol
Source: AP
June 6, 2007
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - About 100 descendants of slaves from Montpelier and other Orange County plantations plan to share their stories and collect DNA samples this week that may piece together their history.
President James Madison's Montpelier and the Orange County African American Historical Society are hosting the reunion Friday through Sunday at the central Virginia estate in Montpelier Station. It it meant to educate and celebrate the cultural history of the descendant community.
Source: http://www.thepresstribune.com (Roseville, CA)
June 8, 2007
A Cirby School third-grade teacher is proving books and documentaries aren't the only ways to learn about the history of Roseville.
Students in Lisa Wegsteen's class last week staged several performances of an original play shedding light on the city's history. But in a unique twist, students' hands did all the acting.
Using specially decorated hand puppets, actors played a group of contemporary Cirby School students who want to learn more about their area's past.
Source: NYT
June 8, 2007
The history of the American spacesuit may be missing a chapter if NASA doesn’t change its plans.
While all the previous iterations of the suit — from John Glenn’s to Gene Cernan’s — are on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, the model used in the most recent spacewalks is not for a number of reasons, according to CollectSpace, a website about preserving the history of space exploration.First, it’s a fashion issue. NASA splurged on c
Source: http://www.state-journal.com
June 6, 2007
Helen Fairfax Holmes was a fire cat.
That's how Eastern Kentucky University visiting scholar and Frankfort resident Karen McDaniel describes her late friend.
Once, when the two were getting out of a car at Holmes' house, McDaniel tried to help the feeble woman to the door.
"She smacked my arm and said, "I don't need no help,'" McDaniel said. "I never tried to help her again like that. She was independent."
Holmes, forme
Source: http://www.sonomanews.com
June 8, 2007
For those with a keen knowledge of Sonoma history, Gen. Mariano Vallejo's tombstone in Mountain Cemetery has been a long-standing point of contention. The reason: The general's birth date is incorrect on the large slab of marble.
Now a collection of interested citizens is working with the living descendants of Vallejo to attempt to get this error fixed.
"We can actually set the date straight," said Martha McGettigan, great-great-granddaughter of Vallejo. "I thi
Source: http://miningjournal.net
June 6, 2007
More than 140 people came to learn about a forgotten time in history Tuesday at the Peter White Public Library in Marquette — leaving many in the audience astounded at the stories they heard and read.
“Vanished: German-American Civilian Internment, 1941-48,” put on by the Traces Museum in St. Paul, Minn., told the story of 15,000 German-Americans who were forced into internment camps.
The exhibits were displayed in one of the museum’s two converted buses, called a “BUS-
Source: http://www.dailypress.com
June 8, 2007
NORFOLK, Va. -- Their lightly armed spy ship was cruising the Mediterranean off the coast of Egypt, watching and eavesdropping during the Six-Day War in 1967 between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
The sky was clear and the sea calm. Suddenly, Israeli war planes swooped down and ships approached, firing at the deck as sailors aboard the Liberty struggled to save the Norfolk-based ship. The assault--40 years ago Friday--lasted as long as 75 minutes, k
Source: Buffalo News
June 8, 2007
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s sale of the prized bronze statue “Artemis and the Stag” earned $25.5 million Thursday at Sotheby’s auction house in New York City, setting records as the most expensive sculpture and antiquity sold through auctions.
Final sales from Thursday’s auction of 25 antiquities from the gallery’s permanent collection totaled $35.8 million, bringing profits from the gallery’s recent series of auctions to more than $64 million, not including Sotheby’s commission
Source: KUTV News (SLC)
June 7, 2007
The remains of seven American Indians unearthed by a home builder show several were shot point-blank in the head by Mormon settlers seeking revenge during a period of pitched violence in 1853, say scientists who plan to release their findings on Friday.
The bones were discovered by contractors digging in Nephi, about 70 miles south of Salt Lake City, last summer for a house that now stands over the site.
The victims, all males about 13 to 35 years old, are believed to
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 8, 2007
She was a beautiful young Chinese nurse, fresh from a Hong Kong training college. He was the epitome of glamour in war-wracked China, an American "Flying Tiger", one of the select group of fighter pilots who defended the supply chain across the Himalayas for the troops fighting the Japanese.
Amid the carnage, they fell in love, and the pilot - known to this day only by his nickname, Panny - promised to return after the war was over to find her.
It took 60 year
Source: NYT
June 8, 2007
BUTOVO, Russia — Barbed wire still lines the perimeter of the secret police compound here on the southern edge of Moscow where more, perhaps far more, than 20,000 people were shot and buried from August 1937 through October 1938, at the height of Stalin’s purges.
Now, gradually, Butovsky poligon — literally, the Butovo shooting range — is becoming a shrine to all of the victims of Stalin’s murderous campaigns. Grass-covered mounds holding the victims’ bones crisscross the pastoral f
Source: NYT Editorial
June 8, 2007
Many members of Congress were rightly outraged by the Cherokee Nation’s decision earlier this year to revoke the tribal citizenship of about 2,800 descendants of slaves once owned by the tribe. The tribe’s leaders have since tried to avoid any punishment by restoring partial rights to some black members. Congress should disregard that ruse and move ahead with legislation that would force the Cherokee to comply with their treaty obligations and court decisions that guarantee black members full ci
Source: Reuters
June 7, 2007
The Acropolis in Athens and Mexico's Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza are among the leaders in a competition, ending in one month, to choose the New Seven Wonders of the World, the organizers said on Thursday.
The winners will be chosen through a global online and phone vote, organizers of the New 7 Wonders of the World (www.new7wonders.com) competition said, a far cry from the methods used by the Greeks who chose the original Seven Wonders more
Source: Inside Higher Ed (Click on SOURCE for embedded links.)
June 7, 2007
Opposition — much of it in the United States — is growing to the vote last week by Britain’s main faculty union, the University and College Union, to encourage a boycott of Israeli academics. An online petition by Wednesday had more than 1,300 scholars from around the world — including several Nobel laureates — pledging that as long as the boycott call remains in effect, they will consider themselves to be like Israeli academics and will refuse to attend any meeting from which Israeli professors
Source: Inside Higher Ed
June 7, 2007
Google’s Library Project, which is in the process of digitizing millions of books at top university libraries around the world, announced a major expansion Wednesday: The 12 universities that make up the Committee on Institutional Cooperation have agreed to let Google digitize up to 10 million of their collective volumes — generally those from the most distinctive parts of their collections.
The announcement brings to 25 the number of universities involved in the Google project, whi
Source: AP
June 7, 2007
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Archaeologists unearthing the remains of George Washington's presidential home have discovered a hidden passageway used by his nine slaves, raising questions about whether the ruins should be incorporated into a new exhibit at the site.
The underground passageway is just steps from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. It was designed so Washington's guests would not see slaves as they slipped in and out of the main house.
"As you enter the heaven o
Source: Las Vegas Sun
June 7, 2007
Every time Bettye Kearse steps foot on former President James Madison's plantation, she feels like she's coming home. She has spent much of her adult life wondering about her family's saying, one passed down for generations: "Remember your name is Madison."
Kearse, a pediatrician, plans to join about 100 other descendants of Madison's slaves at Montpelier this weekend to share their stories and collect DNA samples that may piece together their history.
