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: Australian
June 6, 2007
Two hundred years ago, his ancestor Napolean Bonaparte laid siege to Europe, shaping modern history with one of the greatest military conquests of all time.
But for Charles Napoleon, who spent last weekend on the campaign stump, handing out leaflets at a market in the imperial city of Fontainebleau, a seat in the next French parliament would do just fine.
The 56-year-old is Napoleon's great-great-great-grandnephew. As head of the only branch of the Bonaparte family dir
Source: Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey)
June 6, 2007
Of all the stories of the Allied invasion at Normandy in World War II, perhaps none leaps off the pages of history like that of Leonard Lomell.
The 87-year-old Toms River resident was a staff sergeant and platoon leader with the elite 2nd Ranger Battalion, whose soldiers scaled a 100-foot seaside cliff during the invasion and destroyed five giant German guns to clear the way for allied troops.It's a story that's been told at countless reunions over the years, do
Source: AHA Blog
June 6, 2007
At 3:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944, Peter Fantacone was feeling queasy. He and his fellow sailors had spent the last few hours crossing the dark, choppy waters of the English Channel on a cramped landing craft, trying hard not to think about the grave danger that lay ahead. What the 18-year-old navy radioman saw next did little to settle his stomach. Two LCIs (Landing Craft for Infantry) that had been flanking his vessel were hit by German artillery fire, pitching bodies into the surf and staining the
Source: Press Release--David Wyman Institute
June 6, 2007
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel will deliver the keynote address at the fifth national conference of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, "Jewish Activists Who Shook the World: The Bergson Group, American Jewry, and the Holocaust."The conference will be held on Sunday, June 17, 2007, from 10 am to 5:30 pm, at the Fordham University School of Law, 140 West 62 St. (near Ninth Ave.), in New York City--right across from Lincoln Center. The confere
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
June 6, 2007
Publishing houses initially viewed Google’s Book Search, as the project is called, as a serious threat to their economic well-being. Many publishers, it should be said, stick by that assessment. But others have come to appreciate Google’s method for dealing with books under copyright: The search engine typically displays small sections of those books alongside links to sites where the complete texts can be purchased.
This has been so effective, says a representative of Oxford Univer
Source: http://www.news-gazette.com
June 5, 2007
A Champaign County judge this morning threw out two lawsuits filed as efforts to get the University of Illinois to retain Chief Illiniwek as its honored symbol.
"I would be telling the university to 'deal with it.' I would be subjecting the UI to many potential consequences and very clearly controlling the actions of the state. This is something that falls within their (the trustees') authority," Judge Michael Jones said. "The relief requested would have this court co
Source: BBC
June 6, 2007
The hearse used to carry wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill is being offered to the families of veterans of WWII free of charge for funeral services.
The hearse carried the former Prime Minister's coffin to his final resting place in Bladon, Oxon in 1965.
Bristol-based MW Funeral Directors is beginning the new service on Wednesday as a mark of appreciation for the veterans' wartime contribution.
The gesture marks 63 years since the D-day landings.
Source: Reuters
June 6, 2007
Italy's prehistoric iceman "Otzi" died from a shoulder wound inflicted by an arrow, according to research into his perfectly preserved 5,000-year old body.
Otzi, the oldest mummy unearthed, was found in the Italian Alps in 1991 wearing clothing made from leather and grasses and carrying a copper axe, a bow and arrows.
Though Otzi's body underwent several scientific tests to study life in the prehistoric age, it had so far been unclear whether he died from an a
Source: http://www.gainesville.com
June 6, 2007
Deteriorating historical sites in St. Augustine will get some much-needed relief while providing students with a hands-on learning experience when management of the properties is handed over to the University of Florida.
"It's an incredible opportunity for the whole university," said Roy Eugene Graham, director of Historic Preservation Programs at UF. "I can't tell you how excited we all are."UF will take over management of the sites Ju
Source: BBC
June 6, 2007
Israel wiped out much of the Egyptian Air Force on the morning of June 5, 1967, the first day of the war. Egyptian pilot Mustafa Hafez was stationed at one of the 11 Egyptian air bases that were targeted.
He told military historian and BBC website reader, David Nicolle, what happened that day:
In the build-up to war, I was sent to a squadron based at Kabrit, flying MiG-17Fs and MiG-17PF night fighters.
We didn't really think that there would be a war, and i
Source: BBC
June 4, 2007
To understand what is happening between Israel and the Palestinians now, you have to understand what happened in the Middle East war of 1967.
It took only six days for Israel to smash the armed forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria but over the last 40 years, the legacy of the war has shaped the conflict into what it is today.
The war made 250,000 more Palestinians - and more than 100,000 Syrians - into refugees. No peace is possible in the Middle East without solving their
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
June 6, 2007
History should be taught properly in schools as a way of teaching immigrants what it means to be British, David Cameron claimed yesterday.
The Tory leader warned that national identity had been deliberately weakened by constant attacks on the nation's culture.
He entered the debate about Britishness with an impassioned plea for a return to positive attitudes about the role of a citizen of the United Kingdom.
"You do not earn respect by constantly denig
Source: NYT
June 6, 2007
Queen’s Pier is a simple building, a few short columns and a low roof next to Hong Kong’s harbor, designed and built after World War II for official events like the arrival and departure of colonial governors.
The government’s Antiquities and Monuments Office classified the pier this spring in the highest category of historic buildings, as the scene of important events in the city’s colonial history. But the government planning office and an important legislative committee agreed on
Source: Advertiser (Australia)
June 5, 2007
IT'S a once in a century event - but blink and you'll miss it. At 12.34pm today, a sequential phenomenon will eventuate.
For that lonely 60 seconds in history, it will be 12.34pm on the fifth day of the sixth month in the year 2007.
Under the Australian standard time and date format, this means it will be 12.34pm on 5/6/07.
The 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 time and date sequence is rare and happens just once every 100 years.
Mathematically, it is a one-in-100
Source: AP
June 4, 2007
Egypt has refused to allow Portugal to feature its ancient Pyramids of Giza on postage stamps the European country wants to issue coinciding with a global contest to name the seven new wonders of the world.
Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the pyramids, which date back more than 4,000 years, would not be shown on any stamps.
"The council totally rejects any attempt to put the pyramids, the wonder of world wonders and the only wo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 6, 2007
Original copies of the dramatic dispatches sent by the Daily Telegraph correspondent who witnessed the Allied invasion of France go on display this week as the centre-piece of an exhibition at the D-Day Museum in Portsmouth.
F.W. (Freddie) Perfect was this newspaper's Special Naval Correspondent sent to cover the landings, reporting initially from on board the operations ship Largs, then from the beaches as the Allies forged into occupied France.
He went on to witness t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 6, 2007
Forty three years after Ku Klux Klansmen allegedly abducted, beat and drowned two young black men, two of the gang stared at each other across a courtroom yesterday as one broke the Klan's most precious oath and gave evidence against the other.
United not only by their past but also by their need to wear court-supplied hearing aids, James Ford Seale and Charles Edwards both affected a studied nonchalance to their alleged crimes as the latter recounted how they pounced on two local 1
Source: HNN Staff
June 5, 2007
NBC News tonight broadcast a story about the abandoned children conceived by Norwegian women and Nazi soldiers during World War II at Hitler's direction.
It was a dread dark secret. The offspring were often shunned and abandoned even by their own mothers after the Nazis fled Norway.
Today the children, now in their sixties, are demanding an accounting by Norway of their ordeal.
Source: Wired
May 22, 2007
It doesn't have a name yet, but when it's completed in 2011, the 2,001-foot-tall concrete-and-steel tower in the Sumida River region of Tokyo will be the tallest free-standing antenna in the world. Ostensibly, its purpose is to host all of the city's digital radio and television signals, plus a mobile TV network. But the massive transmitter will also broadcast Japan's global cultural significance.
It's no coincidence that the new structure resembles the old 1,092-foot-high Tokyo Tower, wh
Source: Reuters
June 5, 2007
The Vatican tried to enroll Roman Jewish men in its security forces in 1943 in order to save them from the Nazis, the Vatican's second in command said on Tuesday, rejecting charges that wartime Pope Pius XII was anti-Semitic.Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's Secretary of State, who ranks second only to the Pope in the Holy See hierarchy, made his comments at the presentation of a new book about Pius by Italian author Andrea Tornielli.
Bertone called accus
