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.thisisbucks.co.uk
June 1, 2007
A dispute has broken out over which watering hole has been serving ale the longest in south Bucks after a historian raised doubts about how old The Royal Standard of England is.
The pub in Brindle Lane claims to have served ale since the 11th century and is said to have housed both King Charles I and II through its history.
But these claims have been questioned by historian Miles Green, who believes the first evidence of it as a drinking venue is from as recently as 183
Source: http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com
June 1, 2007
Now retired, the nine-term Republican congressman from Georgia was on Maui to promote his historical novel, "Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th."
"History is actually lived forward – it's studied backwards, but it's lived forward," Gingrich said. "There's no finer place to teach former lessons that relate to today than Pearl Harbor."
Written by Gingrich and historian William R. Forstchen, the book is the pair's ninth collaboration and th
Source: Newsweek
June 4, 2007
Four decades after the battle [for Jerusalem in 1967], Israeli leaders still refer glowingly to Jerusalem as the "eternal, undivided capital" of the Jewish state. But the mantra is accurate only as myth. Even as they celebrate the 40th anniversary of the war this week, a growing number of Israeli voices are saying the once unthinkable: that Jerusalem may never truly be united. The city is now Israel's poorest metropolis; ambitious young people prefer making their living in the country'
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
June 3, 2007
It was a last-minute addition, almost an afterthought.
But against virtually all expectations, the archaeological excavation of the President's House, now more than two months running, has uncovered powerful physical evidence evoking presidents and slaves, eliciting excitement and deep interest from the thousands who have packed the public observation platform to view the site at Sixth and Market Streets.
In response, the city and Independence National Historical Park h
Source: MSNBC
June 1, 2007
Muammar Kaddafi has become something of a poster child in the administration's fight against terror. But back in 1981, he was said to be behind a hit squad bound for Washington, Ronald Reagan recalls in his newly published diaries. Just how serious was the Libyan threat?...
A former Reagan administration official, who asked for anonymity when talking about details that may still be sensitive, told NEWSWEEK that intelligence reporting at the time suggested a complex plot. The Libyans
Source: NYT
June 3, 2007
First, in late 2002, came a red 1959 Seagrave from Elmwood Place, Ohio, a 12-cylinder quint — meaning it had a pump, an aerial ladder, a ground ladder, a booster tank and a hose. He bought it on eBay for $7,300. He’d collected antique all-wheel-drive dump trucks from the same company before. Why not try one of their fire engines?
Next came a cream-colored 1959 Pirsch ladder truck from Bergen County that was sitting by the road in Elizabeth, N.J., with a for-sale sign because the own
Source: David Sanger in the NYT
June 3, 2007
For the first time, the Bush administration is beginning publicly to discuss basing American troops in Iraq for years, even decades to come, a subject so fraught with political landmines that officials are tiptoeing around the inevitable questions about what the United States’ long-term mission would be there.
President Bush has long talked about the need to maintain an American military presence in the region, without saying exactly where. Several visitors to the White House say th
Source: NYT
June 2, 2007
A federal judge gave doctors for John W. Hinckley Jr., who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981, more flexibility to help Mr. Hinckley rejoin society. Officials at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, where Mr. Hinckley is under treatment, sought to loosen restrictions on how far in advance they must alert the Secret Service when they take Mr. Hinckley into the community to attend baseball games, the theater and other events. Hospital officials were required to alert the Secret Service of any
Source: MSNBC
June 1, 2007
Who is Hillary Rodham Clinton? In his new biography, “A Woman in Charge,” Carl Bernstein, who shared a Pulitzer Prize with Bob Woodward for their coverage of Watergate for The Washington Post, tries to answer that question. He follows her life from her childhood in the Midwest to her college days at Wellesley to Yale Law School, where she meets Bill Clinton, to Arkansas to the White House and to New York as a U.S. Senator. With Hillary Clinton running for president, Bernstein gives readers anoth
Source: LiveScience
May 30, 2007
Maybe Pocahontas had a thing for men with superior mapping skills.
Captain John Smith, the famous founder of America's first settlement, at Jamestown, Virginia, traced the Chesapeake Bay river system with remarkable precision from his primitive sailboat, geographers have discovered.
Using a sophisticated "remapping" system that merges old maps with the modern lay of the land, the team from Maryland's Salisbury University found that Smith's 1608 exploratory cha
Source: Newsday
June 1, 2007
The Coney Island History Project, an organization launched in 2004 to begin an oral history archive for the iconic area, opened the doors yesterday to its first home. Its exhibition space is located underneath the Cyclone roller coaster in a building that has sold souvenirs, ice cream and hot dogs over the years.
"It's absolutely incredible because not only is it great because the memories of Coney Island will be preserved for future generations, but the location couldn't be b
Source: NewsHour (PBS)
May 30, 2007
In collaboration with the Smithsonian Institute, the Museo Alameda, which opened in San Antonio, Texas, in April, showcases Hispanic influence in American art and music.
Source: http://www.haaretz.com
March 18, 2007
More than a quarter of Israel's Arab citizens believe the Holocaust never happened, and nearly two thirds of Israeli Jews avoid entering Arab towns, a poll by a University of Haifa sociologist showed Sunday.
The poll, conducted by Sami Smoocha, a prominent sociologist at the University of Haifa, showed a wide gap of mistrust, anger and fear between Israel's majority Jews and its Arab citizens, who make up a fifth of Israel's citizens.
In its most dramatic finding, the p
Source: Guardian
May 31, 2007
Iran's powerful intelligence ministry has stepped up its war of nerves with the west by telling the country's academics they will be suspected of spying if they maintain contact with foreign institutions or travel abroad to international conferences.
The blunt warning has been issued by the ministry's counter-espionage director in an atmosphere of rising suspicion and paranoia as Iran claims to have cracked a CIA-backed spy ring and has charged three American citizens with spying.
Source: Times (UK)
June 1, 2007
For centuries, rats and fleas have been fingered as the culprits responsible for the Black Death, the medieval plague that killed as many as two thirds of Europe’s population.
But historians studying 14th-century court records from Dorset believe they may have uncovered evidence that exonerates them. The parchment records, contained in a recently-discovered archive, reveal that an estimated 50 per cent of the 2,000 people living in Gillingham died within four months of the Black Dea
Source: http://www.thestatesman.net
May 31, 2007
Pakistan’s Education Min-ister has defended the inclusion in school textbooks of chapters dealing with Hindu monarchs in the subcontinent, saying history deals with historical events and not religious incidents.
The Islamic alliance Muthahida Majlis Amal (MMA) had objected to inclusion of the Ashok and Chandra Gupta Maurya period in history textbooks, whose curriculum is otherwise confined to Islamic periods and its rulers.
The chapters dealing wi
Source: Mark Hare, columnist, in the democratandchronicle.com
May 31, 2007
When I read that Mayor Robert Duffy's proposed city budget would downsize and outsource the position of city historian to save about $58,500 a year, I recalled that more than 20 years ago, the trustees at the George Eastman House secretly discussed giving away the museum's collection of films and photos.
Kodak had grown weary of the annual expense of a growing collection, and the trustees had approached the Smithsonian Institution about taking them all — lock, stock and Ansel Adams.
Source: BBC
May 29, 2007
A student has found the passport used by Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann to enter Argentina in 1950.
The passport was issued by the Red Cross, in the Italian city of Genoa, under the name of Ricardo Klement.
The student found the passport among court documents while investigating Eichmann's capture in 1960 by the Israeli secret service.
He was tried and sentenced to death in Israel in 1962 for his role in mass killings of Jews during World War II.
Source: BBC
May 31, 2007
Several dozen people have taken part in a rare public protest in the Chinese capital Beijing, against what they see as Japanese crimes during World War II.
About 30 people marched to the Japanese embassy with banners and slogans.
Such protests are rare in China, although the government has sanctioned a number of rallies against the Japanese wartime treatment of Chinese.
However the number of these demonstrations has fallen in recent years.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 1, 2007
Human ancestors developed the ability to walk upright while living in trees rather than on open land as previously believed, scientists say.
The traditional view that our ancient relatives developed the ability to manage on two feet only when they moved out of the forests to live on the open savannahs of east Africa is mistaken, according to ground-breaking new research.
British scientists, who spent a year in Indonesian rainforests observing orang-utans, believe the co
