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.forthoodsentinel.com
May 27, 2007
The Families of more than 88,000 fallen troops continue to suppress the “what if” thoughts in the backs of their minds as they await news of what happened to their loved ones who were taken prisoner of war or were listed as missing in action since World War I. The vast majority are World War II veterans, but about 1,200 still are unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. ...The people who work to find fallen warriors and return them to their families are part of the
Source: NYT
May 26, 2007
After months of intense discussions, negotiations between a New York antiquities collector and the Italian government have bogged down over a demand that she never be pursued by Italy again, several people close to the talks say.
Italy is seeking the return of nine artifacts from the collector, Shelby White, contending that they were looted from its soil.
Lawyers for both sides had been optimistic earlier this year that a deal could be struck. But an impasse developed o
Source: NPR
May 25, 2007
Public.resource.org has taken more than 6,200 low-resolution photographs posted on the Smithsonian site and posted them on flickr.com, as an act of protest over what public.resource head Carl Malamud calls the Smithsonian's unnecessary restrictions on use of the images and dubious claims of its ownership of them.
The protest raises interesting questions over who owns the images in "America's museum" — and whether the public should have unfettered access to them.
Source: AP
May 25, 2007
Archaeologists diving into a lake in the crater of a snowcapped volcano found wooden scepters shaped like lightning bolts that match 500-year-old descriptions by Spanish priests and conquerors writing about offerings to the Aztec rain god.
The lightning bolts — along with cones of copal incense and obsidian knives — were found during scuba-diving expeditions in one of the twin lakes of the extinct Nevado de Toluca volcano, at more than 13,800 feet above sea level.
Scien
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 25, 2007
One of the so-called Princes in the Tower allegedly murdered by Richard III actually survived and ended life as a bricklayer, according to an historian.
David Baldwin, who lectures at the University of Leicester, believes that Edward, the elder prince, died of natural causes and that Richard, the younger Prince, was secretly sent to live with his mother.After their father, King Edward IV, died, the princes - aged 12 and nine - were placed in the Towe
Source: Slate summary
May 25, 2007
The cover article commemorates the 40th anniversary of Israel's Six-Day War. In light of continuing violence in the Middle East, it "has come to look like one of history's pyrrhic victories." The Jewish state's triumph over neighboring Arab forces left Israelis "intoxicated by victory and the Arabs paralysed by humiliation." The subsequent land grab gave rise to today's conflict, "feeding poison into the wounded relations between Islam and the West as a whole." The
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
May 25, 2007
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) would benefit under the House Appropriations’ Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies fiscal year (FY) 2008 “Chairman’s Mark” that was approved this week.
NEH would receive an increase of $19 million over both its FY 2007 appropriation and the administration’s FY ‘08 request. NEH’s budget would go from the current $141 million to $160 million, and would also be in parity with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
May 25, 2007
The Smithsonian Institution came under fire during this week’s markup of its fiscal year 2008 budget by the House Appropriations’ Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies.
The Smithsonian Institution’s budget would be frozen at the FY ‘07 level. The Smithsonian would receive $536 million for operating costs, some $35 million less than the administration’s request for fiscal year 2008.The Smithsonian was the subject of severe criticism during the mark
Source: Agence France Presse
May 25, 2007
The sacrifice of thousands of US soldiers who died in the D-Day landings are honoured in a new [$30 million] visitors' centre opening Saturday at the Colleville sur Mer cemetery in northern France.
Situated on a cliff overlooking Omaha Beach, one of the landing points of the June 6, 1944 allied invasion, the centre traces the story of US soldiers who stormed the Normandy beaches to end the Nazi occupation of Europe.
"We simply wanted to tell future generations what
Source: WaPo
May 25, 2007
Two new books on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York offer fresh and often critical portraits of the Democratic presidential candidate that depict a tortured relationship with her husband and her past and challenge the image she has presented on the campaign trail.
The Hillary Clinton who emerges from the pages of the books comes across as a complicated, sometimes compromised figure who tolerated Bill Clinton's brazen infidelity, pursued her policy and political goals with metho
Source: NYT
May 24, 2007
Fannie Lee Chaney, a $28-a-week bakery worker who became a target of racial hatred herself after her son James Chaney and two other civil rights workers were killed by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964, died on Tuesday in Willingboro, N.J. She was 84.
Her son Ben, James’s younger brother, confirmed the death in a telephone interview.
Four decades after losing her son, Mrs. Chaney drew national attention in June 2005 when she testified for
Source: http://www.niagarafallsreview.ca
May 24, 2007
Jon Jouppien makes a living restoring old buildings. Today, he's looking to restore a misunderstood holiday.
Canada celebrated Victoria Day on Monday with sports on the tube, burgers on the grill and a day off work. But do most people know it's a day to mark Queen Victoria's birthday, he wondered? Or that it isn't even celebrated in Britain?
Or that the Queen's actual birthday is May 24 - today? It really hit home when he overheard som
Source: AP
May 25, 2007
New testing on the type of ammunition used in the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy raises questions about whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, according to a study by researchers at Texas A&M University.
Lead researcher Cliff Spiegelman stressed, however, that the research doesn't necessarily support conspiracy theorists who for decades have doubted Oswald was the lone gunman.
"We're not saying there was a conspiracy. All we're saying is the ev
Source: NYT
May 25, 2007
DURBAN, South Africa: None of South Africa’s big cities are so redolent of colonialism as this old seaport, namesake of a British major general and headquarters, in the early 1800s, of a British colony at Africa’s southern tip. Durban’s baroque city hall is said to be a clone of Belfast’s. From Brighton Beach to Victoria Market, allusions to colonial dominance are inescapable.
So one could hardly blame Durban’s thoroughly postcolonial leaders for wanting to redress this imbalance,
Source: NYT
May 25, 2007
The dinner was first-class, with butlers serving hors d’oeuvres and the strains of “Blue Danube” tastefully muffling the festive din. This nine-course re-creation of the last supper aboard an ill-fated ocean liner was the culmination of Titanic Day at Laurel Hill Cemetery, one of a growing number of historic cemeteries to rebrand themselves as destination necropolises for weekend tourists.
Historic cemeteries, desperate for money to pay for badly needed restorations, are reaching ou
Source: BBC
May 24, 2007
Military records featuring 90 million Americans who have fought in wars from the 1600s through the American Civil War to Korea and Vietnam have been brought together online.
The huge collection of documents, which includes draft registration cards, photographs, prisoner of war records and news reels, is the work of family history website Ancestry.com.
It hopes to help millions of Americans uncover their ancestors' pasts through their military records, and to shed a litt
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
May 24, 2007
ALL pupils would study British history up to the age of 16 under proposals being drawn up by the Conservatives.
As many as two-thirds of students abandon history at 14 but a future Tory government could make the subject compulsory for an extra two years.
Pupils would study 'our island story' between the ages of 11 and 16 with a special unit on the British Empire.
The aim is that they would leave school with a clear chronological understanding of history, h
Source: Christian Science Monitor
May 24, 2007
On the latest of Beijing's ancient lanes to be scheduled for demolition, a tale of two cities is unfolding. Their diverging stories have probably sealed the leafy alleyway's fate.
At No. 21, Li Xiaoling cannot wait for the bulldozers to roll up. After 17 years living with her daughter in a decrepit one-room rental shack thrown up in the middle of an old courtyard "this is a good chance for us to improve our living conditions," she says.
A few doors down, Xia J
Source: Czech News Agency (CTK)
May 24, 2007
Czech politicians and historians have agreed after a half-century of disputes that a monument to the Czechoslovak paratroopers who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, the German Reichsprotector of Bohemia and Moravia, in 1942 should be erected in Prague, the daily Lidove noviny says today.
A monument to Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik, who fatally wounded the widely hated Nazi leader, is to be built near the road curve in Prague 8's Kobylisy neighbourhood where the event occurred.
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
May 24, 2007
Its cache has been on the rise for more than a year now, boosted, among other things, by notice from trendsetting publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Esquire magazine.
You meanwhile may have been under the impression that Western Pennsylvania's rye distillers floated down the Ohio River following the 1790s Whiskey Rebellion, giving rise to Kentucky's corn bourbon tradition.
Here's the problem with that story: Most booze historians say it'
