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: BBC
May 21, 2007
One of the most secret sites from the Vietnam War era is being opened to the world.
The caves at Viengxay, in north-eastern Laos, once hosted the country's communist revolutionaries as they plotted the final US defeat in Indochina.
Even in peacetime it takes two days to drive to Viengxay from either Vientiane, the capital of Laos, or Luang Prabang, its second city.
During the secret war in Laos it was almost impossible.The remoteness of
Source: http://www.cbc.ca/canada
May 23, 2007
One of the oldest veterans groups in the country held its final meeting Tuesday night at the Union Club in Saint John.
The Byng Boys started in 1919 after the First World War, and were named after Sir Julian Byng, commander of the Canadian army at Vimy Ridge and later a governor general. Club member George Pridham said that in those days there was a special requirement for membership.
"Originally, to be a Byng Boy you had to be carried off the field of battle, and
Source: http://www.thestreet.com
May 23, 2007
The question of the day: Just how much of the $500 million sunken treasure found in the Atlantic last weekend belongs to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards?
I put a call in to Edwards' campaign yesterday morning to find out, but I haven't heard back yet. The reality? The populist one-term senator will get an undisclosed piece of the action from the sunken 17th-century galleon.
The ship, laden with gold and silver, was found at the bottom of the Atlantic by a
Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com
May 21, 2007
Pollard supporters are enraged at US Ambassador to Israel Richard Jones for his remarks Monday morning, implying that Jonathan Pollard committed treason or sold US secrets to Israel.
Speaking at a conference at Bar Ilan University on Israeli-American relations, Jones said, "Pollard took money and sold out his country... The fact that he wasn't executed shows that he was treated mercifully."
"Malicious incitement against both Jonathan and Israel" is
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 24, 2007
Kosovo Albanians plan to honour their “saviour” Bill Clinton by erecting a statue of the former United States president in the capital of Serbia’s breakaway province.
The 10ft tall monument is still under construction in a studio in Podujevo, 40km north of Pristina. “He is our saviour. He saved us from extermination,” Izeir Mustafa, the sculptor, said. “I was thrilled by the work because I know what he did for us.”
Kosovo has been under UN administration since 1999 afte
Source: AP
May 24, 2007
For every generation in this country there has been a war. And with wars come millions of records that can shed light on family history, detailing everything from the color of soldiers' eyes to what their neighbors may have said about them.
On Thursday, Ancestry.com unveils more than 90 million U.S. war records from the first English settlement at Jamestown in 1607 through the Vietnam War's end in 1975. The site also has the names of 3.5 million U.S. soldiers killed in action, inclu
Source: http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com
May 22, 2007
For a 143-year-old piece of paper, a letter written by Ulysses S. Grant recently unearthed at the Brown County Historical Society's library is in pretty good shape.
"You can still see the ink quite clearly," said Wendy Barszcz, executive director of the society. "That's good for a document of this age."
The communiqué from Gen. Grant to then-Capt. Melancton Smith came at a crucial junction in the Civil War in City Point, Va., requesting Smith sweep t
Source: http://www.norwaypost
May 20, 2007
An old leather shoe discovered in the Jotunheimen Mountains, and first estimated to be around 1000 years old, turns out to be more than 3,000 years old. The shoe was found in an old snowdrift in August last year.
We first believed that the shoe was only 1000 years old, but to our great surprise the analysis of the leather showed it to be 3,400 years old, says Oppland County Archaeologist Espen Finstad to Aftenposten. This means that not only is it Norway's oldest shoe, but also the
Source: BBC
May 23, 2007
Roman soldiers descended on the Scottish Parliament to encourage MSPs to back an application for the Antonine Wall to gain World Heritage Status.
Scottish Conservative Deputy Leader Murdo Fraser MSP has put forward a motion calling on the parliament to support the application.
He has also called on the Scottish Executive to create a National Roman Centre in Scotland.
The 37-mile wall is the UK's official nomination for World Heritage status.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org
May 22, 2007
A team of Texas A&M University researchers will soon be recovering artifacts from a 200-year-old shipwreck that lies more than 4,000 feet beneath the Gulf of Mexico, making it the deepest such recovery effort ever attempted in the gulf.
The $4.8 million project, funded by the Okeanos Gas Gathering Company, will begin today (May 22) says William Bryant, professor of oceanography, and Donny Hamilton, professor of anthropology at Texas A&M. Peter Hitchcock, a doctoral student a
Source: http://www.charlotte.com
May 20, 2007
Declaration Whether history or hoax, it reflects spirit of Mecklenburg in 1775, when people were ready to fight for freedom Mention the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and listeners split into two camps:
Believers: They point to ample evidence -- including statements from participants -- that 27 freedom-loving men met in Charlotte on May 20, 1775, and reacted to news of battles in Lexington and Concord, Mass., by declaring their independence from King George III.
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
May 24, 2007
Historians and other researchers may continue to access archival
records at Los Alamos National Laboratory, officials said last week.
But they also affirmed strict new limits on such access.
A story in Secrecy News (May 3) describing new restrictions on
researchers was based on a misunderstanding by Lab personnel,
Department of Energy and Lab officials said last week. Although there was a technical change in policy, access to the archives remains unaffected, the officials asserted.
Source: NYT
May 24, 2007
Pope Benedict XVI tried Wednesday to quell anger in South America over his recent comments about the conversion of native populations, conceding that “unjustifiable crimes” were committed in the conquest of the continent 500 years ago.
The pope told a weekly audience here in Italian that it was “not possible to forget the suffering and the injustices inflicted by colonizers against the indigenous population, whose fundamental human rights were often trampled.”
Source: AP
May 23, 2007
MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (AP) -- Amid the sound of battle cries and machine gun fire, the stories of the nation's war heroes are now being told in a renovated museum aboard a moored aircraft carrier.
The refurbished $1.5 million Medal of Honor Museum is set to open Memorial Day weekend aboard the USS Yorktown on Charleston Harbor as a tribute to the 3,444 recipients of the nation's highest military honor.
''It was absolutely breathtaking -- the tightness in the chest and th
Source: Der Spiegel
May 23, 2007
Gentleman warrior, military genius. The legend of Erwin Rommel, the German Field Marshal who outfoxed the British in North Africa, lives on. But a new TV documentary seeks to correct that image by arguing that his victories nearly brought the Holocaust to the Middle East.If Erwin Rommel, lauded as a master military tactician even by his enemies, had managed to fight his way through North Africa, he would have sealed the fate of thousands of Jews who had fled to Palestine fro
Source: NewsHour (PBS)
May 22, 2007
Congress has approved about $450 billion to date for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but economists also have been tabulating the long-term costs such as veterans' care. JIM LEHRER: Now, what the war in Iraq is costing. Democrats in Congress are still trying to pass a war funding bill the president will sign. That legislation will provide money for military operations, but those funds are only part of the larger price tag. The NewsHour's economics correspondent, Paul Solman,
Source: http://www.eux.tv
May 23, 2007
King Juan Carlos, 69, has been elected the most important Spaniard in history, well ahead of Don Quixote author Miguel de Cervantes and navigator Christopher Columbus, who came next.
The results of a poll among more than 3,000 Spaniards were presented Tuesday night at a television show called "The Spaniard of history."
The show staged by the private channel Antena 3 showed the popularity of the royal family. Queen Sofia took the fourth, Crown Prince Felipe t
Source: http://www.irrawaddy.org
May 23, 2007
Burma's ruling junta has effectively erased the history of modern Burmese rulers by suppressing their biographies, according to a Rangoon-based historian.
Than Win Hlaing, 40, planned to distribute a biographical study of Burma’s first prime minister, U Nu, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth on May 25.
But the Ministry of Information’s Press Scrutiny and Registration Division, the country’s notorious censorship body, has blocked its distribution.
Source: http://www.coloradoan.com
May 23, 2007
A U.S. Department of Education report card says high school seniors are faring better in history than in past years, but the change is yet to be evident among freshman at Colorado State University....
At CSU, professors say first- year students do seem to show greater interest in history and current events, but their writ-ing and analytic skills are declining.
“What I’m hearing from faculty is there’s not any broad sense that students are coming to CSU better prepared,”
Source: IHT
May 23, 2007
Five years after the discovery of two wooden trunks containing letters and other writings by U.S. General Robert E. Lee, the Virginia Historical Society is making most of the materials available to researchers.Mary Custis Lee, the unofficial family archivist, stowed the trunks at the bank because she had an account there, said Lee Shepard, the Virginia Historical Society's director of manuscripts and archives. She died in 1918, and the trunks were not rediscovered by family
