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 News
May 18, 2007
Sixth formers donned togas to protest at the plans
Ancient history A-level is to be saved from the scrapheap after a high-profile campaign calling for it to continue.
The last exam board in England to offer the subject, OCR, has decided not to abandon the course after pressure from ministers and academics.
Classicists, including shadow education minister Boris Johnson, argued pupils would be denied the chance to study the Roman Empire and ancient Greece.
Source: AP
May 18, 2007
BALTIMORE -- Abraham Lincoln might have survived being shot if today's medical technology had existed in 1865.
Given that scenario, the question is whether Lincoln would have recovered well enough to return to office, says a doctor and historian who planned to speak Friday at an annual University of Maryland School of Medicine conference on the deaths of historic figures.While the conference has traditionally re-examined the deaths of historic figures to determi
Source: NYT Book Review
May 13, 2007
The old hands at the C.I.A.’s publications review board, who maintain the agency’s memory hole, must have had a mordant chuckle over [Watergate defendant E. Howard Hunt's] “American Spy,” and connoisseurs of literary crimes and misdemeanors will find much to savor here. Hunt describes a foreign president’s wife as “the true power behind the thrown.” He makes Dwight Eisenhower president in 1950, at the start of the Korean War, instead of 1953, at its end. He mangles the names of, among others, th
Source: Independent (South Africa)
May 18, 2007
Mistakes about Bangalore in an Oxford dictionary have stirred anger in the hi-tech Indian hub where the government has joined historians in demanding an apology, reports said on Friday.The 2005 edition of the Oxford Concise Dictionary of World Place Names says Bangalore is a land of Bengalis who took their name from a local chief called Banga, the New Indian Express and Times of India reported on Friday.
Bengali is in fact the language spoken mainly in Banglades
Source: BBC
May 18, 2007
Chinese archaeologists studying ancient rock carvings say they have evidence that modern Chinese script is thousands of years older than previously thought.State media say researchers identified more than 2,000 pictorial symbols dating back 8,000 years, on cliff faces in the north-west of the country.
They say many of these symbols bear a strong resemblance to later forms of ancient Chinese characters.
Scholars had thought Chinese symbols came into
Source: New York Times
May 17, 2007
Google said on Wednesday that it was changing its approach to Internet searches by combining results from its established Web search service with offerings that help users find videos, images, maps and other content....
Until now, a Google search for “I have a dream” would have returned links to the text of the 1963 speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and to other historical and informational Web sites about him. But those looking for video clips or photographs of Dr. King
Source: Telegraph
May 18, 2007
BEIJING -- The Hong Kong and central Chinese governments have turned down requests for Britain to take part in major celebrations planned to mark the 10th anniversary of the return of the former colony to the mainland.
Officials have made clear that there is to be no role for Hong Kong's former rulers in the ceremonies, which include a flag-raising event on the morning of July 1 and the swearing-in of its chief executive, Donald Tsang, for a new five-year term.
The Communist Party le
Source: Times (of London)
May 18, 2007
ATHENS -- Police combed the wooded hills of the Mount Athos monastic community in Northern Greece yesterday after a militant band of monks barged their way in to join an Ascension Day service.
The action by hundreds of bearded and black-clad monks belonging to the Old Calendarists, a sect that refuses to follow the modern Western calendar, brought turmoil to the 1,000-year-old community on the rocky peninsula...For years the Calendarist monks of [the Esphigmenou
Source: Washington Post
May 18, 2007
Here, in a study that faces the garden [in Silver Spring, Md.], is where Rachel Carson would sit and write on days when she felt well. Here, in a bedroom with a dogwood outside the window, is where she would lie down and write on days when she felt worse...
Carson's book Silent Spring, published in 1962, led to the banning of the pesticide DDT, the launch of modern environmentalism and her enshrinement as a kind of patron saint of nature. In this region, Carson's name has been given
Source: UPI
May 18, 2007
COPENHAGEN -- A new book about Denmark's so-called bog people suggests the Iron Age sacrifice victims were not brutally beaten as previously thought.
The bog people are a collection of well-preserved remains found in Danish peat bogs. Christian Fischer, director of the Silkeborg Museum, has written Trollund Man -- A Gift to the Gods, a compilation of more than 30 years of studies into the remains.
Because the skulls of many of the remains are crushed, researchers previously belie
Source: New York Times
May 17, 2007
Scientists working with the Defense Department have found evidence that a low-level exposure to sarin nerve gas —- the kind experienced by more than 100,000 American troops in the Persian Gulf war of 1991 —- could have caused lasting brain deficits in former service members.
Though the results are preliminary, the study is notable for being financed by the federal government and for being the first to make use of a detailed analysis of sarin exposure performed by the Pentag
Source: AP
May 16, 2007
WASHINGTON -- More students are learning the basics when it comes to history and civics, but they aren't rising to the next level, national tests show.The history and civics tests were given to students nationwide in the fourth, eighth and 12th grades last year, and the results were released Wednesday...
The Washington-based Center on Education Policy reported last year that a third of elementary school districts reported cutting back on time for social studies,
Source: Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News (Federation of American Scientists)
May 17, 2007
More than five years after it was completed, the Department of Energy last year finally released a landmark historical account of U.S. production of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from 1945 to 1996.
Conceived a decade ago as a bold initiative to set a new standard for international transparency and government accountability, the HEU study was released under pressure as an unwilling concession to the rule of law, i.e. the Freedom of Information Act.The story of the five
Source: University of Haifa via Newswise
May 15, 2007
The world's oldest wooden anchor was discovered during excavations in the Turkish port city of Urla, the ancient site of Liman Tepe...by researchers from...the University of Haifa. The anchor, from the end of the 7th century BC, was found near a submerged construction, imbedded approximately 1.5 meters underground...
Urla [is] a port city located near Izmir, with more than 5,000 years of maritime history. Remnants of an ancient port were uncovered during the excavations.
Source: AP
May 17, 2007
About two weeks ago, archaeologist Tom Kutys thought he'd found a stone wall when he came across mortared capstones in a trench at the state park that once was the site of French and British forts. Instead, archaeologists at Point State Park believe they very well might have uncovered long-buried remnants of Fort Duquesne, Pittsburgh's original fort...
"It argues that there may be extensive other evidence of Fort Duquesne," [archaeologist Brooke] Blades said. "People
Source: International Herald Tribune
May 16, 2007
PILSEN, Czech Republic -- Zdenek Sverak, dressed in a professorial gray suit with red club tie, nodded a greeting to the sold-out crowd in a municipal theater here and began his lecture about Jara da Cimrman, the greatest Czech of all time.
Cimrman nearly made it to the North Pole before any other human, according to Sverak, but missed the mark by about seven meters, or 20 feet, because he encountered hostile natives. He invented the telephone and dynamite, though others took the cr
Source: Lee White, National Coalition for History (NCH)
May 17, 2007
In response to the release of the 2006 results for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for U.S. history and civics, Senators Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) have re-introduced legislation (S. 1414) to establish a new, 10-state pilot program under the NAEP to assess and improve the knowledge of American history and civics.
The Senators plan to consider the legislation as part of the upcoming reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. The S
Source: Live Science
May 17, 2007
Abraham Lincoln might have been in the early stages of a life-threatening type of smallpox when he delivered his Gettysburg Address, lauded as one of history's greatest speeches and an archetype of genius brevity...
The researchers suggest Lincoln's physicians downplayed the severity of his illness in an effort to reassure the public that their president was not dying...Though some historians recognize that Lincoln was ill following his Gettysburg speech i
Source: Telegraph
May 17, 2007
GUSEN, Austria -- Outwardly, number 18 Unteregartenstrasse in the charming Austrian village of Gusen has hardly changed in 60 years.
The iron gates of its drive remain the same. The arch under its first floor window, and the long low cottage off to one side are still identical. Only the people inside are different.
Today the buildings are home to middle class Austrian families. Few would guess that until 1945, number 18 was the gatehouse to Gusen concentration camp, and the low cot
Source: DPA (German Press Agency)
May 17, 2007
MONTREAL -- Cost concerns led a 1985 Air India flight to take off from Toronto despite credible information that a terrorist attack was imminent, an inquiry into the two-decade-old bombing heard Wednesday.
The revelation was the latest in a litany of security oversights, unheeded warnings and miscommunication among security officials in the days before Air India Flight 182 was blown from the sky, killing 329 people.
The lapses are a catalogue of missed opportunities: re
