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: The Australian (Sydney)
May 18, 2007
High school students resent being made to feel guilty during their study of Australia's indigenous past and dislike studying national history in general.
The History Teachers Association called yesterday for a rethink of the type of Australian history being taught in schools and the way in which it is taught.History Teachers Association of [New South Wales] executive officer Louise Zarmati said..."This is a somewhat delicate subject but they don't like the
Source: USA Today
May 16, 2007
The Great Pyramid of Giza, the sole surviving member of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, stands today as the most massive puzzle in the history of civilization.
From the ancient Greeks to today's techno-geeks, many have asked this question: How was something this huge built with such precision?...
Now French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin has reopened this conversation with a controversial proposal that the giant tomb of the pharaoh Khufu (Cheops to the Greeks), who reigned from
Source: AP
May 16, 2007
CHARLESTON, S.C. -- A federal judge has dismissed a counterclaim to a lawsuit relating to the discovery of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship.
Underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence claimed he suffered as much as $309 million in damages because the discovery was credited to author Clive Cussler...The South Carolina Hunley Commission has credited [Cussler's outfit] with finding the sub off Charleston 12 years
Source: Discovery News
May 17, 2007
Pre-Islamic Middle Eastern regions were home to mysterious snake cults, according to two papers published in this month's Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy journal.
From at least 1250 B.C. until around 550 A.D., residents of what is now the Persian Gulf worshipped snakes in elaborate temple complexes that appear to have been built for this purpose, the studies reveal.
The first paper, by archaeologist Dan Potts of the University of Sydney, describes architecture and relics dat
Source: eWeek
May 17, 2007
The Hewlett-Packard Garage, a 12-foot by 8-foot shed at 367 Addison Ave. in Palo Alto, Calif., now stands beside such hallowed sites as the Alamo, Carnegie Hall and the White House.
The National Park Service on May 17 declared the site where Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard began their partnership in 1938 a National Historic Landmark, among those sites and some 2,400 others considered historically significant by the agency.
The garage, which first appeared in Palo Alto cit
Source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
May 17, 2007
Several hundred people gathered in front of the 17th-century Bernardine monastery complex in Minsk on May 16 to protest planned reconstruction work to convert the monastery into a hotel, Belapan reported.
The baroque-style complex, located near Belarus's main Orthodox cathedral, includes a former monastery and a former Roman Catholic church, which currently houses state archives.
The protest coincided with Solidarity Day, which has been observed by the Belarusian demo
Source: AP
May 17, 2007
PARIS -- A few years ago, Israel's prime minister claimed France was infected with ''the wildest anti-Semitism'' and urged French Jews to flee. From the far right came the charge that France's troubles were the fault of immigrants. From the left, the blame was laid on capitalism and free markets.
Nicolas Sarkozy's election as president confounds these premises and stereotypes: The French could have picked Socialist Segolene Royal, a colonel's daughter with something of a Joan of Arc
Source: New York Times
May 17, 2007
After more than 50 years American Heritage, the magazine that furnished not just the minds but, in its original hardcover format, the dens of generations of American history buffs, is suspending publication, its editor, Richard F. Snow, said last week.
The bimonthly magazine, which is owned by Forbes Inc., has been for sale since January, and in the absence of a buyer, Mr. Snow said, the publishers have decided to put the next issue, June-July, on indefinite hold. For at least the t
Source: AP
May 17, 2007
A University of Colorado committee has recommended that a controversial professor accused of faulty research be suspended for one year rather than fired.
Ward Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies, touched off a national firestorm with an essay that compared some of the 2001 World Trade Center victims to Adolf Eichmann, a key planner of the Holocaust.
It was some of his other work, however, that led an interim chancellor of the Boulder campus and another comm
Source: AP
May 16, 2007
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- A new book that challenges the official cause of deadly 1969 racial riots in Malaysia may be banned if it is found to disrupt national harmony, officials said Wednesday.
The book, titled "May 13: Declassified Documents on the Malaysian Riots of 1969," was released Sunday by author Kua Kia Soong, who says the worst riots in Malaysia's 50-year history were not random acts of communal violence but a coup attempt by a faction within the ruling Ma
Source: AP
May 17, 2007
The divided Koreas sent trains lumbering through their heavily armed border for the first time in more than half a century Thursday, reaching another symbolic milestone in a reconciliation process often hindered by the North's nuclear weapons ambitions.
Firecrackers and white balloons filled the skies near the border as a five-car train started rolling north on a restored track on the west side of the peninsula. On the eastern side, a North Korean train crossed into the South on ano
Source: Washington Post
May 17, 2007
In a collision of 21st-century science and decades-old conspiracy theories, a research team that includes a former top FBI scientist is challenging the bullet analysis used by the government to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot the two bullets that struck and killed President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
The"evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed," concludes a new article in the Annals of Applied Statistics written by former FBI lab metallurgist Wil
Source: Independent
May 17, 2007
PARIS -- President Nicolas Sarkozy took office promising to create a new France, rooted in pride in the values of an "old France" of hard work, discipline, patriotism and self-sacrifice.
After the traditional, rather stiff ceremony of inauguration...Sarkozy added a gut-wrenching speech paying tribute to young resistance martyrs of the Second World War..He said his first act as president would be to order the final letter home of a condemned resistance
Source: BBC News
May 16, 2007
An eleventh-hour bid has been made to prevent Dumfries House and its contents being sold to a private owner.
The SAVE Britain's Heritage Fund has received £7m in donations to keep the historic home and its contents intact.
Completed in 1759, Dumfries House in Cumnock was put up for sale by the Marques of Bute at a price of £6.75m.
The property's contents, which include furniture made by Thomas Chippendale, are due to be auctioned in July and are expected to
Source: Telegraph
May 17, 2007
Marion Countess Yorck von Wartenburg, who has died aged 102, was among the last survivors of the Kreisau Circle, the group of intellectuals opposed to Hitler from which sprang the attempt to kill him with a bomb in July 1944.The circle derived its name from having met several times at the country estate of Helmuth Count Moltke. Yet though Moltke was the Kreisauers' driving force, they owed their harmony to the more measured temperament of Peter Count Yorck von Wartenburg, Ma
Source: Times (of London)
May 17, 2007
ROME -- Mosaics from the fabled Gardens of Lucullus, one of the pioneering influences on gardening, have been brought to light after 2,000 years by archaeologists in Rome.
The vast terraced gardens, or Horti, covered what is now the built-up area above the Spanish Steps. The first known attempt in the West to “tame nature” through landscaping, the gardens were laid out around a patrician villa in the middle of the 1st century BC by Lucius Licinius Lucullus, one
Source: Times (of London)
May 17, 2007
With only a few words of Mandarin and some satellite photos to guide them, a British couple have become the first people to walk the entire length of the Great Wall of China.The 3,000-mile trek across some of the most inhospitable terrain on Earth took Tarka L’Herpiniere and his girlfriend, Katie-Jane Cooper, 167 days, walking up to 30 miles a day.
Their journey took them from baking deserts where temperatures peaked at more than 40C (104F) to snow-capped mountains where
Source: Telegraph
May 17, 2007
The Archbishop of Canterbury last night declared that schoolchildren in mixed communities should be taught British history and traditions in a bid to better understand the national identity.
Dr Rowan Williams said that children needed to understand how cultures evolved and the origins of the values and traditions which society now held.
A proper education "would enable a measure of literacy in respect of the language and the imagery of the majority", he said.
Source: New York Times
May 17, 2007
WASHINGTON -— Stealing a page from the Soviet playbook, the current crop of presidential candidates has taken to eliminating whole chapters of their histories.
[For example,] Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s turbulent final years as first lady? While Mrs. Clinton, a New York Democrat, frequently invokes husband Bill on the stump, she has managed to avoid any mention of his impeachment and the unpleasantness leading to it...
Source: Independent
May 17, 2007
TALLINN -- Estonia's last synagogue was wiped out in 1944, amid fierce gunfire and overhead air raids, as Nazi troops fled the Red Army's advance. But yesterday, after a six-decade wait, the country's 3,000-strong Jewish population finally donned prayer shawls and clutched siddurs, as the first synagogue since the Holocaust opened in Tallinn.Construction of the $2m (£1m) ultra-modern design began in 2005...
Yesterday, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves and
