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: AP
March 15, 2007
WARSAW -- Authorities are working on plans to mark a little-known Nazi concentration camp and nearby military installation.
The Pustkow labor camp, where 15,000 inmates died, was dismantled before the end of the war, and local official Andrzej Regula said Thursday it needs to be recognized before its existence is forgotten with the passage of time.
"If 15,000 people were killed here, the world should know about this," Regula said in a telephone interview from
Source: AP
March 16, 2007
ST. LOUIS, Mo. -- The baby mummy had a European mom, and likely came from a wealthy family. But where he lived and why he died —- and at such a young age —- remain a mystery. The mummy, exhibited for the first time Thursday at the St. Louis Science Center, has been the year-long focus of an international team of investigators. The museum said it may be the most extensive research project ever undertaken on a child mummy...
A small snippet of the mummy's wrapping tested for carbon da
Source: WorldNetDaily (Medford, Ore.)
March 15, 2007
Tour guides at the American birthplace of Jamestown, Va., are being prevented from explaining Christian history and are under orders to refer to items such as the Ten Commandments and Lord's Prayer only as"religious" in nature.
That according to California pastor and researcher Todd DuBord [of Lake Almanor Community Church] who says he was stunned on a recent tour of the historic town when"our guide responded to our inquiry by saying that she was 'unable to speak about the plaques. We are
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 15, 2007
A bill that would permanently establish April as Confederate History and Heritage month in Georgia sailed through a Senate committee on Thursday without any opposition.
Sen. Jeff Mullis (R-Chickamauga), the sponsor of Senate Bill 283, told the Senate Rules Committee that the proposal would help promote tourism in the state and preserve an important part of the state and nation's history.
"I'm not doing this for controversial reasons, but to commemorate a struggle t
Source: Independent
March 16, 2007
A rare copy of the first printed atlas of England and Wales sold for £669,600 [about $1.2 million] at auction yesterday.
The atlas was completed in 1579 -- but printing was delayed until 1590 to prevent the Spanish getting information about the English coastline. It is a landmark in Elizabethan cartography, mapping England and Wales in their entirety for the first time. It was created by a surveyor called Christopher Saxton, who was born in Dunningley, West Yorkshire.
T
Source: AP
March 15, 2007
RALEIGH, N.C. -- The military collection of the man who pulled a lever dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima is coming to the North Carolina Museum of History.
Colonel Thomas W. Ferebee scrupulously saved souvenirs of his military service, including notes written on August 6, 1945 —- the day the bomb was dropped from the Enola Gay during World War II.
The museum has acquired maps, Ferebee's dress uniform, desk nameplate, reunion pins and mugs and paperwork documenting h
Source: Weekly Standard
March 8, 2007
On May 17, 1607, English settlers landed on Jamestown Island in Virginia and created what would be the first permanent British colony. An Anglican clergyman led them in prayers of thanksgiving and in constructing the first permanent Protestant church in the Western hemisphere.
In two months, the 400th anniversary of this event will be celebrated. The Episcopal Church, as the spiritual descendants of the original Jamestown colony, is participating, although perhaps with some hesitati
Source: National Geographic News
March 12, 2007
Julius Caesar's bloody assassination on March 15, 44 B.C., forever marked March 15, or the Ides of March, as a day of infamy. It has fascinated scholars and writers ever since.
For ancient Romans living before that event, however, an ides was merely one of several common calendar terms [calends, nones, ides] used to mark monthly lunar events. The ides simply marked the appearance of the full moon.
But the Ides of March assumed a whole new identity after the events of 44
Source: National Geographic News
March 15, 2007
FOWLER'S BLUFF, Fla. -- Treasure hunters digging on a remote bluff overlooking Florida's Suwannee River claim they have found tantalizing evidence that pirate gold might be at the bottom of a muddy, 13-foot (4-meter) hole.
"We've found mahogany wood samples, flecks of gold, and gold all over the diver's dive suit [after diving in the hole]," said Tommy Todd, a St. Petersburg landscaper who owns the property being excavated.
Workers drilling at the site said th
Source: Live Science
March 15, 2007
Archaeologists working on the Pacific islands of Vanuatu have found the region's oldest cemetery, and it's filled with a slew of headless bodies.
The peculiar 3,000-year-old skeletons belong to the Lapita people, the earliest known inhabitants of the Pacific Islands. Their DNA could shed light on how the many remote island specks surrounding Vanuatu were colonized, the researchers say.
"Both Vanuatu and Western Polynesia were first settled by the Lapita culture but
Source: New York Times
March 15, 2007
LOS ANGELES -— Shortly after moving here last year to take over as director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Michael Govan started looking at houses — not as a place for him to live but as potential museum pieces.
His idea —- one that has rarely, if ever, been tried on a large scale by a major museum —- is to collect significant pieces of midcentury residential architecture, including houses by Rudolf M. Schindler, Richard Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright and his son Lloyd Wright,
Source: Age (Australia)
March 14, 2007
Climate change was one of the key factors in the abandonment of Cambodia's ancient city of Angkor, Australian archaeologists said today.
The centuries-old city, home to more than 700,000 people and capital of the Khmer empire from about 900AD, was mysteriously abandoned about 500 years ago.
It has long been believed the Khmers deserted the city after a Thai army ransacked it, but University of Sydney archaeologists working the site say a water crisis was the real reason
Source: AP
March 15, 2007
More than 1 million pages of historical government documents — a stack taller than the U.S. Capitol — have been removed from public view since the September 2001 terror attacks, according to records obtained by the Associated Press. Some of the papers are more than a century old.
In some cases, entire file boxes were removed without significant review because the government's central record-keeping agency, the National Archives and Records Administration, did not have time for a more thor
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
March 15, 2007
The House of Representatives yesterday adopted a slate of open
government bills by large, veto-proof majorities in the face of
sharp opposition from the Bush White House.
"Today, Congress took an important step towards restoring openness
and transparency in government," said Rep. Henry Waxman, who
expeditiously moved the bills through his Committee on Oversight
and Government Reform.
"Over the past six years, the Bush Administration has done
everything it can to operate in secret,
Source: NYT
March 14, 2007
Why does Japan insist on whaling?...
Historically, fishermen in coastal towns, like Taiji in southwestern Japan, hunted whales in nearby waters. But things changed after the Commodore Perry’s so-called Black Ships forced an isolationist Japan to open up in the 1850s. Back then, the United States used whale oil lamps, and part of Perry’s mission to Japan was to secure the rights of American whalers in the Pacific.
As whaling became knotted with Japan’s traumatic opening to the wo
Source: AFP
March 14, 2007
PARIS -- One of the star exhibits at the Louvre's egyptology wing, a collection of four jars said to have contained the embalmed organs of Egypt's greatest pharoah, Rameses II, have a sadly less glamorous vintage.
The beautiful turquoise-blue earthenware pots, emblazoned with Rameses' name in hieroglyphs and with incantions to the gods Mut and Amon, are genuine.
But the belief that they held Rameses' preserved innards to help ease the pharoah into the afterlife is false
Source: Rocky Mountain News
March 12, 2007
Did University of Colorado ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill see secret Canadian government files about child abuse in Indian boarding schools?
Highly unlikely, says a Canadian researcher who reviewed the files and cited them in his 1999 book about the history of the infamous boarding schools.
So how did references to those documents end up in Churchill's 2004 book on the schools?
"Unless he got himself into one of those black suits that Tom Cruise use
Source: Las Vegas Sun
March 15, 2007
A lawmaker in China has called for a national "Humiliation Day" on Sept. 18 to mark the start of Japan's 1931 invasion and remind the Chinese public of foreign attacks, state media reported Thursday.Chinese nationalism, especially among the young, has surged recently along with the country's economy and international influence, stoked by a Communist government that regards Japan as its rival for regional superpower status.
"An outstanding nation i
Source: Salon
March 15, 2007
While there may not be armies massing near the Yalu River at present, in the context of ancient Northeast Asian history, a border war is being fought, a conflict in which archaeologists are the infantry and ancient inscriptions on stone monuments the ammunition. The "history war" between China and Korea has been raging for at least a decade, and the skating incident is just one of the most recent skirmishes. Fronts in this war include government-sponsored research institutions, televis
Source: AHN
March 15, 2007
Next week, Japanese and Chinese historians are scheduled to gather for the second round of a joint history study that will also touch on war-related issues. The new round of talks comes amidst worldwide anger over Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's claim that there was no evidence of Asian women being forced into Japanese military brothels during WWII.Ten historians from each country will hold talks in Tokyo on Monday and Tuesday as part of the second round of discussions.
