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: Fox affiliate in St. Louis (Video)
February 21, 2007
A beautiful sunset was often the sign for African-Americans to get out of town. That was the rule in hundreds of towns in Illinois and Missouri. The author of a recent book called 'Sundown Towns' claims in some rare cases, it may still be the unwritten rule. FOX 2’s Chris Hayes visited one of those towns near the Missouri/Illinois border, a place called Anna. He discovered the name itself suggests African-Americans are not welcomed.
Source: NPR
March 10, 2007
David Slone arrived in the small Kentucky town of Corbin in 2005, seeking a haven after Hurricane Katrina ripped through his hometown of Biloxi, Miss.
He was in a shelter in Gulfport, Miss., and saw a flier left by the Corbin church offering to house displaced families.
Slone didn't know until he arrived that he would be one of only a few blacks living in Corbin, a town still trying to come to terms with a troubled racial history.
In 1919, more than 200 bl
Source: Telegraph
March 10, 2007
Evidence of a Roman sacred site has been discovered [in Wiltshire] at the foot of a man-made hill created thousands of years before the Romans arrived in Britain, it was announced yesterday.
English Heritage called the uncovering of the settlement a "startling discovery", and all the more so because it lies next to 5,000-year-old Silbury hill, which at 130ft is Europe's largest man-made prehistoric monument.
The original purpose and use of the Neolithic hill,
Source: Independent
March 9, 2007
For the Hualapai tribe, the construction of a skywalk over the Grand Canyon is a way of exploiting the site's tourism revenue. But other Native Americans accuse them of greed...
Related Links
Skywalk rolled out (photo and artist's conception)
Source: Guardian
March 9, 2007
A national register is to be created to protect England's precious historic sites, bringing together everything from Stonehenge to Blenheim, from Canterbury cathedral to the wreck of the Hanover, an 18th century treasure ship breaking up on the seabed off Cornwall.
The culture secretary, Tessa Jowell...promised to beef up protection for World Heritage sites: Britain's range from the Tower of London to the old iron and coal works at Blaenavon in south Wales, but the honour which flags them
Source: Email from the Nation to subscribers
March 9, 2007
Four years ago, The Nation launched a Classroom Education Program as a way to encourage a healthy diversity of opinion by offering massively marked-down short-term subscriptions for students. One part of that program offers teaching aids and archival resources to educators which have been so popular that we're now making special history packs available to all students of history, whether you're in a classroom or not, at very reasonable rates.
Nation editors have combed the magazine
Source: AP
March 8, 2007
HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Thousands of American Indian and Western artifacts purchased by the city government will be sold at a four-day auction scheduled for October, officials said Thursday.
Mayor Stephen R. Reed spent about $8 million in nontax city money to assemble the collection -— including Annie Oakley's coat, a card table from Wyatt Earp's saloon and the gun that killed Jesse James —- for an Old West museum he wanted to have built in Harrisburg. [WHP-TV reported the items are bei
Source: AP
March 8, 2007
America is once again struggling to atone for slavery and its aftermath.
In a nation with an unquenchable need to analyze its racial past, there is now a fresh flow of contrition from public officials for the many wrongs of U.S. history. ...
Why are public officials making amends now?
Because revelations about the past are pushing some people to think about race in America in new ways. Plus, echoes of racial bias remain all too obvious, and politicians ma
Source: Times (of London)
March 9, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Federal US agents have seized disabled F14 fighter jets from museums in California because of fears that parts would be sold to Iran.
The raids reflect the nervousness that is driving policy towards the Islamic republic at a time when the US has stationed two aircraft carriers in the Gulf and is alleging that Iranian Revolutionary Guards are aiding attacks on its soldiers in Iraq. One European diplomat described the raids as evidence of American paranoia.
Source: New York Times
March 2, 2007
JAMESTOWN, Va. —- At the banks of the James River here, not far from where an archaeological dig has found pottery shards and remains of settlers from 400 years ago, a proud Capt. John Smith faces the waters and the setting sun. A wooden stockade extends near the shoreline — the water has moved inland over the centuries — showing where his frail fort once stood. But Smith stands heroically tall, his bronze cape seeming to ripple in the brisk winter winds. Even the inscription proclaims his impor
Source: Reuters
March 9, 2007
BERLIN -- The mayor of a small town in Germany on Thursday called on Google Earth to delete a reference to a nearby "Mount Hitler" from its geographic image service, saying it was misleading.
Andreas Wiedemann, mayor of Bad Toelz, south of Munich, said the peak near the Bavarian town had been known as Mount Hitler for a short time during the Third Reich but had been given back its original name of Heigelkopf after World War Two.
Google Earth users who call up
Source: AP
March 9, 2007
ISTANBUL -- Turkey lifted its ban on YouTube Friday, an official for the country's largest telecommunications firm said, two days after a court ordered the Web site blocked because of videos that allegedly insulted the founder of modern Turkey.
Ahter Kutadgu, head of corporate communications for Turk Telekom, told the Anatolia news agency his company had been notified of a court decision to lift the ban...
The Istanbul court that ordered the site blocked on Wednesday ha
Source: AP
March 7, 2007
LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- A prominent Turkish politician was convicted Friday of breaching Swiss anti-racism laws by saying that the early 20th-century killing of Armenians could not be described as genocide. The Turkish foreign ministry reacted swiftly to the decision, saying in a statement that it was saddened by the Swiss court's ruling to punish Dogu Perincek, leader of the Turkish Workers' Party, and to ignore "his freedom of expression."
Perincek was ordered to pay a
Source: AP
March 9, 2007
NEWARK, N.J. -- The financially struggling New Jersey Symphony Orchestra is selling its prized collection of "Golden Age" string instruments, four years after acquiring them for $17 million from a benefactor who wound up in jail.
The NJSO had hoped the 30 violins, violas and cellos made by such Italian makers as Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu would place it among the world's top orchestras.
But orchestra officials said the debt from the 2003
Source: AFP
March 9, 2007
GENEVA (-- The flowing, elegant lines and even the name of the Russo-Baltique Impression appearing at the Geneva Motor Show on Thursday for the first time mark a distinct shift in gear for Russia's ramshackle old motor industry.
So does the price tag: more than 1.0 million euros (1.3 million dollars).
To add to the complete break from the aura of cheap Ladas and Volgas produced under communism, the grandiose new coupe by young Russian industrial designer Ivan Shishkin u
Source: AP
March 9, 2007
TOKYO -- Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, Emperor Hirohito told aides he hoped to visit the South Pacific after the war, when the entire region would be Japanese territory, according to a newly released journal. He also said, however, he did not want Japan to go to war with China.
Hirohito [who reigned 1926-89] made the South Seas comment on Christmas Day 1941 -- just weeks after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the Pacific War, according
Source: AP
March 9, 2007
ATLANTA -- Georgia is poised to introduce two literature classes on the Bible in public schools next year, a move some critics say would make the southern state the first in the U.S. to take an explicit stance endorsing —- and funding —- biblical teachings.
The Bible already is incorporated into some classes in Georgia and other states, but some critics say the board's move, which makes the Bible the classes' main text, treads into dangerous turf. The U.S. Constitution's guarantee o
Source: Bloomberg
March 8, 2007
The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles is forming a scholarly group to study the origin of a disputed ancient statue known as "Aphrodite" that the Italian Ministry of Culture has claimed.
The Getty, the world's richest art institution, said in November that it was willing to transfer ownership of the "Cult Statue of a Goddess" to Italy after the sculpture is examined for as long as a year. The museum said today in a statement that it invited a group of scientist
Source: AP
March 7, 2007
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- J.P."The Big Bopper" Richardson suffered massive fractures and likely died immediately in the 1959 plane crash that also killed early rock 'n' rollers Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, a forensic anthropologist said Tuesday after exhuming the body.
The performer's son, Jay Richardson, hired Dr. Bill Bass, a well-known forensic anthropologist at the University of Tennessee, to look at the remains in Beaumont, Texas.
There have been rumors a gun might have been fired
Source: NPR Morning Edition (with audio)
March 8, 2007
The Italian city of Pompeii is one of the best-known reminders of how deadly volcanoes can be. Mt. Vesuvius' eruption in 79 A.D. buried the city, entombing many of the dead in casts of hardened ash that remain today. Now, scientists say the destruction was even worse in an earlier incident -- a deadly day 4,000 years ago.
A group of scientists digging northwest of Vesuvius near Naples has found evidence that an enormous eruption during the Bronze Age covered the land almost 15 miles
