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: Chronicle of Higher Education
November 24, 2006
The study's findings were irresistibly damning, even if they did sound vaguely familiar: American colleges, supposedly the nation's hothouses for enlightened citizenship, in fact produce civic nincompoops.
That was the word in late September from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a Delaware think tank, when it released its study, "The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education's Failure to Teach America's History and Institutions."
The think tank had
Source: CNN
November 20, 2006
Bones discovered four years ago at the site of America's first permanent English settlement could be those of Jamestown's unsung founder, a knight or a captain.
A tooth analysis did not rule out that the skeleton is, as Jamestown researchers had theorized, that of Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold, principal organizer of the expedition from England that established Jamestown in 1607. Next year marks the settlement's 400th anniversary.
But test results released Monday also sugge
Source: The State.com
November 13, 2006
The remains of hundreds of ancient people once buried in South Carolina continue to be stored in archives across the state five years after their existence was made public — despite efforts by tribal groups to recover and rebury them.
One set of remains stored by federal officials at the Savannah River Site might be as many as 6,000 years old, said Barbara Morningstar Paul, the state program coordinator for Native American Affairs.
Leaders of tribes with people still li
Source: Reuters
November 21, 2006
A Greek prosecutor on Tuesday charged a former curator
of the American J. Paul Getty Museum with knowingly buying an ancient
artifact which had been illegally dug up and smuggled out of Greece 13
years ago.
The accusation that former antiquities curator Marion True illegally
obtained a 4th-century BC golden wreath is the latest controversy
surrounding acquisitions she made for the wealthy Los Angeles-based
museum.
True resigned from her post in a whirlwind of publicity last yea
Source: Salon
November 20, 2006
OBERLIN, Ohio -- An artist's creation of gingerbread
Nazis drew complaints after it was displayed in a hardware store window,
prompting the store owner to demand the artwork be removed. Charlie Palmer
covered the gingerbread men during the weekend and said he wanted them out
by of his business by Tuesday.
"He's gone way overboard this time," Palmer said of artist Keith McGuckin."A few of his other displays were on the edge, but never that crazy."
McGuckin said he chose the subject
Source: Broadside, the Newsletter of the American Revolution Round Table
November 21, 2006
Everyone's heard of the battle of Flamborough Head, where The Bonhomme Richard, captained by John Paul Jones, slugged it out by moonlight with the British frigate, Serapis. But does anyone remember what happened to the Richard? A few ARRT navy buffs will recall that it sank the next day -- but exactly where? That's what an expedition launched from the Avery Point campus of the University of Connecticut is trying to find out. The day before he left for England, the organizer of the hunt, Captain
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
November 20, 2006
... Soon after the Brown report was issued, the University of Pennsylvania's student newspaper published an article asking whether Penn had any closeted skeletons of its own. The headline read: "Penn says 'all clear' as Ivies decry slave ties."
The source for that claim is Mark Frazier Lloyd, director of the university's archives and records center. Several years ago, administrators asked him to find out whether Penn had any historical connections to slavery that they shou
Source: AP
November 17, 2006
Off an East Jerusalem side street, between an olive orchard and an abandoned hotel, sit a few piles of stones and dirt that are yielding important insights into Jerusalem's history.
They come from one of the world's most disputed holy places — the square in the heart of Jerusalem that is known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
Source: AP
November 19, 2006
The largest collection of information on Holocaust victims and survivors is held by the International Red Cross at its International Tracing Service facility in Bad Arolsen, Germany. Requests for information may be submitted directly to ITS or through a national Red Cross office in your state or country.
These organizations may provide documentation of forced labor, forced evacuation from Soviet-controlled areas, internment in concentration camps, or deportation.
Thei
Source: Reuters
November 17, 2006
Admired by madmen and dreamers, the elegant skyline of St Petersburg has survived revolutions, wartime bombing and the heavy hand of Soviet planners.
But its charm may not survive Gazprom and a new generation of Russian rich who are building up their own dreams -- some say nightmares -- in Russia's imperial capital.
The gas behemoth wants to build a towering office block 300 metres (990 feet) high that will dominate the skyline of Russia's second city, an elegant Baroqu
Source: AP
November 20, 2006
KARACHI One of the hundreds of historical artefacts, right, that Pakistani Customs stopped from being smuggled out of the country. The 625 artefacts, which were worth millions of dollars, had been concealed in a shipping container bound for Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Muhammad Yaha, a Customs spokesman, said that no arrests had been made but that investigators were looking for the suspects. The artefacts were hidden in wooden boxes with ordinary furniture. (AP)
Source: NYT
November 20, 2006
The United States Mint is unveiling four designs for one-dollar coins today, featuring likenesses of the first four presidents. They begin a series that is to last a decade and portray every deceased president.
The first coin, displaying George Washington on one side and the Statue of Liberty on the other, will go into circulation in mid-February, in time for Presidents’ Day. After that, coins with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison will be issued at three-month interval
Source: Scotsman.com
November 20, 2006
THE face of Jack the Ripper, the 19th-century killer whose identity still remains a mystery, has been revealed for the first time.
Using state-of-the-art profiling, investigators have created a vision of what the murderer, who strangled and butchered five London prostitutes, would have looked like - and revealed that police at the time were probably searching for the wrong kind of man.
Source: Independent (UK)
November 19, 2006
Stonehenge was a major international healing centre, according to a leading British archaeologist.
Up till now, most scholars have accepted that the 4,600-year-old stone circle was used mainly for ritual purposes but new research suggests that it was a prehistoric version of Lourdes packed full of pilgrims from all over the ancient world.
Professor Timothy Darvill, who has just published the most detailed study of the area ever carried out ['Stonehenge: Biography of a
Source: Independent (UK)
November 18, 2006
An Israeli-Arab lawyer plans to travel to Iran next month to preach his message at an official conference that all Muslims need to appreciate the true magnitude of the Holocaust.
Khaled Mahameed, who started the Arab world's first Holocaust museum in Nazareth, has been invited to address the conference, Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision, in Tehran on 11 and 12 December.
Mr Mahameed said yesterday his challenge to the questioning of the Holocaust by the Iranian Pre
Source: Times Online (UK)
November 18, 2006
WITH its disappearing ink and cunning electronic gadgets it could be straight out of a James Bond story.
But this laboratory, where grey-bearded engineers invent fiendish devices and test machinery, grapples with altogether trickier problems than keeping secret agents ahead of the game. The 40-year-old institute, in a scruffy block on the fringes of Jerusalem, conjures up solutions thatallow observant Jews to meet the challenges of modern life without violating the Sabbath laws.
Source: AP
November 17, 2006
Police have arrested former dictator Juan Maria Bordaberry and his foreign minister in connection with four "Dirty War" killings dating to 1976, officials said Friday.
The arrest of Bordaberry, 78, and former Foreign Minister Juan Blanco marked a new chapter in efforts by this small South American country to grapple with the 1973-85 dictatorship and its legacy of disappearances, torture and exile of thousands of political dissidents.
Bordaberry and Blanco, w
Source: Reuters
November 18, 2006
For all the talk of laying to rest the ghosts of a wartime past, President George W. Bush had a grim reminder on Saturday of some of America's unfinished business from the Vietnam war.
Taking a break from diplomacy on the second day of his trip to Vietnam, Bush visited the joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, where U.S. experts are working to find and identify the remains of American war dead.
It was only a brief stop for Bush, the second post-war U.S. president to visit V
Source: Yahoo
November 17, 2006
As American involvement in Vietnam deepened, President Lyndon Johnson railed against "bunch of commies" running The New York Times and complained about the newspaper's criticism of the war, according to taped phone conversations released Friday.
The recordings, released by the LBJ Library, covered August to December 1966. Johnson had many of his calls from the Oval Office and his Texas ranch recorded on Dictabelt equipment.
In one conversation, Johnson blasted
Source: Reuters
November 17, 2006
The independent mayor of a Budapest district whose
councilors have suspended the local paper and TV station saying they are
biased, is hitting back by employing town criers to call out the news.
Tamas Derce, the mayor of Ujpest, told Reuters Thursday he is reviving the
medieval tradition in protest against the decision of the
Socialist-liberal majority in his town hall to silence the local media.
"I will hire someone who will stand with a drum at busy junctions of the
district, an
