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: Armenian News Network
October 19, 2006
The cabinet does not think the Swiss anti-racism law should be changed - despite comments by the justice minister, Christoph Blocher, to the contrary. Blocher, a leading light of the rightwing Swiss People's Party, had remarked during his Turkish trip that part of the anti-racism law - which was adopted in 1994 and includes sections aimed at preventing revisionist views about the Holocaust - gave him a "headache".
The law has led to investigations in Switzerland against tw
Source: Bruce Craig in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History
October 19, 2006
The Abraham Lincoln Commemorative Coin Act (P.L. 109-285) was signed into law on 27 September 2006. This law directs the Secretary of the Treasury to mint coins to commemorate the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. These coins should be representative of Lincoln’s life and legacy. The Treasury can only mint up to 500,000 of the one-dollar coins and they are to be distributed for only one year, beginning 1 January 2009. Representative Ray LaHood of Illinois introduced P.L. 109-285 in the Ho
Source: Bruce Craig in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History
October 19, 2006
The National Coalition for History has learned that the Library of Congress plans to close the African and Middle Eastern Reading Room (AMED) effective December 2006. It will be closed until at least 2008, after which, according to a LC spokesperson, its “status is unknown.” A permanent exhibition gallery of the Jay I. Kislak Collection of early Americana is slotted to replace the AMED Reading Room.
The AMED Reading Room is the contact point for research being conducted on Africa, t
Source: AP
October 18, 2006
Despite encroaching development and dwindling attendance, the White House of the Confederacy will stay at its site in downtown Richmond, and the collections of the adjoining museum will be moved, officials said. The executive mansion of President Jefferson Davis and his family in the Civil War has fallen on tough times, as annual visits have fallen, to 50,000 from 90,000 in the early 1990’s. The White House and museum operate with an estimated $500,000 annual deficit.
Source: BBC
October 18, 2006
A party of Scottish war veterans has flown back to Malaysia, where they fought 50 years ago. The men from the King's Own Scottish Borderers were fighting in what became known as the Malaya Emergency.
The veterans' journey back to the other side of the world was much more than a return to what many call a forgotten war.
These young men came from every corner of Scotland. For many, the journey to south east Asia in the 1950s was their first time on a plane, their first t
Source: Reuters
October 18, 2006
A bullet found inside a skull buried on a remote Indian
Ocean island has added further intrigue to Australia's greatest naval
tragedy, the mysterious World War Two sinking of a warship with the loss
of all 645 hands.
The light cruiser HMAS Sydney II sank somewhere off Western Australia's
northwest in November 1941 after it came under fire from a German raider,
thought to be the Kormoran disguised as a Dutch merchant ship.
The Sydney has never been found after it sailed ablaze o
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
October 18, 2006
Can scholars build a better version of Wikipedia? Larry Sanger, a co-founder who has since become a critic of the open-source encyclopedia, intends to find out.
This week Mr. Sanger announced the creation of the Citizendium, an online, interactive encyclopedia that will be open to public contributors but guided by academic editors. The site aims to give academics more authorial control -- and a less combative environment -- than they find on Wikipedia, which affords all users the sa
Source: WaPo
October 18, 2006
On desks around the West Wing sit digital clocks counting down the days and hours left in the Bush presidency, reminders to the White House staff to use the time left as effectively as possible. As of 8 a.m. today, those clocks will read 825 days, four hours. But if the elections go the way pollsters and pundits predict, they might as well read 20 days.
At least that would be the end of George W. Bush's presidency as he has known it. If Democrats win one or both houses of Congress o
Source: National Security Archive
October 16, 2006
Washington, DC, October 16, 2006 - The CIA's reliance on high-level informants including the President and a future President of Mexico for "intelligence" about the student protest movement in 1968 that culminated in the infamous Tlatelolco massacre misled Washington about responsibility for the repression, according to documents obtained by journalist Jefferson Morley and posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
The declass
Source: Steven E. Moore in the WSJ
October 18, 2006
[Mr. Moore, a political consultant with Gorton Moore International, trained Iraqi researchers for the International Republican Institute from 2003 to 2004 and conducted survey research for the Coalition Forces from 2005 to 2006.]
After doing survey research in Iraq for nearly two years, I was surprised to read that a study by a group from Johns Hopkins University claims that 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the war. Don't get me wrong, there have been far too many deaths in I
Source: Observer
October 15, 2006
The solution to the darkest of all Agatha Christie mysteries may be at hand. What lay behind her extraordinary 11-day disappearance in 1926? Several plausible theories have competed for favour over the years, but biographer Andrew Norman believes he is the first to find one that satisfies every element of the case.
In his study of the writer's life published this autumn, Norman uses medical case studies to show that Christie was in the grip of a rare but increasingly acknowledged m
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 16, 2006
Three Britons are due to go on trial in Italy today accused of illegally salvaging more than £320,000 worth of gold, silver and diamonds from a shipwreck.
Nicholas Pearson, David Dixon, and Kerr Sinclair are accused of illegally diving and damaging the wreck of the Pollux, an Italian steam ship which sank off the coast of Elba in 1841.
The three men, along with five other Britons, chartered a salvage ship in 2000 and bought a £2,500 licence to retrieve tin ingots from t
Source: AP
October 17, 2006
Austria launched an online database Tuesday to find the owners of art and other cultural items that may have been looted under Nazi rule and are now in some of the country's museums.
The database -- accessible at http://www.kunstrestitution.at -- contains information about objects that were likely to have been expropriated between 1938 and 1945, when Austria became a part of Nazi Germany.
Source: Reuters
October 17, 2006
What you had for breakfast on Tuesday could make history.
That meal, or perhaps the way you went to work or what you saw on TV on this one day, Tuesday October 17 are wanted by a Web site hoping to create a national online archive.
The National Trust is aiming to create Britain's biggest blog as part of its History Matters campaign.
The blogs can include everyday events, but bloggers are encouraged to include an historical twist, even if it is only to d
Source: Discovery News
October 13, 2006
Nine Neolithic-era buildings have been excavated in the Stonehenge world heritage site, according to a report in the journal British Archaeology.
The structures, which appear to have been homes, date to 2,600-2,500 B.C. and were contemporary with the earliest stone settings at the site's famous megalith. They are the first house-like structures discovered there.
Julian Thomas, who worked on the project and is chair of the archaeology department at Manchester University
Source: Reuters
October 17, 2006
LONDON Only one of the ancient wonders of the world still survives -- now history lovers are being invited to choose a new list of seven.
Among 21 locations shortlisted for the worldwide vote is Stonehenge, the only British landmark selected.
The 5,000-year-old stones on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, will be up against sites including the Acropolis in Athens; the Statue of Liberty in New York; and the last remaining original wonder, the Pyramids of Giza in Cairo.
Source: Turkish Daily News
October 16, 2006
Excavations in the Harran district of Şanlıurfa have uncovered a stamp dating back to 4,000-5,000 B.C., said the excavation leader on Saturday, reported the Anatolia news agency.
Harran excavation team leader Nurettin Yardımcı said the excavations have been ongoing since 1983 and that recent work in the area has focused on the Harran tumulus and Ulu Cami as well as the Neolithic settlement of Tellidris.
“Our work has indicated
Source: AP
October 16, 2006
CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN AIR FORCE STATION, Colo. - Dr. Strangelove would have a heart attack: America’s vaunted underground war room deep inside this granite mountain is being retired. Not only that, but Russian military men have been inside the place.
During the long nuclear standoff with Moscow, the nation’s super-secret nerve center was a symbol of both Cold War might and apocalyptic dread, depicted in such movies as “WarGames” in 1983.
But with the end of the
Source: AP
October 17, 2006
The body of Argentine strongman Juan Domingo Peron arrived at a new mausoleum for his reburial Tuesday, greeted by the cheers but also a violent scene as rival groups hurled rocks at one another.
As Peron's cortege traveled from downtown Buenos Aires to the new mausoleum at his former weekend estate, thousands of weeping admirers tossed carnations and confetti.
Many in the crowd at the rural mausoleum, while awaiting the caravan, scattered and at least two men were seen
Source: Guardian
October 17, 2006
One of the most beautiful and infamous treasure hoards of the 20th century, 14 pieces of Roman-era silver of staggering quality, will resurface today on display in London, to the consternation of leading archaeologists who regard it as archaeological loot.
Although Bonhams auction house, which will display the Sevso Hoard, insists no sale is planned, the Marquess of Northampton who bought the silver for an undisclosed sum in the 1980s recently said he "hopes" the silver w
