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: UNESCO
September 8, 2006
The Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, today announced that the Organization will send a mission of experts, from September 10 to 16, to assess the potential damage caused to cultural sites in the recent conflict in Lebanon.
The mission will, among other things, visit UNESCO's World Heritage sites of Tyre, Baalbek and Byblos. Tyre and Baalbek, first built by the Phoenicians grew over the centuries and retain, to this day, some of the finest examples of Imperial Roman arc
Source: NYT
September 9, 2006
There is mounting concern among scholars that the appointment of religiously conservative Shiite Muslims throughout Iraq’s traditionally secular archaeological institutions could threaten the preservation of the country’s pre-Islamic history.
Donny George’s recent departure as chairman of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, and his flight to Syria with his family, is among the latest results of a transformation that began in December when a Shiite-dominated government was e
Source: Wa Po
September 10, 2006
Most of us take the form of the book for granted: A collection of sheets with writing on both sides bound along one side.
The story of how that form -- the codex -- became synonymous with the idea of a book is one of the threads that runs through one of the most unusual exhibitions coming to Washington this fall.
The show, which opens in October at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, brings together scrolls, scraps of papyrus, bits of parchment and other curiosities, incl
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
September 8, 2006
On Oct. 27, 1838, Missouri Gov. Lilburn W. Boggs issued Executive Order 44 -- what Mormons now refer to as the "Extermination Order" -- in effect running members of that church out of the state.
For Boggs, the issue was the so-called Mormon Wars -- a decade of conflict between Missouri settlers and members of the fledgling religion.
In his orders to Maj. Gen. John Clark, who was to lead the expulsion, Boggs said Mormons were "in the attitude of an open a
Source: Guardian
September 7, 2006
Archaeologists in Ukraine have unearthed the remains of an ancient pyramidal structure that pre-dates those in Egypt by at least 300 years. The stone foundations of the structure, which probably resembled Aztec and Mayan ziggurats in South America, were discovered near the eastern city of Lugansk.
It is thought they were laid about five millennia ago during the early Bronze Age by animists who worshipped a sun god. The "pyramid" is in fact a complex of temples and sacrifi
Source: Newsweek
September 11, 2006
When U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris recently told a religious journal that separation of church and state was "a lie," many critics cited this as another sign she was out of the mainstream. But, experts say, she was reflecting a common view in religious conservative circles--that the idea of separation of church and state was concocted by 20th-century courts, not the Founding Fathers. "This notion, the denial of church-state separation, is gaining ground among politically conservative
Source: NYT
September 8, 2006
Under growing pressure from Democrats and aides to former President Bill Clinton, ABC is re-evaluating and in some cases re-editing crucial scenes in its new mini-series “The Path to 9/11” to soften its portrait of the Clinton administration’s pursuit of Osama bin Laden, according to people involved in the project.Among the changes, ABC is altering one scene in which an actor playing Samuel R. Berger, the former national security adviser, abruptly hangs up on a C.I.A. office
Source: Brussels Journal
August 31, 2006
The Belgian authorities have destroyed archives and records relating to the persecution and deportation of Jews in Belgium in the 1930s and 1940s. Some of this happened as recently as the late 1990s. This was revealed during hearings in the Belgian Senate last Spring.
Source: Bruce Craig, writing in the newsletter of the Coalition for History
August 24, 2006
After over ten years of sometimes heated negotiation between the State Department and various governmental intelligence agencies, the Department of State History Office (HO) has released a new title in the FRUS series: "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, Vol XXIX, PART 2, JAPAN," the penultimate volume to be published in the Johnson administration sub-series. What makes this volume unique is that it has been nearly ready for publication for over seven years, but owing t
Source: Seattle Times
September 8, 2006
Charlize Theron will play a pregnant bystander who loses her baby in Seattle's WTO riots. Susan Sarandon may take the part of a newscaster sympathetic to the protesters.
Former Mayor Paul Schell just hopes the movie re-enacting one of the worst chapters of his political life tells "the whole story about the 21st-century Boston Tea Party."
It's true: Academy Award winner Theron is set to star in a major motion picture about the 1999 anti-globalization protests
Source: Christian Science Monitor
August 23, 2006
In Black Jack, Mo., (pop. 6,792), the city council wrangled last week over precisely how to define a family. In West Virginia, religious conservatives are getting ready to do battle with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) over the use of a law that aims to bolster marriage by outlawing "lewd and lascivious cohabitation."
In North Carolina, a state judge in July ruled unconstitutional a law that states it's illegal for unmarried couples to live together.
Source: Wa Po
September 3, 2006
JAMESTOWN -- They were known as the "20 and odd," the first African slaves to set foot in North America at the English colony settled in 1607.
For nearly 400 years, historians believed they were transported to Virginia from the West Indies on a Dutch warship. Little else was known of the Africans, who left no trace.
Now, new scholarship and transatlantic detective work have solved the puzzle of who they were and where their forced journey across the Atlantic O
Source: Reuters
September 3, 2006
German spies hid secret messages in drawings of models wearing the latest fashions in an attempt to outwit Allied censors during World War Two, according to British security service files released on Monday.
Nazi agents relayed sensitive military information using the dots and dashes of Morse code incorporated in the drawings.
They posted the letters to their handlers, hoping that counterespionage experts would be fooled by the seemingly innocent pictures.
Source: Reuters
September 6, 2006
Google News is getting a sense of the past to balance out its relentless focus on the present.
Google Inc. (Charts) has added the ability to search through more than 200 years of historical newspaper archives alongside the latest contemporary information now available on Google News, the market-leading Web search firm said Tuesday."The goal of the service is to allow users to explore history as it unfolded," said Anurag Acharya, a top Google engineer
Source: Independent Institute
August 27, 2006
Evidence of a building linked to the myth of King Arthur and the knights of the round table has been found at Windsor Castle.
The circular structure was built by Edward III in the 14th century to house the round table intended to seat the original 300 Knights of the Garter. Archaeological proof of the building was uncovered by members of Channel 4's Time Team in the castle's quadrangle.
Although the stones have been removed, rubble in-fill where they were originally located remained in place.
Source: cronaca
August 27, 2006
Canada's only major Arctic petroglyph site -- a 1,500-year-old gallery of mysterious faces carved into a soapstone ridge on a tiny island off of Quebec's northern coast -- has been ransacked by vandals in what the region's top archeologist suspects was a religiously motivated attack by devout Christians from a nearby Inuit community.
Source: BBC
August 27, 2006
British soldiers fighting the Zulus experienced appalling conditions similar to the muddy killing fields of World War I, it has emerged.
Archaeologists have revealed details of soldiers' battle for survival during a bloody siege in the Anglo-Zulu War.
The colonial war in 1879 was dramatised by Michael Caine in the film Zulu.
Historians lacked detailed evidence of the troops' daily lives, but a team of experts from Glasgow have now uncovered a forgotten B
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
September 6, 2006
The University of Heidelberg has returned a tiny piece of the Parthenon’s marble frieze to the Greek government, the Associated Press reported. The German university’s relief, which measures 3 inches by 5 inches, depicts a man’s foot. Greece is still trying to regain possession of the so-called Elgin marbles, a large part of the ancient building’s sculptural decor, which were removed in the early 19th century by a British diplomat.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
September 7, 2006
The National Archives and Records Administration is working to streamline the process of declassifying documents and has allowed few new withdrawals of documents from open shelves since a scandal over reclassified records hit the agency last spring, the United States archivist said on Wednesday.
The archives drew fire last April, when an audit report revealed that it had struck agreements with other federal agencies, such as the Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency, to rem
Source: AP
September 2, 2006
As a boy, Farrow Allen, Jr., heard stories about the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906 from his mother, whose father was hustled out of town to safety at the height of the four-day melee where 10,000 blacks and whites clashed in the streets.
Allen said he recalls little of the stories he was told as a child about his grandfather Luther Price, a fair-skinned black postmaster who ran a general store in a black neighborhood at the turn of the last century. But he remembers being scared to deat
