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: Australian
March 6, 2006
Education -- and specifically education that values knowledge for its own sake -- is the subject of Alan Bennett's play The History Boys, which Hytner directed for the National Theatre and has now brought to Sydney. Since its premiere in London in 2004, The History Boys has become one of the most talked-about new plays -- it won awards for director and playwright -- not only because it comes from Bennett's pen, but because it pushes some very contemporary buttons.''You
Source: Wa Po
March 7, 2006
Next Tuesday, the Federal Register celebrates its 70th year as the country's chronicle of regulatory minutia. True to the publication's reputation as an encyclopedia for policy nerds, the party being thrown by the National Archives and Records Administration and the Government Printing Office starts at 9 a.m. -- scheduled, no doubt, to let federal bureaucrats scurry back to their desks to write more rules. The celebration marks the evolution of a publication that began
Source: South China Morning Post
March 7, 2006
An amateur antique collector has formally unveiled a world map which, if authentic, may prove that Chinese explorers circumnavigated the globe well before Columbus ever set sail.Liu Gang, a prominent intellectual property rights lawyer, says he bought the map in a Shanghai bookshop in 2001.
It appears to be a copy made in 1763 of a map drawn in 1418, recording the explorations of admiral Zheng He, who made several voyages to Africa and possibly beyond duri
Source: NY Daily News
March 7, 2006
One of the great online assets for anyone interested in Brooklyn's - and therefore New York's - history is the digitized archives of the Brooklyn Eagle established by the Brooklyn Public Library.Visit www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/eagle and you will open the yellowed pages of the great Brooklyn Eagle, offering history's first draft of the most legendary borough of New York. Brooklyn's infancy is available with th
Source: Australian
March 7, 2006
A DASHING British hero survives a plane crash in wartime Germany, flees through a crowded city, speaks German without a hint of an accent, makes love to the beautiful nurse who saves his life, then exposes a corruption scandal.
This is no fictional blockbuster but German television's attempt to tell the story of the bombing of Dresden by the British during World War II, when up to 50,000 people are believed to have died.At pound stg. 7million ($16.5millio
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
March 7, 2006
The United States has denied visas to all 55 Cuban scholars who had planned to attend an international conference of the Latin American Studies Association next week in Puerto Rico. According to the association, known as LASA, the Cubans were informed of the decision on February 23, just three weeks before the conference is scheduled to start, on March 15. The association holds an international conference every 18 months.
The decision is consistent
Source: BBC News
March 7, 2006
An archaeological dig at a north London school has uncovered a Second World War air raid shelter. A week-long excavation at Edgware Junior School revealed the shelter, hidden under playing fields. It contained the remains of electrical fittings and gas heaters as well as shoes, an ink-well, a wartime fire bucket and a metal escape ladder.
Chalk drawings and other artefacts were also found. It is hoped the shelter will be kept open for history lesson
Source: Yahoo News
March 6, 2006
A team of Egyptian and German archaeologists has unearthed six statues of the lion-headed war goddess Sekhmet during restoration work at an ancient temple in the southern city of Luxor, officials said. The team found the artifacts in the Kom Hitan area on the location of the 18th dynasty (1580-1314 BC) temple of pharaoh Amenhotep III on the west bank of the Nile, said Egyptian antiquities boss Zahi Hawas.
The black granite statues show Sekhmet sittin
Source: National Geographic News
March 6, 2006
On the volcanic plains east of Naples, Italy, archaeologists have made an unusual discovery: thousands of prehistoric footprints in a layer of volcanic ash. On the volcanic plains east of Naples, Italy, archaeologists have made an unusual discovery: thousands of prehistoric footprints in a layer of volcanic ash.
These footprints are just one of several archaeological finds indicating that the still-active Vesuvius is capable of far worse eruptions than an
Source: Cedar Rapids Gazette
March 7, 2006
A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a lower court ruling revoking the citizenship of a former Nazi concentration camp guard. The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a federal district judge was correct in revoking the citizenship of John Hansl, 81, who lives in Des Moines.The U.S. Department of Justice filed a complaint against Hansl in July 2003, claiming he hid his military service when he applied for a visa to come to the United States in 1955. He was grant
Source: The Australian
March 7, 2006
A textbook widely used in Victorian high schools describes the Crusaders who fought in the Holy Land in the Middle Ages as terrorists, akin to those responsible for the September 11 attacks. The Year 8 textbook Humanities Alive 2 says that the Crusaders, like Muslim terrorists, "believed they were giving their lives for a religious cause".
"Like the Crusaders ... they were told they would go straight to heaven when they died," the book says.
Source: NYT
March 7, 2006
In some ways, art history is like an episode of "The Sopranos." A relatively small number of artists are welcomed into the family of the famous, their works immortalized in museums and on postcard racks — in other words, they are made. But hit men, otherwise known as critics and scholars, are lurking around every corner, waiting to whack even the most sterling reputation.Almost no one is safe. Not even, as it turns out, Whistler's mother.
This month, t
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
March 6, 2006
The European Commission announced on Thursday that it planned to make at least six million books, documents, and other cultural works available online by 2010 via the European equivalent of the Google Library Project.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
March 6, 2006
Faculty salaries rose 3.4 percent this year, just a little more than last year, according to a survey by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.Salaries at private institutions increased 3.7 percent, while those at public institutions rose 3.1 percent. A year ago, faculty salaries increased 3.2 percent over all.
Unlike the salary survey done by the American Association of University Professors, the CUPA-HR survey does not r
Source: Romanesko
March 6, 2006
That's what former presidential adviser David Gergen says. "This administration has engaged in secrecy at a level we have not seen in over 30 years," he tells Howard Kurtz. "Unfortunately, I have to bring up the name of Richard Nixon, because we haven't seen it since the days of Nixon. And now what they're doing -- and they're using the war on terror to justify -- is they're starting to target journalists who try to pierce the veil of secrecy and find things and put them in the ne
Source: NYT Magazine
March 5, 2006
In 1625, a carpenter named Pieter Fransz built a house on the outskirts of Amsterdam. He was young, ambitious and lucky enough to belong to one of history's greatest generations: his life spanned the course of his country's golden age, when tiny Holland became an empire and Amsterdam grew into Europe's wealthiest city. Fransz walked the streets with Rembrandt; he saw a forest of masts grow in the harbor, as ships returned from the East Indies laden with pepper and nutmeg, a sack of which could m
Source: Timesonline (UK)
March 4, 2006
MUAMMAR GADDAFI has demanded that Italy pay millions of dollars in compensation for the death of thousands of Libyans under colonial rule. The Libyan leader angered Italy after he spoke of his people’s “hatred” of Italians and threatened attacks on Italian interests in Libya unless reparations were agreed.
Two weeks after riots outside the Italian consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi, in which 11 people were killed, Colonel Gaddafi said that Lib
Source: Yahoo News
March 6, 2006
Archaeologists generally downplay the Indiana Jones side of their discipline, full of derring-do and unexpected discoveries. But every once in a while, an amazing find surprises even the most experienced researchers. And that's just what happened two years ago when Boston University's Kathryn Bard reached into a hole in the sand at the edge of the Egyptian desert and found the first of six caves. Her research team of Italians and Americans now knows those caves hold the most ancient ship stores
Source: post-gazette.com
February 28, 2006
The first signs of the destruction wrought by vandals came into view just after dawn. Almost simultaneously, several calls came into the National Park Service office at Gettysburg National Military Park.That was 12 days ago and the park service since has calculated the cost to repair and restore the monuments at just over $61,000. It was the worst case of vandalism at the park in 93 years.
A coalition of Gettysburg-area groups and individuals has put
Source: KATC3
March 6, 2006
Civil War submarines known to once be in Shreveport but unseen since that conflict continue to elude searchers."The submarines look like they will stay an enigma for a while," said Ralph Wilbanks, the diver who led underwater efforts that found the Confederate submersible Hunley off Charleston Harbor in 1995. "We have looked in the bayou and we didn't see anything we didn't see last time."
Wilbanks, together with fellow Hunley discovere
