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: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
November 30, 2011
Online registration for the 2012 National Humanities Alliance’s Humanities Advocacy Day is now open. Events will take place Monday, March 19 – Tuesday, March 20, 2012, in Washington, DC. Early-bird registration rates are in effect through December 31, 2011.With increasing budgetary pressures on federal spending, your help is needed now more than ever to defend critical humanities programs. The National Coalition for History is a co-sponsor of the annual event.For the preliminary program and other event information, visit www.nhalliance.org/events. To register online, click here.Humanities Advocacy Day started in 2000 to provide an opportunity for the entire humanities community to convene, meet with their elected officials, and convey the importance of federal support for the humanities. Strong participation in Humanities Advocacy Day events is essential to our success in increasing public support for, and understanding of, the humanities.The 2012 preliminary program includes:
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
November 30, 2011
The National Archives and Records Administration recently announced it will place the entire 1940 Census – more than 18 terabytes of data – online, free of charge, for viewing and download by page or enumeration district beginning Monday, April 2, 2012, at 9 a.m. EDT.Researchers will be able to search the 1940 Census using the public computers at National Archives facilities nationwide, or personal computers with Internet access. In addition, for customers with large data requirements, the National Archives Trust Fund is selling the 1940 Census data on hard-drives and hard-drive arrays. Microfilm copies of the 1940 Census data will be available for purchase from the Trust Fund, as well.The National Archives Trust Fund will accept pre-orders for the 1940 Census data on hard-drives and hard-drive arrays. Digital copies will be available for purchase as a whole or by individual state.Pre-orders for the entire 1940 Census and/or for individual states will be sent via overnight mail on April 2, 2012.If you would prefer the data on microfilm, orders for 1940 Census microfilm can be placed on April 2, 2012.
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
November 30, 2011
In 2010, President Obama signed Executive Order 13556, “Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI),” and designated the National Archives and Records Administration as the Executive Agent “to implement this order and oversee agency actions to ensure compliance with this order.”On November 4, 2011, as required by this Executive Order, the National Archives Controlled Unclassified Information Office established a publically available registry reflecting the initial categories and subcategories of unclassified information that require dissemination or safeguarding controls consistent with and pursuant to law, regulation, and Government-wide policy. This registry, additional information and CUI training is online at www.archives.gov/cui/.
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
November 30, 2011
The National Park Service recently announced the award of more than $1.4 million in grants to help with land acquisition at five Civil War battlefields. Grant recipients include battlefields at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania ($217,000); Wilson’s Creek, Missouri ($400,000); Bentonville, North Carolina ($114,000); Cedar Creek, Virginia ($430,000); and Chancellorsville, Virginia ($246,425).The grants were made from the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP) to help states and local communities acquire and preserve threatened Civil War battlefield land outside the boundaries of National Park units. Priority was given to battlefields listed in the National Park Service’s Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report on the Nation’s Civil War Battlefields (CWSAC Report). Funds were awarded based on the property’s location within CWSAC-defined core and/or study areas, the threat to the battlefield land to be acquired, and the availability of required non-Federal matching funds.
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
November 30, 2011
The National Archives recently announced the launch of a special web site highlighting activities and documents related to the 2012 National History Day theme – Revolution, Reaction, and Reform in History. Inspiration for National History Day projects can be found in sample documents, suggested topics at www.DocsTeach.org/home/national-history-day.These online records include photographs, maps, textual records, posters, patent drawings, and video and sound recordings that reflect the 2012 theme and can be incorporated into any of the five National History Day categories.Teachers can introduce the 2012 National History Day theme with an activity that encourages students to define the terms revolution and reform, and then examine the differences between them by analyzing documents connected to the New Deal. Another activity, entitled Mrs. Jackson’s Letter, illustrates an emotional reaction to ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Selma, Alabama in 1964. In other activities, students can reflect on why some documents are more effective than others when creating a National History Day project.
Source: Old West New West
December 2, 2011
Nearly a thousand visitors joined the staff of Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park on Nov. 19, 2011 for the official dedication of the Resaca de la Palma Battlefield as a new unit of the park, and to participate in the memorial illumination ceremony held annually at the site.Palo Alto Battlefield NHP near Brownsville, Texas has the distinction of being the only unit in the National Park Service to preserve battle sites from the U.S. War with Mexico.The dedication event marked the culmination of an effort extending back over a decade to preserve the site of the second battle of the U.S. War with Mexico....
Source: Gannett Times-Herald (MI)
December 12, 2011
FORT GRATIOT -- A community that lived through the deadly water tunnel explosion 40 years ago watched as their memories officially became a piece of history Sunday afternoon at Fort Gratiot County Park.During the ceremony held at the memorial, Tom Truscott of the Michigan Historic Commission dedicated a new historical marker -- a sign that details how 22 men working on a water intake tunnel deep underneath Lake Huron died in a powerful methane gas explosion Dec. 11, 1971.The Lake Huron Water Supply Project was started by the Detroit Metro Water Department in 1968 to build a new water intake for the then-growing cities of Detroit and Flint....
Source: NYT
December 12, 2011
One hundred years ago, on Dec. 14, 1911, the Norwegian Roald Amundsen and four companions trudged through fog, bitter cold and lacerating wind to stand at the absolute bottom of the world, the South Pole. Nowhere was there a trace of their British rival, Robert Falcon Scott. No Union Jack mocked them, no ice cairn bespoke precedence. The Norwegians had won the race.Amundsen and Scott were commanding forces driving early exploration of Antarctica, the ice-covered continent almost half again the size of the United States and unlike any other place on Earth. Both were driven by ambition to win fame by grabbing one of the few remaining unclaimed geographic prizes. Each was different, though, in temperament and approach to exploration, which may have been decisive in the success of one and the undoing of the other.
Source: NYT
December 12, 2011
On Monday, the Henry Hudson Bridge – that triumphalist crossing over the Harlem River, a steel archway slicing through a verdant vista of water, trees and cliffs – celebrates its diamond anniversary, the 75th. And like many older citizens of New York City, the bridge has had its share of wear-and-tear.It is one of the least-used bridges in the region’s arsenal, but its operations have piled up over the years, closing lanes and upsetting commuters bound for the many gilded Westchester County suburbs it serves.One Manhattan-bound lane was shut down for a 43-month period that ended in June 2010, during which the entire Depression-era lower deck was replaced. Eleven months later, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority began a new rehabilitation, this time to replace the steel support ropes, which will require a round-the-clock shutdown of a Bronx-bound lane for the next three years.In fact, the bridge has been, more or less, continually under construction since 2000, at a cost of around $160 million, twice the inflation-adjusted price tag of the original bridge....
Source: MSNBC
December 12, 2011
It's never too late to solve a mystery, or to set the record straight. In the 70 years since the attack on Pearl Harbor, a dramatic photo of female firefighters has been published many times in magazines, history books and online as a depiction of action on Dec. 7, 1941. We published it this past week on msnbc.com. Now, with the help of our readers, we've located one of the women, who says the photo was definitely not taken on that day.
Source: Guardian (UK)
December 10, 2011
Palestinian officials have reacted with dismay after the Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said Palestinians were an "invented" people.The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, said Gingrich was denying "historical truths".Gingrich said in an interview with The Jewish Channel that Palestinians were not a race of people because they had never had a state and because they were part of the Ottoman empire before the British mandate and Israel's creation."Remember, there was no Palestine as a state, [it was] part of the Ottoman empire," he said in a video excerpt posted online. "I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places."...
Source: The Newnan Times-Herald
December 10, 2011
Although Japan was facing an oil and steel embargo from the United States in 1941 and "had to do something," ultimately the Japanese "made the wrong decision and paid for it royally" when they decided to attack Pearl Harbor that morning of Dec. 7, Dr. Walter Todd of the University of West Georgia told the Newnan Rotary Club on Friday.Todd said there are many "misconceptions" about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. A new book by Dr. Alan Zimm, "The Attack on Pearl Harbor: Strategy, Combat, Myths, Deceptions," is helping to set the record straight, Todd said."There's been a huge amount of investigation about what actually happened during the raid," said Todd. "This is going to disprove a lot of misconceptions that Americans have about it....
Source: Globe and Mail
December 8, 2011
The Japanese government is offering an apology to Canadian prisoners of war, a significant move for a country that historians say has long struggled to come to terms with its wartime past.On Christmas Day in 1941, about 1,600 Canadians were captured by the Japanese in Hong Kong, after more than two weeks of battle. They were imprisoned for 3½ years, when they were beaten and forced to labour in mines, shipyards and on construction sites. By the time Japan surrendered in 1945, more than 250 of the Canadian prisoners had died of starvation, sickness or abuse, and many survivors remained ill or permanently disabled.George MacDonell, who wrote a book about his capture in Hong Kong and his experiences as a prisoner of war, said he sees Thursday’s apology as a sign that Japan is willing to come to terms with its past.“It will be a small comfort for us,” the 89-year-old Toronto resident said. “But it’s a tremendous step forward for the Japanese.… they will be the beneficiaries.”...
Source: Huffington Post
December 8, 2011
WASHINGTON -- Though Wednesday marked the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, speeches by a series of U.S. presidential candidates at the Republican Jewish Coalition rang strongly with rhetoric that applied more to the European theater in the years before the outbreak of World War II.In speech after speech, five of the six invited GOP candidates invoked the specter of "appeasement," the pre-WWII policy that many historians say emboldened Adolf Hitler to conquer Europe and carry out a full-scale genocide of its Jewish population. U.S. President Barack Obama, the Republicans said, was making a comparable mistake by "appeasing" Iran, "appeasing" Islamist extremists, even "appeasing" other countries who want to take America's place in the world.Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum accused the Obama administration of the kind of "appeasement" of Iran that allowed Hitler to invade neighboring countries with impunity.Michele Bachmann said, in reference to Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that "again a madman is speaking, and it seems the world is again not listening."...
Source: MSNBC
December 8, 2011
The Dead Sea nearly disappeared about 120,000 years ago, say researchers who drilled more than 1,500 feet below one of the deepest parts of the politically contentious body of water.The discovery looms large at a time when the Dead Sea is shrinking rapidly, Middle Eastern nations are battling over water rights, and experts hotly debate whether the salt lake could ever dry up completely in the years to come....
Source: Huffington Post
December 8, 2011
NEW YORK -- John Brennan turned 91 in May. Today he lives in relatively good health on Long Island, his mortgage paid off. When he was growing up in Manhattan during the Depression, though, times were tough."I was two weeks old when my father died, leaving my mother with five kids," he told HuffPost, his voice still marked by a craggy 1920s Hell's Kitchen accent. "Them days the women didn't have too much education, so my mother was out working most of the time, and we were free kids.""She worked in all these different factories," he said. "Making candy, then a paint factory."Under such desperate circumstances, Brennan himself had a hard time finding work during the Great Depression. So in 1937 he followed his older brother Peter into the Civilian Conservation Corps. He joined on his 17th birthday, the first day he was eligible.The pay was only a dollar a day, but between 1933 and 1941, the program gave some 3 million young men employment. The CCC planted 3 billion trees, stemming the deforestation that caused the Dust Bowl, and built modest public works like park trails across the country.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
December 12, 2011
A team of historians believe they have unearthed evidence of a 4,000-year-old Stone Age camp - thanks to a dog walker.Roger Hall was walking his pet at Cannock Wood in Staffordshire, when he discovered a handful of strange-shaped rocks.Experts later identified the rocks as flint 'flakes', which are the off-cuts from tools crafted by Stone Age Man 4,000 years ago.If the discovery is confirmed, it could mark the spot of the only Neolithic camp known in the Midlands.Roger Knowles, a member of the Council for British Archaeology, is convinced the camp could identify a link from the time when mankind changed from nomadic hunter-gatherer to village dweller....
Source: Siam Daily News
December 12, 2011
KATHMANDU, Dec 12 (Bernama) -- What could well be compared to Shangri-La as envisioned by British author James Hilton in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon, recent findings of human history dating back to over 3,000 years in the caves of Upper Mustang in western Nepal have unraveled a significant portion, if not the whole of that virgin unknown, reports China's Xinhua news agency.According to Monday's The Kathmandu Post, a team of national and international climbers, scientists, archaeologists, historians and anthropologists has found evidence of thousands of years of civilisation in this mystical land.After beginning the first phase of its research in 2008, the team discovered human remains dating back to 3,000 years, bringing out untold stories of an " independent" civilisation....
Source: The Metro West Daily News
December 12, 2011
Forget the da Vinci Code. There’s no Knight Templars or murderous albinos, but the life and death of Julien Hudson and the whereabouts of his paintings is a fascinating “art historical mystery’’ waiting to be solved.The second-earliest documented painter of African descent in the U.S., Hudson was making his mark as a portraitist in New Orleans in the early 1800s before dying of unknown causes, leaving behind just six canvases.Who was the man with searching eyes in one of his remaining paintings? Did he kill himself, as some suspect? With his sixth painting discovered by a New England collector, can more of Hudson’s valuable works be found in area shops, flea markets or your attic?An intriguing exhibit, “In Search of Julien Hudson,’’ at the Worcester Art Museum, offers the first retrospective about the man and the artist whose enigmatic career casts light on the lives of free blacks and mixed race people in Louisiana before the Civil War?...
Source: DNA Info
December 6, 2011
LOWER MANHATTAN — Workers installing a new steam pipe on Fulton Street this fall stumbled across an archaeological treasure trove of more than 5,000 objects dating back to the turn of the 19th century.Among the discoveries made in an old basement foundation at 40 Fulton St. were a bone toothbrush, a copper half-penny and hundreds of shards of pottery.The range of bottles, goblets, gravy boats and dinner plates — including some imported Chinese porcelain — suggests that the home there belonged to a wealthy family with access to a wide variety of goods and foods, said Alyssa Loorya, the archaeologist who excavated the artifacts....
