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: Telegraph (UK)
July 6, 2011
The creation of a truth commission would help promote reconciliation for Haitian victims who suffered during the dictatorship of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, a UN human rights official said. The UN's Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kyung-wha Kang, said at a press conference that the panel wouldn't replace ongoing efforts to prosecute Duvalier, a former despot known as "Baby Doc," but would work alongside them.More than 20 lawsuits have been filed in a Haitian court against Duvalier for crimes ranging from attempted murder and torture to embezzlement since he made an unexpected return to his homeland in January after 25 years in exile. Advocacy groups say the case could break important new legal ground in Haiti, where the judiciary like other institutions is historically weak and ineffective.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 8, 2011
Peru has celebrated the 100th anniversary of the "discovery" of Machu Picchu, the Inca citadel.
Source: Salon
July 8, 2011
Rep. Michele Bachmann, who in the latest Iowa poll is in a virtual tie with Mitt Romney, used her first TV ad the other day to promise that she will under no circumstances vote to raise the debt ceiling, thus setting the ideological bar that much higher for the rest of the presidential field....The pledge (which comprises two pages of pledge, two pages of endnotes) covers a lot more than just marriage.There is, for example, this gratuitous reference to slavery in the preface to the pledge:Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born in to slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African- American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.
Source: Salon
July 8, 2011
Ludwig Wittgenstein is known above all for his groundbreaking work as a modern philosopher. But he was also an enthusiastic amateur photographer whose pictures -- from a "composite" family image to a jaunty shot of a friend posing as if he were in a gangster film -- are intriguing and revelatory.Sixty years after the Austrian thinker's death, the Wittgenstein Archives (located at Cambridge University, where the philosopher studied and taught) have gathered some of Wittgenstein's own artistic efforts, along with other related photographs, for an exhibition....
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
July 5, 2011
On June 23, 2011, the House Appropriations Committee cleared a bill providing only $1 million for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) in fiscal year (FY) 2012. That figure constitutes a 90% reduction from the FY ’11 funding level of $7 million and is $4 million less than the Obama administration’s request for the NHPRC.Assuming no changes are made when the bill is considered on the House floor, advocacy efforts will shift to the Senate. There is no indication when the Senate Financial Services & General Government Subcommittee will meet to consider their FY ‘12 bill. Congress will be in recess the month of August until after Labor Day. Given what occurred last year, and in previous years, there will likely be a series of continuing resolutions to keep the federal government running after the start of Fiscal Year 2012 on October 1. So it is likely many months before any action will occur in the Senate.
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
July 5, 2011
Forty-five years after President Johnson signed the U.S. Freedom of Information Act into law in 1966, federal agency backlogs of FOIA requests are growing, with the oldest requests at eight agencies dating back over a decade and the single oldest request now 20 years old, according to the Knight Open Government Survey by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.The Knight Survey of the oldest requests utilized the FOIA to examine the actual copies of the oldest requests from the 35 federal agencies and components that process more than 90 percent of all FOIAs. It shows that the oldest requests in the U.S. government were submitted before the fall of the Soviet Union. These unfulfilled requests — some are for documents that are themselves more than 50 years old — are victims of an endless referral process in which any agency that claims “equity” can censor their release.
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
July 5, 2011
To mark the sesquicentennial anniversary of the American Civil War, the Civil War Trust has announced an ambitious national campaign that will permanently protect 20,000 acres of battlefield land over the next five years. The Trust has already protected more than 30,000 acres in 20 states over the past two decades.Campaign 150: Our Time, Our Legacy kicked off on June 30 with an event held at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, a key landmark of the Civil War’s bloodiest battle, which occurred 148 years ago. The project was announced by Civil War Trust chairman Henry Simpson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom James McPherson and the organization’s newest Trustee, country music superstar Trace Adkins.“With an average of 30 acres of battlefield land lost each day, now is the time for a major preservation initiative,” said McPherson. “If successful, Campaign 150 will have allowed us to set aside those landscapes that future generations will require in order to gain a full understanding of the Civil War. This project will enable us to substantively complete protection of many of the conflict’s storied fields.”
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
July 5, 2011
The National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) recently released its 2011 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. To see the list of endangered sites visit the Trust’s website.Beginning in 1988, the NTHP has annually released the list to raise awareness of the serious threats facing the nation’s greatest treasures. Since the program’s inception, the Trust has identified 233 endangered sites. The program has been so successful in galvanizing preservation efforts across the country that, in over two decades, only a handful of sites have been lost.
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
July 5, 2011
Notes and comments hand-written by Charles Darwin on the pages and margins of the books in his personal library are now available online for the first time, enabling new insights into the great naturalist’s thought processes and the development of the theory of evolution. The first phase of the project has just been completed, with 330 of the most heavily annotated books now accessible online at the Biodiversity Heritage Library.Darwin’s scientific library comprised 1480 books, of which 730 contain abundant research notes in their margins. All the annotated books are in the process of being digitized, resulting in high-resolution images of each book’s pages showing Darwin’s handwriting along with a transcription of the notes in a companion panel.Digitizing the volumes, the majority of which are held at Cambridge University Library, is a collaborative effort involving Cambridge, the Darwin Manuscripts Project at the American Museum of Natural History, the Natural History Museum, and the Biodiversity Heritage Library. It is supported jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Joint Information Systems Committee in England.
Source: WaPo
July 7, 2011
WASHINGTON — Several members of Congress are calling for a presidential commission to study the formation of a National Museum of the American People in Washington to tell the history of immigration and migration that formed the nation.Virginia Rep. Jim Moran, a Democrat, and Tennessee Rep. John Duncan, a Republican, introduced legislation Thursday that calls for studying the feasibility of creating such a museum without any federal taxpayer funds....
Source: WaPo
July 7, 2011
Born out of a grand vision of space exploration after the Apollo moon missions, NASA's manned space vehicle, Columbia, lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in 1981. The final flight of Atlantis will mark the end of the space shuttle era after 135 missions. (/Alexandra Garcia, AJ Chavar, Jason Aldag, Sohail Al-Jamea and Joel Achenbach)
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
July 7, 2011
Prosecutors in the U.S. are demanding that a university hands over to Britain taped interviews in which former IRA members purportedly accuse Gerry Adams of running a secret death squad.Researchers on an oral history project for Boston College obtained the testimonies from two convicted IRA terrorists between 2001 and 2006.Adams, president of Sinn Fein, has always denied being an IRA member, let alone heading a unit which – in kidnapping, torturing and killing suspected informants – carried out some of its most brutal acts....
Source: University of Bristol (UK)
July 7, 2011
One of the largest online collections of historical photographs of China will be launched at the University of Bristol today. The Visualising China project, a unique virtual archive of Chinese life, gives users the opportunity to explore and interact with more than 8,000 digitised photographs of China taken between 1850 and 1950.The archive includes rare photographs by the Chinese ambassador to the USSR during World War Two, Fu Bingchang, and rare shots of the nationalist leader of China Chiang Kai-Shek.
Source: MSNBC
June 29, 2011
Jamestown, N.Y. (WKBW release) -- The Vikings are coming! The Vikings are coming!Centuries ago, such a statement would have been viewed as an ominous warning of impending doom to coastal towns and villages throughout western Europe. Today, however, it should be met with great enthusiasm, as anyone wanting to catch a glimpse of a replica Viking ship will have the chance to do so on July 14 when The Norseman sails the waters of Chautauqua Lake.The event is being held to help promote the 2011 Scandinavian Folk Festival, taking place July 15 – 17 at the Gerry Rodeo Grounds, located just 10 minutes north of Jamestown.
Source: History Today
June 28, 2011
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War following the military uprising led by Franco on July 17th, 1936. Over 500,000 people lost their lives in the Spanish Civil War including 525 volunteers from Britain and Ireland. Despite the official British policy of non-intervention, many volunteers from Britain and Ireland travelled to Spain to join the International Brigades. According to newly digitised files, released today, June 28th, by The National Archives, many more volunteers left Britain than was previously thought....
Source: History Today
June 29, 2011
Bleak House, the former home of Charles Dickens in Broadstairs, Kent, is for sale through Chesterton Humberts. The six-bedroom house arranged over four floors is on the market for £2,000,000.Bleak House was the holiday home of Charles Dickens and his family between 1837 and 1859. It is where he completed David Copperfield, in 1851, and the house still features Dickens’ original desk and study on the extreme right on the house overlooking the sea. The mahogany staircase in the house and some fireplaces are also believed to be original.
Source: National Catholic Register
July 6, 2011
PORTSMOUTH, R.I. — The archbishop of Canterbury recently broke his church’s long silence on the religious beliefs of England’s foremost playwright — William Shakespeare.During a presentation at the Hay Festival held in May in Britain, Rowan Williams lobbed his bombshell about the Bard: “I think he probably had a Catholic background and a lot of Catholic friends and associates.”Archbishop Williams speculated that Shakespeare the man “wasn’t a saint.”...
Source: National Catholic Register
July 6, 2011
WICHITA, Kan. (CNA) — U.S. Army chaplain Father Emil Kapaun’s cause for beatification is headed to Rome, an event the Diocese of Wichita, Kan., celebrated with a July 1 Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.Father John Hotze, episcopal delegate for the office of Father Kapaun’s beatification and canonization, said the event marks the culmination of years of work and also celebrates the “gift” of Father Kapaun.“The fact that we, unlike any other diocese in the United States, in the world, have been blessed by the example of this saintly man, Father Emil Kapaun, boggles my mind,” he said in a June 30 statement. “How can we do anything less than give praise to God for this gift and strive to follow the example of Father Kapaun’s selfless giving?”...
Source: Guardian (UK)
July 7, 2011
Reports of the death of the former president Jiang Zemin have been greatly exaggerated, the Chinese state media has insisted, amid a frenzy of speculation online and overseas.In an unusual move, state news agency Xinhua issued a brief denial that the 84-year-old statesman had passed away to quell rumours that began on Friday when Jiang failed to attend the biggest political event of the year – a 90th anniversary celebration to mark the founding of the Chinese Communist party.Asia Television of Hong Kong broadcast a report on Wednesday claiming Jiang had died of an unnamed illness. Japanese and South Korean media issued similar bulletins. Chinese journalists said they had been told to expect news on Thursday, but the only comment was a single line from Xinhua.
Source: Fox News
July 5, 2011
One of Victorian Britain's most gruesome murder mysteries has been solved after the skull of a wealthy widower was found in the garden of famed naturalist Sir David Attenborough.More than a century after Julia Martha Thomas was brutally attacked by a servant in her home, the case was closed Tuesday as her death was formally recognized in a U.K. court.Remains found during excavations at Attenborough's property in Richmond, South London, were confirmed as those of Thomas, who was chopped up and boiled by her housekeeper in 1879.Although a box containing human flesh was found in the Thames days after the killing and the victim's foot was found on an allotment, her skull had been missing for 132 years....
