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: WaPo
January 12, 2011
Arlington school officials decided Wednesday to pull a textbook in which historians have found dozens of errors.
"Based upon the recent information about the number and scope of errors identified in the Grade 4 Social Studies textbook, Our Virginia: Past and Present, Arlington Public Schools (APS) officials announced today their decision to remove all print copies of the textbooks from circulation and use in Grade 4 classrooms," officials wrote in an email to parents....
Source: NYT
January 12, 2011
MOSCOW — As Capt. Arkadiusz Protasiuk peered down at a dense fog over the Russian city of Smolensk last April, weighing whether to land an aircraft carrying Poland’s president and dozens of other government officials, no one told him what to do.
But no one had to, according to a Russian-led investigation of the subsequent crash, which killed everyone on board.
Captain Protasiuk had been in an eerily similar position in 2008, according to the report on the inquiry, whic
Source: Salon
January 12, 2011
Sarah Palin's use of "blood libel" today, as is already clear to most people, is divorced from the historical origins of the term. But it's worth taking a moment to revisit the original meaning of the phrase and the violent context from which it emerged.
I called Ronnie Hsia, a history professor at Penn State who has written extensively on blood libel and early modern Europe. He explained that the term generally refers to the medieval "fantasy in Christian belief that
Source: NYT
January 12, 2011
ATLANTA — Stanley Nelson writes for a small weekly newspaper in the Louisiana delta. For the past four years, he has been obsessed with one story: who threw gasoline into a rural shoe repair and dry goods shop in 1964 and started a fire that killed Frank Morris?
No one disputes that the death of Mr. Morris, a well-liked businessman who served both black and white customers, was connected to the Ku Klux Klan. The case is on a list of unsolved civil rights murders the F.B.I. released
Source: Yahoo News
January 12, 2011
ROME – Forget her smile. An Italian researcher says the key to solving the enigmas of "Mona Lisa'" lies in her eyes.
Silvano Vinceti claims he has found the letter "S" in the woman's left eye, the letter "L" in her right eye, and the number "72" under the arched bridge in the backdrop of Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting. According to the researcher, the symbols open up new leads to identifying the model, dating the painting, and attesting t
Source: BBC News
January 11, 2011
The last known survivor from the Lusitania ocean liner that was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915 has died.
Audrey Lawson-Johnston from Melchbourne in Bedfordshire died in the early hours of Tuesday aged 95.
She was three months old when the liner bound for Liverpool from New York sank off the Irish coast on 7 May.
Mrs Lawson-Johnston's family had been emigrating to England when the boat was hit in an attack that killed hundreds, including her sisters.
Source: Talking Points Memo
January 12, 2011
A school board member in Greeley, Colo., has started bringing his gun to school board meetings after, he says, he received threats over his regular radio broadcasts attacking the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
He describes it as a letter he received from a listener three years ago. It can also be found on a web site, martinlutherking.org, which is run by the white supremacist group Stormfront....
For what it's worth, the Tribune spoke to Clayborne Carson, the founding dire
Source: Hollywood Reporter
January 7, 2011
In a surprise move, A&E Television Networks has canceled plans to broadcast The Kennedys, the ambitious and much-anticipated miniseries about the American political family that was set to air this spring on the History channel.
our editor recommends
Greg Kinnear, Katie Holmes in History's 'Kennedys'
“Upon completion of the production of The Kennedys, History has decided not to air the 8-part miniseries on the network,” a rep for the network tells The Hollywood Rep
Source: Bloomberg News
January 12, 2011
Greece’s government said it will be represented at the International Court of Justice at The Hague in relation to a claim for German war reparations by relatives of victims of a massacre in a Greek village during World War II.
“I have taken the decision that Greece intervene at the International Court of Justice at the Hague on this specific case,” Prime Minister George Papandreou told his ministers in Athens today, according to an e-mailed statement of his comments. “We are faithf
Source: WaPo
January 12, 2011
JERUSALEM -- A new report by a prominent Nazi-hunting group gives more than a dozen countries, including Hungary, Ukraine and Canada, low grades for bringing suspected Holocaust-era war criminals to justice.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center gave top marks to Germany - the first time any country besides the U.S. has been given an "A" grade for prosecuting suspected Nazi war criminals.
The Associated Press on Wednesday received an advance copy of the center's report,
Source: USA Today
January 12, 2011
The nation's first gay history museum opens today in San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
Items on display include the kitchen table and pink-framed sunglasses that belonged to Harvey Milk, the first elected openly gay politician in California. The exhibit also features manuscripts and sex toys....
Source: NOLA.com
January 3, 2011
More than a century before the first modern-day civil rights march, there was Charles Deslondes and his make-do army of more than 200 enslaved men battling with hoes, axes and cane knives for that most basic human right: freedom.
They spoke different languages, came from various parts of the United States, Africa and Haiti, and lived miles apart on plantations along the German Coast of Louisiana. Yet after years of planning at clandestine meetings under the constant threat of immed
Source: Guardian (UK)
January 11, 2011
I am sitting on the verandah of the Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince, sipping coffee and looking out over its tranquil gardens. So idyllic is the scene, you could easily imagine that nothing much has changed here for a century – or at least not since the 1960s, when this white-painted landmark was known as "the Greenwich Village of the tropics" and hosted the likes of Truman Capote, Mick Jagger and Graham Greene. The Oloffson even inspired the hotel that appears in Greene's 1966 novel
Source: Guardian (UK)
January 11, 2011
Paris boasts so many historic monuments it has been called a living museum. But now Nicolas Sarkozy is under attack for seeking to sell the capital's heritage to luxury hotel chains.
Historians are outraged at government plans to rent out one of France's most important palaces, L'hôtel de la Marine on Place de La Concorde.
A symbol of the nation's bloody history, the palace was the site of the first riots that led to the French revolution in 1789. King Louis XVI and Mar
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
January 7, 2011
Henry V NPG wiki bigger The BBC World News was getting pretty excited tonight about the discovery by British Professor Paul Davis -- the man who invented the pregnancy test -- that bandages inspired by the chemistry of honey could make wounds heal more quickly.
Well done, Professor. But maybe you would have got there sooner if you'd been reading more history and less science.
In particular, the history of Henry V and how he became the man to lead the English and the Wel
Source: Yahoo News
January 11, 2011
Some U.S. lawmakers want an Arlington National Cemetery burial for the controversial Laotian Hmong ex-general of a secret CIA-backed army that fought communism during the Vietnam War.
Vang Pao, who died in California last week at age 81, commanded thousands of Hmong fighters in a covert U.S.-backed war against North Vietnamese and Laotian communists during the 1960s and '70s. His legendary skills at guerrilla warfare led some followers to see him as a minor deity.
Reps.
Source: Epoch Times
January 11, 2011
F. Lee Bailey, one of the former lawyers for OJ Simpson during his much-hyped murder trial in the mid-1990s, has posted a document on his website saying that evidence of Simpson’s innocence was held back.
The defense didn't call four witnesses who could have testified to clear Simpson, who was on trial for the murders of his ex-wife and friend, Bailey wrote in the 20,000-word document, according to Salon.
Even though Simpson was found not guilty, he was found guilty dur
Source: Fox News
January 11, 2011
MUNICH – John Demjanjuk's defense attorney said Tuesday that transcripts of testimony by a former guard at a Nazi death camp, who acknowledged that he was tortured by the Soviets into confessing to committing war crimes, show that all such confessions should be considered suspect.
In the transcript of the 1951 trial in the Soviet Union, read into the record as evidence Tuesday at the Munich state court, a former Red Army soldier who was captured by the Nazis and then served as a gu
Source: Haaretz
January 3, 2011
A few decades ago, the appearance of animals such as wild oryx, fallow deer and roe deer on Israeli pathways, after they became extinct in this region, would have seemed like the fantasy of some romantic naturalists. Yet data released recently by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority indicate that this image has turned into a practical plan that has been successfully implemented in some places; such animals have returned to areas such as the Galilee and Negev. They are even playing important rol
Source: Fredericksburg.com
January 11, 2011
Just in time for the sesquicentennial of its namesake, America's largest battlefield preservation organization has a new name--the Civil War Trust--and a new graphical identity.
Until now, the group--which has deep roots in Fredericksburg--had been called the Civil War Preservation Trust. Its new moniker is shorter and simpler, as is the new logo that the Washington-based nonprofit rolled out yesterday.
The design features the silhouettes of two soldiers, Union and Conf
