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
October 22, 2010
National Park Service (NPS) Director Jon Jarvis and Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) Chairman Wayne Donaldson, recently announced $1.3 million in Preserve America grants to 22 projects in 16 states.
Among the projects funded are: King County Heritage Barn Guide, Seattle, WA; a Heritage Design Plan for Baltimore’s Carroll Park, Baltimore, MD; Austin Historical Survey Web Tool, Austin, TX; Edmonds Downtown Cultural Heritage Tour, Edmonds, WA; Montana Community Revitali
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
October 22, 2010
In response to user requests, for the month of November, 2010, the National Archives at College Park, MD (Archives II) will undertake a pilot program to provide archival records retrieval service for textual records on Saturdays.
This pull service is only for records that have designated retrieval information, do not require screening for personal privacy and other sensitive information, and are housed in open, unclassified stack space. This pilot program is for the Textual Research
Source: Japan Today
October 26, 2010
Two swords found under the Great Buddha of Todaiji temple in the Meiji era have been identified as sacred swords that had been missing for some 1,250 years since around 760 after Empress Komyo, the wife of Emperor Shomu who built the Buddha, dedicated them along with other items to the temple, the temple said Monday.
The swords, decorated with gold, silver and lacquer, appear on the top of about 100 swords in the weapon list of the Kokka Chimpo Cho (the book of national treasures to
Source: Yale Alumni Magazine
October 25, 2010
Peru is considering “criminally denouncing” Yale officials in a long-running dispute over Machu Picchu artifacts, a government minister said this weekend.
Peru has sued Yale over the artifacts, which Yale archeologist Hiram Bingham ’98 took – with government permission — from the ancient Incan ruins in 1911. The South American country plans a centennial celebration of Machu Picchu’s rediscovery for next July, and has demanded the items’ return before then.
The universi
Source: AL
October 25, 2010
When an oil boom at Perdido Pass accidentally snagged a 19th century anchor last month, Doug Wilson was on the dock when the anchor was unloaded.
An archaeologist at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Preserve, Wilson was working a two-week stint at the BP Joint Command Center during the oil spill crisis helping protect historical sites in the Gulf of Mexico and on beaches. As an archaeologist with some expertise in Civil War relics, he wanted to see the anchor.
Marit
Source: BBC
October 26, 2010
A new book in South Africa says a computer hacker tried to sabotage the historic election in 1994.
This was the vote which ended apartheid and brought Nelson Mandela to power.
The book by Peter Harris, who was the head of the official election monitoring division, says the hacker got into what was thought to be an impregnable system.
The manipulation was detected at the time, but the culprit was never discovered....
Source: BBC
October 26, 2010
A collection of Ivor the Engine episodes which have not been seen since the 1960s have been unearthed in Kent.
The 24 reels were found at the back of the converted pigshed in Blean, Kent, where Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate created their much-loved films.
Postgate, who died in 2008, and Firmin were also behind other favourites including Bagpuss and The Clangers.
He said the black and white episodes were discovered by an agency that was digitising his fat
Source: BBC News
October 24, 2010
A French aristocrat descended from Louis XIV is seeking a court order to stop a Japanese artist exhibiting his work at the Palace of Versailles.
Work by Takashi Murakami, who blends Japanese classical art with manga-style modernity, is on show until December.
But Prince Sixte-Henri de Bourbon-Parme believes Murakami's brightly coloured work dishonours the memory of his ancestors.
The prince and fellow protesters say Murakami "denatures" French cul
Source: BBC News
October 22, 2010
The elegant writing style of novelist Jane Austen may have been the work of her editor, an academic has claimed.
Professor Kathryn Sutherland of Oxford University reached her conclusion while studying 1,100 original handwritten pages of Austen's unpublished writings.
The manuscripts, she states, feature blots, crossing outs and "a powerful counter-grammatical way of writing".
She adds: "The polished punctuation and epigrammatic style we see i
Source: AP
October 26, 2010
Saddam Hussein's longtime foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, was sentenced to death by hanging Tuesday for persecuting members of Shiite religious parties under the former regime.
Iraqi High Tribunal spokesman Mohammed Abdul-Sahib did not say when Aziz, 74, would be put to death.
Aziz has 30 days to launch an appeal. If the Appeals' Court upholds the death sentence, the law says Aziz should be hung within 30 days of the final decision. The Iraqi president also needs to sign
Source: AP
October 26, 2010
Authorities in Bosnia and Serbia said Tuesday they had recovered the skeletal remains of at least 97 people from the banks of a border lake that was partially drained this summer for maintenance.
Officials from the Bosnian and Serbian Commissions for Missing Persons said 372 bone fragments were found on the Bosnian bank of Perucac lake and 79 on the Serbian side.
By counting the right femurs recovered, experts determined the bones belonged to at least 97 people -- victi
Source: CNN
October 26, 2010
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was a binge drinker who had a pornography habit or fetish in the 1980s, then changed radically when he stopped drinking alcohol, his former girlfriend told CNN on Monday.
Lillian McEwen, who dated Thomas for several years before he was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1991, provided CNN's "Larry King Live" program with a harsh depiction of Thomas. She said when they first met, he might have been a "raving alcoholic" who used
Source: CNN
October 26, 2010
Just imagine: a world without cancer. It's a tantalizing thought, recently floated by researchers at Manchester University in the UK.
That world may well have existed, but in the distant past, according to their survey of hundreds of mummies from Egypt and South America. The researchers found that only one mummy had clearly identifiable signs of cancer.
The study suggested that industrialization, pollution and the ills of modern life are to blame for the epidemic of can
Source: National Geographic
October 25, 2010
A fossil human jawbone discovered in southern China is upsetting conventional notions of when our ancestors migrated out of Africa.
The mandible, unearthed by paleontologists in China's Zhiren Cave in 2007, sports a distinctly modern feature: a prominent chin. But the bone is undeniably 60,000 years older than the next oldest Homo sapiens remains in China, scientists say.
In fact, at about a hundred thousand years old, the Chinese fossil is "the oldest modern human
Source: Discovery News
October 25, 2010
Early modern humans mated with Neanderthals and possibly other archaic hominid species from Asia at least 100,000 years ago, according to a new study that describes human remains from that period in South China.
The remains are the oldest modern human fossils in East Asia and predate, by over 60,000 years, the oldest previously known modern human remains in the region.
The fossils — a chin and related teeth — belonged to a modern human that also featured more robust Ne
Source: Boston Globe
October 26, 2010
GREAT BARRINGTON — Hunched over a pair of hazy photos, Emily Wagner maneuvers a tiny spatula to rearrange the torn and furrowed film that shows the chest X-ray of a missing Korean War soldier.
It’s slow, painstaking work in a converted cotton mill in the Berkshires, but the payoff could be immeasurable. By putting its film-restoration skills to new use, a photo laboratory here is in the vanguard of a promising Defense Department effort to identify the remains of Korean War veterans,
Source: Time.com
October 21, 2010
Luxor has long been Egypt's prize possession. It was here that the ancient Egyptians at one time built their capital of Thebes; where Pharoahs dedicated massive temples to their gods; and where Howard Carter unearthed the world-famous boy King, Tutankhamen, in his tomb full of riches in 1922. "It has been one of the biggest and most famous tourist attractions for at least 200 years."says Francesco Bandarin, the head of the World Heritage Center at UNESCO. Adds Mansour Boraik, who overs
Source: People's Daily (CN)
October 22, 2010
East China's Jiangxi Province will launch an underwater archaeological investigation in Poyang Lake next month, China's first such project in inland waters.
"This time, we will go into China's largest fresh-water lake to study its repository of underwater sites and artifacts," said Fan Changsheng, director of Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Archeology.
Archaeologists will start by identifying submerged indigenous sites, waterlogged ancient battlefields, and sh
Source: Slate
October 22, 2010
...Sort of. Anyone can write and publish a textbook, but before it gets handed out to public-school students, the book's content would have to be approved by several review committees. As long as the textbook is deemed to meet state-specified guidelines and cover the subject matter with accuracy and coherence, the author's pedigree can be of secondary importance....In general, the publisher hires a more distinguished scholar as the main editor, who oversees the project and has final say over the
Source: Hokumburg Goombah (Blog)
October 8, 2010
This is a Daguerreotype taken by the inventor of the process, Louis Daguerre, in 1838. It is a view of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. To achieve this image (one of his earliest attempts), he exposed a chemically treated metal plate for ten minutes. Others were walking or riding in carriages down that busy street that day, but because they moved, they didn't show up. Only this guy stood still long enough—maybe to have his boots shined—to leave an image.
Other primitive forms of photogra
