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)
Oct 27, 2009
Official figures show that in 131 state schools, not a single pupil sat GCSE history last year.
That is 4.1 percent of all 3,159 maintained mainstream secondary schools whose results are published by the Department of Children, Schools and Families.
Separate figure suggest that the move away from history has been greatest among poorer children.
Around 75,000 children in each year group are eligible for free school meals. Another parliamentary answer reveal
Source: Haaretz
Oct 27, 2009
In a defeated tone and in sharp contrast to the fanfare that heralded its beginnings, the era of the new historians, or what is known as the post-Zionist era, has come to an end.
The historical debate between Zionists and anti-Zionists hasn't changed, but it is no longer possible to hide behind claims of a Zionist conspiracy to expel Israel's Arabs and ethnic cleansing of the area west of the Jordan River.
It seems that a group of historians, who actually did not offer
Source: EurekaAlert
Oct 26, 2009
At the time of his death in 1885, Ulysses S. Grant was easily the most famous man in the United States — if not the world — and his funeral attracted the largest crowd up to that time, as 1.5 million mourners poured onto the streets of New York City.
Yet, if Americans today remember this Civil War general and two-term U.S. president, they tend to think of a drunken, cigar-smoking military butcher who lacked integrity when he moved into the White House.
But if one UCLA h
Source: LA Times
Oct 26, 2009
We always imagined how this might end: GeoCities would finally take down all of the animated "under construction" signs, and we'd hear one last Midi file to the tune of horns playing taps.
Instead, GeoCities will probably go down with a whimper today.
Time is up for Yahoo Inc.'s scheduled closing of perhaps the most significant virtual museum in recent history. Years ago a central meeting place for a massive chunk of American Web surfers, GeoCities will lock i
Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
Oct 25, 2009
He's typically depicted in paintings and sculptures as sullen and melancholy. His cheeks are sunken, and he has a long neck. His huge, veined hands are crossed over an ill-fitting, wrinkled suit.
But a different side of Abraham Lincoln has emerged in recently discovered accounts by those who knew him well and witnessed historic moments in his life and presidency.
In notes compiled early last century by artist and interviewer James E. Kelly, and uncovered by New Jersey h
Source: RockyMountainTelegram.com
Oct 25, 2009
RALEIGH, N.C. — The state's history office is taking the last steps on a long road toward writing a 600,000-word essay on North Carolina — at about 400 words a clip.
Each segment chronicles a stop on the agency's state's roadside marker program, which has history at more than 1,500 locations to as little as five lines of text.
For nearly 75 years, the signs have been a dollop of history sufficient for most motorists, some who like to spend a leisurely afternoon driving
Source: Rapid City Journal
Oct 25, 2009
A jewel of United States history quietly resides in the bowels of a nondescript building at the University of South Dakota.
The South Dakota Oral History Center isn't widely known outside of academia, but the center, located in a basement, contains eyewitness accounts of history that, in many cases, have remained undisturbed for decades.
"We sit on a very valuable collection here _ probably one of the most valuable in North America," said Edward Valandra, chai
Source: newsleader.com
Oct 25, 2009
Willis Carter lived in Staunton more than a hundred years ago.
Researchers from around the state and country have spent four years looking for information about the man — a former slave and, later, Staunton educator and newspaper editor — but after 1902, his historical paper trail fell blank until a recent find is helping the team lay the mystery of Carter's life to rest.
New York-based historian Deborah Harding has led research on Carter's life with the help of Virgini
Source: Ryan Forman, HNN intern.
Oct 25, 2009
The controversial Watergate author Len Colodny has a new book out that is drawing the support of at least one mainstream historian. Colodny, co-author of the 1990s book, Silent Coup: The Removal of a President, alleged that that the Watergate break-in was orchestrated by John Dean. Few historians in the profession believed the book was credible. Colodny himself has backed off the charge that Nixon was an innocent victim of John Dean's manipulations. But Colodny's new book has won
Source: NYT
Oct 24, 2009
MAISONCELLE, France — The heavy clay-laced mud behind the cattle pen on Antoine Renault’s farm looks as treacherous as it must have been nearly 600 years ago, when King Henry V rode from a spot near here to lead a sodden and exhausted English Army against a French force that was said to outnumber his by as much as five to one.
No one can ever take away the shocking victory by Henry and his “band of brothers,” as Shakespeare would famously call them, on St. Crispin’s Day, Oct. 25, 1
Source: NYT
Oct 24, 2009
MAISONCELLE, France — The heavy clay-laced mud behind the cattle pen on Antoine Renault’s farm looks as treacherous as it must have been nearly 600 years ago, when King Henry V rode from a spot near here to lead a sodden and exhausted English Army against a French force that was said to outnumber his by as much as five to one.
No one can ever take away the shocking victory by Henry and his “band of brothers,” as Shakespeare would famously call them, on St. Crispin’s Day, Oct. 25, 14
Source: Times of India
Oct 24, 2009
Syphilis killed Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin and not a stroke, believes a
British historian.
To find the evidence, Helen Rappaport delved deep into books and obscure journals. Rappaport thinks the Soviets tried hard to cover up the real reasons for Lenin's erratic, manic behaviour, bouts of rage and untimely death at 53, seven years after the revolution of 1917.
In a bid to reach the conclusion, Rappaport unearthed comments from Professor Ivan Pavlov. Pa
Source: Evansville Courier and Press
Oct 23, 2009
EVANSVILLE — Were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki justified?
Writer and historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa knows his World War II endgame subject matter doesn't sit well with some Americans.
"They don't want to hear that maybe America made a mistake," said Hasegawa, a professor of history at the University of California and Santa Barbara and the author of "Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and Japan's Surrender in the Pacific War."
Source: The Washington Post
Oct 23, 2009
The historian largely responsible for summing up Washington, D.C., for millions of Wikipedia readers digs for facts from his tiny bedroom in Dupont Circle. He sits on a chair borrowed from his four-piece dinette set at a desk he bought from Target, footnoting away on an old Dell computer. He is 24 years old. Sometimes he makes his bed.
His name is Adam Lewis -- a fact sure to surprise his closest friends and even his parents, who are unaware that, for a year or so, Lewis has been st
Source: Reuters
Oct 23, 2009
LONDON (Reuters Life!) - As Britain prepares to put the clocks back this weekend, one of its leading historians has called for the UK to join the same time zone as the rest of Europe -- and leave Scotland in the dark.
On Sunday the clocks go back one hour to GMT to provide more daylight in the morning, a tradition Alistair Horne called "absolutely crazy."
"The Scots do have a problem because, being that much nearer the North Pole, they do have a very sho
Source: inthenews.co.uk
Oct 22, 2009
The UK did not use chemical weapons on Iraqis just after the first world war, a researcher has said.
Despite claims, which had come to pass as fact, that British forces used chemical weapons on the country just after the war, a historian has said "no such incident ever occurred".
According to Dr RM Douglas, a historian at Colgate University, the claims rest on "shaky foundations". Dr Douglas' research is due to be published in the December issue of t
Source: Herald Express
Oct 22, 2009
ONE of the West Country's finest military historians has celebrated his 100th birthday.
Frank Pearce, a veteran of the Second World War's Arctic and Atlantic convoys, enjoyed his special day surrounded by friends and family at the Redcliffe Hotel, Paignton.
He is the author of more than 20 books, including Sea War: the Great Naval Battles of World War Two, and The Ship that Torpedoed Herself.
Frank, who lives in Brixham, has also written histories about Tor
Source: New Times Broward-Palm Beach
Oct 22, 2009
If you happened to be a highly prominent person of color visiting West Palm Beach in the first half of this century, chances are you would have stayed at Haley Mickens's house at 801 4th Street.
Mickens and his wife Dr. Alice Frederick Mickens, a well known civil rights activist, played host to dozens of African American athletes, musicians and political figures during the years they lived in their spacious two story wood frame house, in part because no local hotel would give black
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 21, 2009
The base for his hugely productive academic career was Queen Mary College at the University of London, where he taught for almost four decades until last year. By the time he left he had established himself as the pre-eminent scholar in his field.
When he joined in 1972, however, academic assessment of recent Conservative party history was in a state of infancy compared with the work done on parties of the Left. Maurice Cowling's 1867: Disraeli, Gladstone and Revolution (1967) had l
Source: Wicked Local Brookline
Oct 21, 2009
Brookline — Like many foreigners before and after him, Mr. Songkla chose to rent an apartment in Brookline because it was near the university where he was studying, and left shortly after receiving his degree.
But Mr. Songkla, known in his own country as the Duke of Songkla, also happened to be a prince visiting from Thailand, then called Siam. And the family he brought to Brookline eventually included two future kings, one of whom still rules his country today.
Now, mo
