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: NYT
Oct 14, 2008
TWAIN HARTE, Calif. — Strange where a road trip can begin: a dorm room, a bar stool or Page 283 of the W.P.A. Guide to California.
It is on Page 283 that a reader can find the barest mention of The Order of E Clampus Vitus, one of the oldest and oddest entities in a state known for having a few, a Gold Rush-era organization whose goofball sensibilities are offset by a single, serious pursuit: a tendency to plaque all things historical, an obsession that continues to this day.
Source: Times (UK)
Oct 14, 2008
The celebrated Czech author Milan Kundera has rejected accusations that he denounced a Western intelligence agent in his country when he was a student 58 years ago.
The claims by local historians are based on a 1950 police report stating that Mr Kundera informed on a young Czech pilot who worked as an agent for American intelligence and was arrested on his first mission in Prague following the tip-off.
It was also alleged that Mr Kundera’s supposed denunciation prompted the arrest of sever
Source: Baltimore Sun
Oct 13, 2008
A group of Baltimore high school students held a demonstration this morning to educate people about the less-heroic elements of Christopher Columbus, on a day most Americans honor the explorer.
The students from Baltimore Freedom Academy, a citywide charter school focusing on social justice and activism, spent the past six weeks comparing textbook accounts of Columbus' travels and actions with primary sources about his life, such as journals and writings.
As the culmina
Source: Providence Journal
Oct 13, 2008
In May, as a handful of local archaeologists watched from the gunwales of four research ships, warfare scientists for the Navy and federal oceanographers lowered several high-tech robots into Narragansett Bay's waters between Portsmouth and Jamestown.
Some of the robots resembled torpedoes. Others looked like mechanical crabs. The newest of their kind, the remote-controlled, sonar-imaging machines had been designed to find mines buried on the sea floor or attached to ship hulls. But
Source: BBC
Oct 13, 2008
A group of archaeologists are trying to establish if Norsemen brought Christianity to Caithness before St Columba arrived on Iona.
The question has arisen after a dig at an ancient church site at the coastal village of Dunbeath.
Pottery dating back to the 6th Century has recently been found in the area.
Source: Australian
Oct 13, 2008
OPPOSITION frontbencher Tony Abbott wants school students to study more British history, saying Britain has shaped the world and should get the credit for it.
The National Curriculum Board today will release a draft curriculum which places a greater focus on world events in history classes.
Mr Abbott said he was in favour of world history but said the focus should be on Britain.
"People have got to know where we came from, they've got to know about the
Source: USA Today
Oct 13, 2008
Emily Post has been dead nearly half a century. Many believe good manners died right along with the woman who gave us the ultimate book on etiquette in 1922.
But would she be shocked by the boorish behavior — from rampant cellphone abuse to undie-less celebrities — we see around us today?
"No," says Peggy Post, her great-granddaughter-in-law. "She'd be fascinated."
Source: USA Today
Oct 13, 2008
The bombing of a prominent Atlanta synagogue in 1958 claimed no lives, but the community outrage that it prompted helped galvanize the city's nervous Jewish community to embrace the civil rights movement.
Members of The Temple gathered Sunday for the blast's 50th anniversary, recalling its terrifying aftermath and the way it changed their congregation's mission to promote racial equality.
"What could have been a terribly tragic event had the effect of making the congrega
Source: NYT
Oct 13, 2008
TWAIN HARTE, Calif. — Strange where a road trip can begin: a dorm room, a bar stool or Page 283 of the W.P.A. Guide to California.
It is on Page 283 that a reader can find the barest mention of The Order of E Clampus Vitus, one of the oldest and oddest entities in a state known for having a few, a Gold Rush-era organization whose goofball sensibilities are offset by a single, serious pursuit: a tendency to plaque all things historical, an obsession that continues to this day.
Source: NYT
Oct 13, 2008
Has John McCain fallen too far behind, too late in the presidential campaign, to overtake Barack Obama?
That is the question facing strategists in both parties three weeks before Election Day. History suggests that the answer is probably so.
Obama has already made history as the first African-American to become a major-party nominee for president. But his breakthrough represents a wild card that could yield election returns at odds with poll results. Beyond that, McCain
Source: NYT
Oct 13, 2008
The government’s plan to prop up banks large and small — along with recent bailouts as well as guarantees to support business loans, money markets and bank lending — represents the most sweeping government moves into the nation’s financial markets since the Great Depression, and perhaps ever, according to economists and finance experts.
The high-stakes program is intended to halt the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. If successful, it could long be studied by historians as a t
Source: International Herald Tribune
Oct 13, 2008
This month Moscow blocked off two streets to make way for a small Communist demonstration. It was a march in memory of about 150 people who were killed in October 1993, when hard-line deputies in the Parliament tried to wrest power from Boris Yeltsin and halt the lurching course he was steering toward constitutional democracy and capitalism.
The whole, vast mass of Russia seemed to teeter for a few days. Sympathizers flocked to Moscow's White House, where the deputies were barricade
Source: WaPo
Oct 13, 2008
You want to talk dirty politics? Oh, we'll talk dirty. We'll talk about . . . 1800!
Thomas Jefferson was attacked by ministers who accused him of being an "infidel" and an "unbeliever." A Federalist cartoon depicted him as a drunken anarchist, and the president of Yale warned that if Jefferson came to power, "we may see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution." A Connecticut newspaper warned that his election would mean "murder, r
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 13, 2008
In a sign of her influence over her husband's decision-making, the Italian-born First Lady - along with her sister - convinced the French president to drop a court order to deport exiled Red Brigades terrorist Marina Petrella to Rome.
Her personal intervention and the presidential u-turn sparked anger in Italy, which has been seeking Mrs Petrella's extradition from France since she fled after being freed on bail in 1986.
A group representing victims of the Red Brigade
Source: AP
Oct 12, 2008
The New York grave of an Irish woman who was the first immigrant to pass through Ellis Island has been marked with a Celtic cross.
Clergy members joined Annie Moore's descendants and admirers Saturday in a Queens Cemetery. She died 80 years ago, but her unmarked grave was discovered only two years ago.
Moore was 17 when she arrived in New York from County Cork in 1892. The Irish consul general in New York says she is a symbol for the hundreds of thousands of Irish who s
Source: NYT
Oct 12, 2008
At the turn of the 20th century, toward the end of a brutal and surprisingly difficult victory in the Second Boer War, the people of Britain began to contemplate the possibility that theirs was a nation in decline. They worried that London's big financial sector was draining resources from the industrial economy and wondered whether Britain's schools were inadequate. In 1905, a new book — a fictional history, set in the year 2005 — appeared under the title, "The Decline and Fall of the Brit
Source: http://www2.tbo.com
Oct 12, 2008
The giant Confederate flag at Interstates 4 and 75 will be replaced with a larger version.
The Confederate battle flag hoisted at what is planned to be a memorial park for Confederate soldiers was raised amid controversy by a local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
The original flag measures 30 feet by 50 feet, or 1,500 square feet. The new flag is 30 feet by 60 feet, or 1,800 square feet.
Source: FoxNews.com
Oct 12, 2008
In the beginning, there was a boy, a girl and an apple.
He was a teenager in a death camp in Nazi-controlled Germany. She was a bit younger, living free in the village, her family posing as Christians. Their eyes met through a barbed-wire fence and she wondered what she could do for this handsome young man.
She was carrying apples, and decided to throw one over the fence. He caught it and ran away toward the barracks. And so it began.
As they tell it, they
Source: Canada.com
Oct 12, 2008
A rare print of a 396-year-old map of Canada created by French explorer Samuel de Champlain - and billed by Sotheby's as "perhaps the most important single map" in Canadian history - is to be auctioned next month in Britain for up to $80,000.
But the newly offered copy of Champlain's richly illustrated rendering of Canada's geography as it was understood in 1612 - just four years after the founding of New France at Quebec City - is drawing special attention from experts at
Source: Dallas Morning News
Oct 12, 2008
Even though the Lincoln landscape already is populated with many books, several authors have found new ground to cover ahead of the 200th anniversary of his birth in February.
Here are some highlights:
Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer. Fred Kaplan.
Abraham Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief. James M. McPherson.
New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World. Edited by Eric Foner.
