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: BBC
Aug 9, 2008
On Arwad Island off the coast of Syria, a group of 20 sailors-to-be are preparing for a voyage their captain believes has not been undertaken for two and a half millennia.
They plan to set off on Sunday on a journey that attempts to replicate what the Greek historian Herodotus mentions as the first circumnavigation of Africa in about 600BC.
Their vessel, the small, pine-wood Phoenicia, is modelled on the type of ship the Phoenician sailors he credited with the landmar
Source: Telegraph
Aug 9, 2008
The country's longest-serving monarch is among the most controversial omissions from the list, which sets out to encapsulate the things every Briton should know about their nation's past.
Compiled by the History Channel, the list includes crucial dates in our islands' story such as the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, the execution of Charles I in 1649 and Nelson's victory at Trafalgar in 1805.
They are listed alongside such less-obv
Source: Telegraph
Aug 9, 2008
When reading accounts of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, 420 years ago this month. They occasionally make a reference to the weather when it impinges on historical events, but they rarely do more than scratch the meteorological surface.
They tell, for instance, of "a contrary wind'', "a rain squall from the northeast'', and "a shift of the wind into the southwest''. They do not investigate how unusual the storms of summer 1588 were, nor do they make reference to the
Source: Bloomington Pantagraph
Aug 9, 2008
The reasons behind the infamous 1908 riots that rocked Illinois’ state capital, the history that followed, and how race relations remain an issue a century later are at the heart of a current exhibit in Springfield and talks planned this fall in the capital and Bloomington.
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum offers in-depth analysis of the three-day riot with its exhibit, “Something so Horrible: The Springfield, Illinois, Race Riot of 1908.” It runs through October.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Aug 9, 2008
It was there when Pickett's soldiers made their famous charge. It was there when Lincoln gave his address.
On Thursday afternoon, a honey locust tree that had stood as one of the last living testaments to the Battle of Gettysburg cracked in a storm and crashed to earth.
Standing on Cemetery Hill, 150 feet from the platform on which the Gettysburg Address was given, it was one of the last of what are termed "witness trees" to the one of the most devastating of
Source: Daytona Beach News-Journal
Aug 9, 2008
Once upon a time, robes of Franciscan friars swept the sands of Volusia County west of New Smyrna Beach. They moved past palmettos and through the shade of ancient oaks to pray behind arched coquina windows as they sought to save souls of heathen Jororo Indians.
Chants and song resonated from the mission of San Josef de Jororo as its bell tolled the faithful to the altar of the chapel built by followers of Columbus on his second voyage in 1496. It was one of several holy out
Source: Asian News International
Aug 9, 2008
London, Aug 9: Late Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's malevolent side has been exposed in a letter criticizing Russian historian Zhores Medvedev.
In the letter he sent to The Times, the year of his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974, Solzhenitsyn panned the 83-year-old historian branding him an apologist for the regime and making public statements that served the Soviet empire better than the "whole Soviet propaganda apparatus".
Howev
Source: Independent
Aug 9, 2008
Police are trying to trace the owner of a handwritten letter from the wife of Winston Churchill, which was recovered during a drugs raid.
Officers executing a warrant last month at a house in Mexborough, South Yorkshire, found the letter, and three cheques mounted on a card, inside a plastic sleeve with a quantity of heroin.
A 55-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of theft and possessing class A drugs at the property. The woman's 32-year-old son and her sister, 41
Source: Independent
Aug 9, 2008
The families of some victims of the Omagh bombing, in which 29 people died, have announced that they will boycott a ceremony to mark the tenth anniversary of the atrocity.
The decision introduced a note of discord to attempts to provide a dignified commemoration of the event in 1998, which is regarded as one of the worst incidents of the Troubles.
The size of the death toll, and that it took place as the Northern Ireland conflict seemed to be subsiding, means it has st
Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Aug 9, 2008
The Western Australian Government has purchased what is being described as the most significant private collection of Aboriginal records and photographs in Australia.The 74,000 individual records and more than 7,000 photographs were gathered over 30 years by Northam genealogist Jan Goodacre.
The State Government, with help from the Commonwealth, has paid $300,000 for the material that will be used to help members of the Stolen Generations trace famil
Source: BBC
Aug 8, 2008
Genealogists now believe the US presidential hopeful is descended from an 18th-Century Dublin businessman.
Previous records found Mr Obama's fourth great-grandfather was a shoemaker in the midlands village of Moneygall, whose son Fulmuth Kearney left for the US in 1850.
But researchers at Trinity College, Dublin, delved further into the would-be-president's colourful past to find his sixth great-granduncle was a prominent Dublin businessman in the 1700s.
Source: Guardian
Aug 8, 2008
Strands of DNA recovered from the fossilised leg bone of a Neanderthal have shed light on the fragility of the ancient population and pinpointed when they first split from what were to become modern humans. The 38,000-year-old bone was unearthed in a cave in Vindija in Croatia, and has since become part of a landmark project to read the entire genetic sequence of an ancient human ancestor, a feat scientists believe will help reveal how modern humans evolved into the world's dominant species.
Source: CNN
Aug 8, 2008
Twenty years after it violently suppressed a bid by more than a million peaceful protesters to restore democracy, Myanmar's military junta was on high alert Friday with riot police guarding the country's main city and detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's home.
While no protests were reported in Myanmar itself, activists around Asia planned to mark the 20th anniversary with demonstrations at the embassies of both Myanmar and China, a key ally of the junta that critics sa
Source: The Boston Channel
Aug 8, 2008
A bone believed to be from one of the 12 apostles was stolen from a Greek Orthodox church in Lowell earlier this week.
Police are hoping some public attention will help track down a 2,000-year-old relic.
"It's a relic of St. Andrew --- a very small, small bone of the saint," said the Rev. Demetrios T. Costarakis, of the Transfiguration Greek Orthodox Church.
He said that the relic was passed down through many generations and that the church acqu
Source: LAT
Aug 8, 2008
Alot worse things have happened in Iraq, but the removal of the Baath Party archives from the country -- 7 million pages that undoubtedly document atrocities of the Saddam Hussein regime -- is significant. The documents were seized shortly after the fall of Baghdad by Kanan Makiya, an Iraq-born emigre who teaches at Brandeis University and heads a private group called the Iraq Memory Foundation. Despite protests from the director of Iraq's National Library and Archives, the documents were shippe
Source: National Coalition for History
Aug 8, 2008
Before leaving for its summer recess, Congress passed and sent to the president a bill (H.R. 4137, H. Rept. 110-803) reauthorizing federal higher education programs. It marks the first time in over a decade that Congress had reauthorized the Higher Education Act. The bill includes a new “American History for Freedom” initiative to establish or strengthen postsecondary academic programs or centers that promote the teaching of “traditional American history, free institutions and the history and ac
Source: CathNews
Aug 8, 2008
In a newly published book, American scholar Joseph Pearce concludes that William Shakespeare was a Catholic.
Projo.com reports that academics have increasingly noted links between Shakespeare and the persecuted Catholics of his times.
A new book by Joseph Pearce, The Quest for Shakespeare: The Bard of Avon and the Church of Rome lays out the case that Shakespeare was indeed a believing Catholic who, for the sake of his career and his neck, kept that a secret.
Source: History Today
Aug 8, 2008
DNA tests on two foetuses from the tomb of Tutankhamun will determine if they were the children of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh. Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities, said the results should be known by December and also if the grandmother was Queen Nefertiti. It is estimated the foetuses were stillborn up to seven months into pregnancy; they were discovered in 1922 when Howard Carter opened the Luxor tomb of the ‘Boy King’ (c.1333-23 BC). They have been kept in the Cairo
Source: History Today
Aug 8, 2008
Archaeologists have unearthed what is thought to be Shakespeare’s first playhouse and one of the earliest in London. Museum of London Archaeology made the discovery in Shoreditch during the construction of a new theatre by the Tower Theatre Company. One of London’s first playhouses, The Theatre was established in the area by James Burbage in 1576 but the exact location has never been found. William Shakespeare’s first plays were enacted here and he also performed there with The Lord Chamberlain’
Source: Business Wire
Aug 8, 2008
CHARLESTON, S.C.--Aug. 2, 2006--Before great Americans of our times like Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King made their mark on America's racial divide, there were men and women who dedicated their lives to ensuring liberty and justice for all Americans. When the Civil War battlefields fell silent these individuals struggled onward to reconstruct a better America. These men and women are true American heroes who over time have had little, if any, recognition.
One influential grou
