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: AP
Feb 23, 2008
It might not even really be George Washington's hair — but it still sold for $17,000.
Four strands reportedly clipped from the first president were sold at auction Friday night to a Richmond man who declined to give his name.
Colorado resident Christa Allen said her father, a Philadelphia attorney, had given her the hair, which was pressed under glass in a locket and accompanied by a watch.
Source: AP
Feb 23, 2008
It hasn't been easy getting people excited about celebrating the 200th birthday of that tall, gaunt, bearded, Kentucky-bred president who was born in a log cabin and went on to lead his people through a bloody civil war.
No, not Abraham Lincoln. Last week, President Bush himself helped kick off a two-year celebration of the Great Emancipator's Feb. 12, 2009, bicentennial that will include dozens of events in Kentucky, Illinois, Washington and beyond.
It's that other tall, lo
Source: ABC News
Feb 22, 2008
The Hillary Clinton campaign pushed to reporters today stories about Barack Obama and his ties to former members of a radical domestic terrorist group -- but did not note that as president, Clinton's husband pardoned more than a dozen convicted violent radicals, including a member of the same group mentioned in the Obama stories.
"Wonder what the Republicans will do with this issue," mused Clinton spokesman Phil Singer in one e-mail to the media, containing a New York Sun
Source: CNN
Feb 22, 2008
When people think of the 1960s civil rights movement, they think of the leaders and lieutenants ... Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Abernathy, Hosea Williams.
They and many more are remembered for challenging segregation, organizing voter registration drives, pushing for equal pay, fighting for union rights, speaking in church and at rallies.
But there were many unsung foot soldiers in the movement -- witnesses to American history.
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz
Feb 22, 2008
A Norwegian museum director says he has discovered cartoons which he believes were drawn by Adolf Hitler during World War Two.
There was no independent confirmation that the drawings were the work of the Nazi leader, who tried to make a living as an artist before going into politics.
William Hakvaag, director of a war museum in northern Norway, said on Thursday he had found the drawings hidden in a painting signed "A.Hitler" that he bought at a German auction
Source: WaPo
Feb 22, 2008
Southern Methodist University in Dallas will be the home of President Bush's future presidential library and public policy institute, officials announced today, launching a project that could require hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations.
The location of the project has not exactly been a state secret -- representatives of Bush's library foundation have been negotiating with the university for months -- but the announcement means Bush's friends and associates will soo
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Feb 22, 2008
Charlie Carr watched as at least 15 friends were thrown overboard because the ship was too heavy. He was shipped from Africa to Georgia 50 years after the overseas slave trade was supposed to have been abolished in 1808. And he fought in the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War but never was able to secure a pension for his family.
Emma Davis-Hamilton thinks she is part of Carr's family. She learned about the man, who may be related to her grandfather, after finding his slave re
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Feb 22, 2008
Paul Dye never doubted that the stain on the old battle flag was the blood of his ancestor.
When a cousin gave the relic to him and his brother, pulling it out of a dress box she kept under a bed, she told them the story of their kinsman, William D. Whitehead, who was shot down as he carried the banner into combat in Virginia.
Decades later, Dye related that tale to Richard D. Hatch, an auctioneer who plans to sell the heirloom -- one of the rarest Civil War flags in G
Source: MSNBC
Feb 22, 2008
The breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo once again captured the international spotlight when it declared independence from the Republic of Serbia on Feb. 17. The move by the majority ethnic Albanian population was condemned by Serbia and its staunch supporter Russia, but supported by many Western countries. The declaration also sparked riots in Serbia's capital, Belgrade, where protesters stormed and set fire to the U.S. Embassy. The history of the region may help provide answers to why Kosovo'
Source: NYT
Feb 22, 2008
Where is the next J. P. Morgan?
In times of market crisis, the safest course for any one market participant may be the riskiest course for the entire market. If everyone wants to sell, prices can go in only one direction.
In past financial crises, it has fallen to someone — regulators, investment banks or even a single banker — to organize collective action and avert disaster.
Such moves involved persuading people to take steps that seemed to go against the
Source: NYT
Feb 22, 2008
WHEREAS, in 1818 when the border between Georgia and Tennessee was marked by surveyors, mistakes were made that deprived Georgia of a sliver of the Tennessee River.
WHEREAS, Georgia’s water supply is now threatened by a severe drought.
WHEREAS, Georgia lawmakers on Wednesday passed a resolution to restore the boundary line to its appropriate latitude, notwithstanding skepticism all around and outright insults from their neighbors to the north.
And WHEREAS t
Source: NYT
Feb 22, 2008
Time Magazine filed an appeal Thursday in Indonesia of a court ruling awarding former President Suharto more than $100 million in damages over an article about what the United Nations calls one of the most gargantuan thefts of our time.
Ruling last August, the court said that Time had libeled Mr. Suharto by reporting that he and his family had amassed a fortune of least $15 billion in money and assets stolen from the country he governed.
“If it stands, the decision will
Source: http://www.politico.com
Feb 22, 2008
In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
While Ayers and Dohrn may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists, they’re better known nationally as two of the most notorious – and unrepentant — figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s anti-war movement.
Now, as Obama runs for preside
Source: Seattle PI
Feb 21, 2008
Hundreds of Japanese-Americans who were held in internment camps during World War II will receive honorary baccalaureate degrees from the University of Washington -- a move some say has been too long in the coming.
Of the thousands of Japanese-Americans incarcerated in the early 1940s, 440 were students at the UW. Regents at the university voted Thursday to acknowledge the suffering of those students by awarding them honorary degrees.
The honorary degrees were lauded as
Source: LAT
Feb 21, 2008
Black History Month was established in 1976, as an evolution of Negro History Week (founded half a century earlier by Carter G. Woodson), and has since become a staple of the nation's elementary school classrooms and textbooks.
Times editorials, on the other hand, have paid little attention. The editorial board's first mention of "Negro History Week" was little more than a half-hearted announcement of the Week's 40th anniversary...
By contrast the 80s saw grow
Source: CNN
Feb 21, 2008
Demand is growing for personal historians who can help clients craft polished narratives - but actually making the time-intensive projects pay off is challenging, pros warn.
***
There's a growing interest in what some call "personal histories" these days, says Jim Cooper, a film producer and director who runs Socratic Productions, in Barrington, N.H.
Whether it's the portable audio recording stations erected by the nonprofit StoryCorps across the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 21, 2008
Many leading figures in the fields of science, politics and the arts have achieved success because they had autism, a leading psychiatrist has claimed.
Michael Fitzgerald, Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College, Dublin, argued the characteristics linked to autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) were the same as those associated with creative genius.
Prof Fitzgerald cited Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, George Orwell, H G Wells and Ludwig Wittgenstein as examples of famous
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 21, 2008
The surviving men and women from the Air Transport Auxiliary of the Second World War are to be recognised with a new award, the Government announced yesterday.
The ATA's pilots, which included female flyers known as Spitfire women, delivered more than 300,000 aircraft to frontline airfields.
The civilian unit, founded in 1938, had a remarkable record and very few planes were lost or damaged, although 173 pilots and eight flight engineers were killed, including Amy Johns
Source: NBC Nightly News
Feb 21, 2008
"Only an accountant could catch Al Capone."
That's the headline on a poster distributed by the Internal Revenue Service, hoping to persuade potential recruits that life as a tax investigator won't be just columns of figures and Schedule A. Though many people think it was Elliot Ness, a fed from the forerunner of ATF, or the FBI that brought down Scarface, that honor belongs to the IRS.
On Nightly News tonight, we get a first look at secret IRS files, now being
Source: Reuters
Feb 21, 2008
A woman alleged to have murdered prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp during World War Two has died aged 86, Austrian justice officials said on Thursday.
German-born Erna Wallisch died in hospital on Saturday a month after Austria, prompted by new testimony from Poland, reopened an investigation into her past that had been dropped in 1973 for lack of hard evidence.
The Polish findings, based on witness statements, suggested Wallisch may have committed murder in the M
