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 5, 2008
If you drive six miles southwest of Anniston, Ala., you'll pass the spot where a bus was bombed in 1961 and the passengers - civil rights activists known as Freedom Riders - were beaten by a mob.
There's no marker there, but it's one of 400 places in a new book called "On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail" (Algonquin Books, $18.95).
Many of the sites included in the book are well-known - like the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., whe
Source: Yahoo News
Feb 5, 2008
Abdel Kader Haidara carefully picks up one of a dozen small leather-bound books lying on his desk and leafs through the age-weathered pages covered in Arabic calligraphy.
This tiny book is centuries old and one of more than 100,000 manuscripts that can be found on shelves and in boxes in Timbuktu, the ancient Malian city of mud-brick walls nestled between the Niger River and the Sahara Desert.
"The manuscripts are our heritage," says the curator of the Mamma H
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 5, 2008
A German town has sparked an outcry after naming its school after a Nazi scientist who helped to develop the V2 rockets that terrorised London during the Second World War.
Bernstadt auf dem Eigen, on the eastern border with Poland, has dedicated a school to Klaus Riedel, who was instrumental in developing the mobile launch pads for Hitler's wonder weapon that killed some 2,700 civilians in England and injured an estimated 6,500 people.
The honour to Riedel is considered
Source: NYT
Feb 5, 2008
Before Zeus hurled his first thunderbolt from Olympus, the pre-Greek people occupying the land presumably paid homage and offered sacrifices to their own gods and goddesses, whose nature and identities are unknown to scholars today.
But archaeologists say they have now found the ashes, bones and other evidence of animal sacrifices to some pre-Zeus deity on the summit of Mount Lykaion, in the region of Greece known as Arcadia. The remains were uncovered last summer at an altar later
Source: NYT
Feb 5, 2008
An article about the Prophet Muhammad in the English-language Wikipedia has become the subject of an online protest in the last few weeks because of its representations of Muhammad, taken from medieval manuscripts.
In addition to numerous e-mail messages sent to Wikipedia.org, an online petition cites a prohibition in Islam on images of people.
The petition has more than 80,000 “signatures,” though many who submitted them to ThePetitionSite.com, remained anonymous.
Source: Seattle Times
Feb 5, 2008
This is going to sound strange, Maxine Box says, but 50 years later, she can't forget it:
Barack Obama's mother used to crack her knuckles."Constantly," Box told me as we sat in her Bellevue home on the eve of Super Tuesday, talking about Stanley Dunham, the girl with the man's name and the son who could be president of the United States.
Box, 65, was Dunham's best friend at Mercer Island High School, where they were members of the Class of 1960.
Source: Australian
Feb 4, 2008
HE was one of the great Australian heroes of World War I, but Bill Glasgow's memory has been sadly neglected in Brisbane, the city where he spent his twilight years.
In her last public commission before she died, acclaimed Queensland sculptor Daphne Mayo in 1964 created an impressive bronze statue of Major General Glasgow, who led his men to a crucial victory against German troops at the French town of Villers-Bretonneux on Anzac Day, 1918.
But three years after it was
Source: Jerusalem Post
Feb 4, 2008
A prominent Israeli archeologist said Monday that she has revised her reading of an inscription on an ancient seal uncovered in an archeological excavation in Jerusalem's City of David after various scholars around the world critiqued her original interpretation of the name on the seal.
The 2,500 year-old black stone seal was found last month amid stratified layers of debris in the excavation under way just outside the Old City walls near the Dung Gate, said archeologist Dr. Eilat M
Source: BBC
Feb 4, 2008
Archaeologists believe they could be closer to discovering the site of the palace belonging to the first King of a united Scotland.
The academics at Glasgow University have been studying documents and previous archaeological finds to narrow down the location in Perthshire.
They will return in August to Forteviot in the hope of uncovering evidence of Kenneth MacAlpine's wooden castle.
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
Feb 4, 2008
Greg Toppo,"High schoolers name women, black Americans 'most famous'," USA Today, 4 February, reports the results of a survey of 2,000 high school juniors and seniors to name the 10 most famous people in American history. Their top 10 and the percentage of students who included each person on their list:
1. Martin Luther King Jr.: 67%
2. Rosa Parks: 60%
3. Harriet Tubma
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Feb 4, 2008
On February 4, 2008, President Bush sent his final budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2009 to Congress. Here is a summary of the proposed funding levels for programs of interest to the historical and archival communities.TEACHING AMERICAN HISTORY GRANTSThe Teaching American History grants program at the Department of Education would be substantially cut under the President Bush’s proposed Fiscal Year 2009 budget. In FY ‘08 the program received $118
Source: Evan Thomas in the NYT
Feb 4, 2008
Philip Shenon, a reporter in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, set out to get behind the scenes of the 9/11 Commission. The inside story of a government commission doesn’t sound very promising; most commission reports wind up unread on dusty shelves....
In “The Commission [The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Commission]” he makes bureaucratic warfare exciting, largely because he has a keen grasp of human frailty and folly. He opens with a desperate, almost pathetic scene o
Source: NYT
Feb 4, 2008
Recent raids on museums in Southern California have stirred much questioning in the art world about why three federal agencies would devote four years to investigating what seems to be low-level smuggling and penny-ante tax fraud.
Yet tax experts say that the pattern of deceit outlined in court papers — appraising art objects for amounts just below a threshold that sets off higher scrutiny — is frequently investigated by the criminal enforcement arm of the Internal Revenue Service.
Source: Jerusalem Post
Feb 4, 2008
Thankfully, when the enemy finally hit Dimona, it wasn't quite on the scale that many have foreseen one day striking the relatively isolated and quiet Negev town.
Expressing the shock felt by residents after Monday's suicide bombing, in which one woman was killed and dozens were wounded in the first terror attack of any kind on the town, Dimona Mayor Meir Cohen told Channel 1, "People here aren't used to this kind of thing, but it's part of the new reality that all of us in the
Source: CNN
Feb 4, 2008
The federal police force responsible for protecting the Washington Monument, the Statue of Liberty and other national icons is understaffed, under-equipped, under-trained and demoralized, according to an assessment that echoes earlier studies.
The new report says the 592-officer U.S. Park Police force is torn between acting as an urban police department and protecting national icons, and consequently "has failed to adequately perform either mission."
Many terr
Source: CNN
Feb 4, 2008
Raymond Jacobs, believed to be the last surviving member of the group of Marines photographed during the original U.S. flag-raising on Iwo Jima during World War II, has died at age 82.
Jacobs died January 29 of natural causes at a Redding hospital, his daughter, Nancy Jacobs, told The Associated Press.
Jacobs had spent his later years working to prove that he was the radio operator photographed looking up at an American flag as it was being raised by other Marines on Mo
Source: Huntsville Times
Feb 4, 2008
BRIDGEPORT - The remains of people who archaeologists said may have lived along the Tennessee River more than 1,000 years ago will be moved from a Bridgeport plant expansion site.
For the past several months, a Georgia archaeology group has been studying human remains and materials found at the site at U.S. Gypsum, said state archaeologist Stacye Hathorn. The company, which found the remains of several American Indians when it began building a drywall plant in Bridgeport in 1998, di
Source: BBC
Feb 4, 2008
A project taking thousands of English teenagers to visit Auschwitz is to be funded for another three years, says the government.
Two sixth formers from every school in England are currently funded to visit Auschwitz in Poland, to encourage an understanding of the Holocaust.
The project will receive an extra £4.65m to extend it until 2011.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 4, 2008
The thorny issue of whether to allow television programmes on Sunday afternoons was debated at the highest level of Government more than 50 years ago, documents show today.
The Cabinet acknowledged in 1955 that there was a growing demand from adults to watch the new technology, but was worried about a religious outcry.
The issue was raised at the Cabinet discussion of Feb 17 by the Postmaster General, who said: "Can we have television between 3-4pm on Sundays, desp
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 4, 2008
A unique record of the Royal Navy from the pencil and paintbrush of a senior officer who joined up as a 13-year-old in 1891 and left during the Second World War has been published.
The pictures show the changing nature of the senior service through the eyes of Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Kitson KBE, CB, who began his career as a midshipman under sail and was by 1927 captain of the world's biggest naval vessel, Rodney.
Sir Henry spent 10 years in Queen Victoria's navy, 10 yea
