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)
Jan 1, 2008
Britain learned that apartheid South Africa was preparing to test an
atomic bomb only after being alerted by the Russians.
Previously secret papers released at the National Archives show how James
Callaghan, the Labour prime minister, was informed in August 1977 of a
secret test site in the Kalahari Desert in a personal letter from Leonid
Brezhnev, the Soviet president.
A Soviet spy satellite had discovered the site at Vastrap, in a remote
area south of South Africa's border w
Source: http://www.wnbc.com
Jan 1, 2008
New Jersey would become the first northern state and the fifth state overall to apologize for slavery under a measure to be considered this week by state lawmakers.
"This is not too much to ask of the state of New Jersey," said Assemblyman William Payne, who sponsors the bill. "All that is being requested of New Jersey is to say three simple words: We are sorry."
Legislators in Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia have issued formal slavery apolo
Source: NYT
Jan 1, 2008
The old photo albums were such a familiar part of the Woods family’s Adirondack camp that no one paid them much notice. But when the 21-year-old James T. Stever took a closer look at the nearly 1,000 rare photographs that his great-great-grandfather Harry Fowler Woods had taken a century ago, he saw them with fresh eyes.
The sepia-toned black-and-white pictures showed candid moments from a groundbreaking diplomatic mission to the Far East, which William Howard Taft and a large entou
Source: BBC
Dec 31, 2007
It is not the type of a call that an archaeologist receives every day.
There are bodies, the voice on the end of the line told Anne Jensen; we don't know who they were, or why they are here.
"People started noticing stuff eroding out of the bluff," she recalls, "and I got called out, along with the police, the real estate people and so on.
"It was very clearly an archaeological burial. And the bluff was collapsing quickly, so we just got
Source: http://www.northjersey.com/news
Dec 31, 2007
Floods. A junkyard. Electric transformers. A pizza joint. Garden apartments.
Is this any way to treat history?
Of course not. But this is life -- and land -- at New Bridge Landing Park in River Edge.
When will someone fix this?
That question has lingered for decades over the sliver of land along the Hackensack River that was home to a narrow bridge that saved George Washington's army in 1776 -- and perhaps the Revolution itself.
To
Source: Yorkshire Post
Dec 31, 2007
ONCE they were spectacular resting places to honour the dead.
But with pagan Britain's conversion to Christianity, the Bronze Age burial mounds came to be regarded with suspicion as places where devils and dragons lurked.
It was at one such site in East Yorkshire that the Anglo-Saxons chose to bury the worst kind of criminals, away from hallowed ground, leaving their heads to rot on stakes.
The latest archaeological techniques have now thrown a new light on an ee
Source: NYT
Dec 31, 2007
It was a year of trauma for the nation, and of foreboding for New York City. In 1963, the year that John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, New Yorkers were feeling strains in the urban fabric: Affluent families fled to the suburbs, job losses mounted among old-line manufacturers, and 548 people were killed.
As 2007 draws to a close, it seems very likely that there will be fewer than 500 killings in the city (as of Sunday evening, there had been 492) for the first time since rel
Source: AP
Dec 31, 2007
Hampton Mansion has plenty of historical and architectural significance. All it needs is a higher profile.
The mansion, maintained by the National Park Service, is considered one of the finest examples of Georgian architecture in the country. It's one of just a handful of plantation homes with extant slave quarters. With 25,000 square feet of living space, it was the largest private home in the U.S. when it was completed in 1790.
Hampton sits on 63 acres just outside th
Source: Guardian
Dec 31, 2007
The chocolate aroma is unmistakeable. The only person missing is Willy Wonka - or possibly Augustus Gloop.
For more than 130 years the Red October chocolate factory in Moscow has been churning out bars for sweet-toothed Russians. But next week the factory, one of the capital's most recognisable central landmarks, is to close.
To the dismay of conservationists, the 19th-century redbrick building on the banks of the Moscow river, close to the Kremlin, is to be converted into lu
Source: AP
Dec 31, 2007
Sara Jane Moore, who took a shot at President Ford in a bizarre assassination attempt just 17 days after a disciple of Charles Manson tried to kill Ford, was paroled Monday after 32 years behind bars. Moore, 77, was released from the federal prison in Dublin, east of San Francisco, where she had been serving a life sentence, the Bureau of Prisons said.
Bureau spokeswoman Felicia Ponce said she had no details on why Moore was let out. But she said that with good behavior, inmates sen
Source: People's Daily Online
Dec 31, 2007
Chinese historians and researchers have identified more than 900 aviation martyrs who died in China during World War II, including 404 American pilots.
"The names of the martyrs were discovered during the information collection process ahead of the establishment of a memorial hall for the deceased aviators," said Wang Jian, vice president of the Nanjing Aviation Association, which is based in the eastern province of Jiangsu.
"These include 404 Americans
Source: AP
Dec 31, 2007
A former home of poet Robert Frost has been vandalized, with intruders destroying dozens of items and setting fire to furniture in what police say was an underage drinking party.
Homer Noble Farm, a former Frost residence that's now a historic landmark, was ransacked late Friday night during a party attended by up to 50 people, Sgt. Lee Hodsden said Monday.
The intruders broke a window to get into the two-story wood frame building — a furnished residence open in the sum
Source: NYT
Dec 31, 2007
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — In 1950, this cotton market town in northern Alabama lost a bid for a military aviation project that would have revived its mothballed arsenal. The consolation prize was dubious: 118 German rocket scientists who had surrendered to the Americans during World War II, led by a man — a crackpot, evidently — who claimed humans could visit the moon.
Ultimately those German immigrants made history, launching the first American satellite, Explorer I, into orbit in January
Source: Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Dec 30, 2007
Hanover - Some 14,000 people were ordered out of their homes in the central German city of Hanover Sunday, as bomb disposal experts prepared to defuse a World War II bomb discovered in a densely populated area in the south of the city.
Buildings in a radius of 1 kilometre were cleared by police and fire officers, beginning at around 8.00 am. The operation was expected to be concluded by mid-afternoon.
The bomb is believed to be a 1,000-pounder (500 kilograms) and is lyi
Source: NYT
Dec 30, 2007
“It’s gone,” said Ed Rollins, who once worked as President Reagan’s political director and recently became Mr. [Mike] Huckabee’s national campaign chairman. “The breakup of what was the Reagan coalition — social conservatives, defense conservatives, antitax conservatives — it doesn’t mean a whole lot to people anymore.”
Source: BBC
Dec 29, 2007
The British Library has admitted an historic diary was damaged while in its care, but refused to confirm reports the book had been left in a car boot.
Owner Peter J Tyldesley handed over the manuscript in 1994, believing it would be safer in the Library than his home.
The solicitor told The Times he "wanted to weep" when he discovered oily stains on the pages seven months ago.
He claimed the book had been removed from the library. A Library spokeswoman
Source: History Today
Dec 29, 2007
An expedition, including the great-grandson of Sir Ernest Shackleton, is to recreate the journey to the South Pole attempted by the explorer a century ago. Alongside 36-year-old descendant Patrick Bergel will be Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Worsley, a relative of Frank Worsley, the captain of the Endurance. The team will start the 900-mile journey in October and hope to launch a £10 million Shackleton Foundation. Shackleton’s trek was curtailed in January 1909 during his attempt to reach the Pole fo
Source: NYT
Dec 29, 2007
A federal judge has ruled that a painting held by a German baroness belongs to the estate of a Jewish art dealer who was forced by the Nazis to auction it, The Associated Press reported. Chief Judge Mary M. Lisi of United States District Court for Rhode Island on Thursday ordered Maria-Luise Bissonnette to turn over “Girl From the Sabiner Mountains," above, to representatives of the estate of Max Stern, who died in 1987, stating that his “relinquishment of his property” was clearly “anythin
Source: China Daily
Dec 28, 2007
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on Friday said Japan would "very earnestly" reflect on the "agonizing part of history" and continue to follow the path of peaceful development so as to establish "forward-looking China-Japan relations".
Fukuda made the statement when meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. China and Japan have a long-standing disagreement over wartime history.
While speaking at the Peking University in the after
Source: AFP
Dec 27, 2007
For the past couple of years, these mysterious circles of carved stone figures, which villagers in southern Nigeria still worship on occasion, have been causing a frenzy of excitement here.
Newspapers have trumpeted the Ikom monoliths - phallic-shaped pieces of volcanic rock largely ignored for centuries - as being remnants of a glorious civilization made up in equal parts of Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament.
One theory even cites them as evidence that the biblical G
