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: Houston Chronicle
Sep 4, 2007
Two months before his death at the Alamo, the legendary Davy Crockett wrote to his children that he dreamt of finding fame and fortune in Texas, "the garden spot of the world."
The letter, which the Texas Historical Commission purchased from a Houston collector for $550,000, is believed to be Crockett's last.
If so, there's no hint of foreboding in his tone, no sign of the mythological hero who was bravely prepared to defend the Alamo to his death, if necessar
Source: NBC Nightly News (video) scroll down
Sep 4, 2007
It is a searing image: a black schoolgirl facing an angry white mob. Where is she now? NBC's Don Teague reports
Source: NYT
Sep 4, 2007
In September 1968, Hillary Diane Rodham, role model and student government president, was addressing Wellesley College freshmen girls — back when they were still called “girls” — about methods of protest. It was a hot topic in that overheated year of what she termed “confrontation politics from Chicago to Czechoslovakia.”
“Dynamism is a function of change,” Ms. Rodham said in her speech. “On some campuses, change is effected through nonviolent or even violent means. Although we too
Source: NYT
Sep 4, 2007
“Italy’s patrimony has been lost because we used to intervene after the fact and not before,” said Roberto Cecchi, general director of the Architectural Heritage and Landscape Department, which is responsible for the safekeeping of Italy’s monuments.
Under the new guidelines unveiled this summer, officials at the local and national levels are to evaluate the seismic risk to individual structures in their jurisdictions and take steps to reduce the vulnerability. These steps could inc
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) (Click here for embedded links.)
Sep 4, 2007
A Russian court fined a University of Missouri at St. Louis graduate student about $585 on Friday for purchasing Soviet war medals as souvenirs, a far lighter punishment than the prison time that she had faced.
The student, Roxana Contreras, a Chilean studying physics at the American university, was detained for two months in the Russian city of Voronezh, south of Moscow, after buying the medals at a flea market (The Chronicle, August 21). Doing so is banned under a 1994 law that ha
Source: UPI
Sep 4, 2007
British-led scientists said early European
domesticated pigs -- previously believed descended from wild boars --
actually came from the Middle East.
The researchers, led by archaeologists at Durham University, said the early
pigs were introduced from the Middle East by Stone Age farmers.
The scientists analyzed mitochondrial DNA from ancient and modern pig
remains. The findings also suggest the migration of an expanding Middle
Eastern population -- which included domesticat
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 4, 2007
George Orwell, the author who coined the phrase "Big Brother is watching you", was himself the subject of intense surveillance by the secret services, documents released on Tuesday disclose.
The creator of Nineteen Eighty-Four, which envisages a day when every person's movements are scrutinised by a totalitarian state, was closely monitored amid concerns that he was a prominent member of the communist movement....
Files released by the National Archives disclo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 4, 2007
She is one of the nation’s most revered heroines, the determined Lady with the Lamp who saved the lives of wounded British soldiers in the Crimea and pioneered modern nursing. But not everybody in Victorian Britain loved Florence Nightingale.
She was, according to a prominent figure whose nose she badly put out of joint in the Crimea, a meddlesome and arrogant publicity-seeker who found it easier to make enemies than friends.
Unpublished letters written by Sir John Hall
Source: NYT
Sep 4, 2007
A previously undisclosed exchange of letters shows that President Bush was told in advance by his top Iraq envoy in May 2003 of a plan to “dissolve Saddam’s military and intelligence structures,” a plan that the envoy, L. Paul Bremer, said referred to dismantling the Iraqi Army.
Mr. Bremer provided the letters to The New York Times on Monday after reading that Mr. Bush was quoted in a new book as saying that American policy had been “to keep the army intact” but that it “didn’t happ
Source: http://www.news.com.au
Sep 4, 2007
A Beefeater at the Tower of London made history yesterday - she became the first woman in the post.
Moira Cameron, from Argyll in Scotland, beat five men to secure the coveted position as a Yeoman Warder, the first female in the role in the guards' 522-year history.
She donned the traditional blue and scarlet livery for her duties, which began with opening the Beauchamp Tower and the Chapel Royal of St Peter and Vincula.
Source: http://english.hani.co.kr
Sep 3, 2007
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun on Monday urged Japan to have a correct recognition of the shared history in order to foster future-oriented bilateral relations.
During a meeting with visiting Japanese politicians, including former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae, Roh said lawmakers of both countries are required to make greater efforts to resolve bilateral conflict over history issues.
"South Korea-Japan relati
Source: WaPo
Sep 3, 2007
It was just two days after President Bush's reelection in 2004, and Condoleezza Rice was planning her move back home to California and to the tranquility of life at Stanford University.
But Bush had other plans. In a private meeting at Camp David on the morning of Friday, Nov. 6, the president made his pitch: Colin Powell was out as secretary of state -- though Bush hadn't told him yet -- and the president wanted Rice to take the job.
Source: WaPo
Sep 3, 2007
Karl Rove told George W. Bush before the 2000 election that it was a bad idea to name Richard B. Cheney as his running mate, and Rove later raised objections to the nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court, according to a new book on the Bush presidency.
In "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush," journalist Robert Draper writes that Rove told Bush he should not tap Cheney for the Republican ticket: "Selecting Daddy's top foreign-policy guru ran count
Source: NBC video (scroll)
Sep 3, 2007
In Stonewall, Miss., a former 'whites-only' swimming pool officially reopens after three decades of being buried. As NBC's Ron Mott reports, its painful past has found a new life.
Source: Vancouver Sun (BC)
Sep 3, 2007
France is a pretty country full of pretty little villages, but Oradour sur Glane is not pretty.
On June 10, 1944, possibly as a reprisal for the death of a German officer, Nazi troops encircled the village, then, quickly working toward the centre, rounded up every person they found and killed them. Next they burned the village. They also burned the bodies.
Not long after, France was liberated and the new French leader, General Charles De Gaulle, visited the site. He dec
Source: BBC
Sep 3, 2007
An archaeological dig has started in Dumfries and Galloway in an attempt to find out more about the Scot viewed as the founder of the United States Navy.
A US team is carrying out the investigation at the cottage where John Paul Jones was born in 1747.
They hope even traces of "trash" will shed more light on his early years.
Source: BBC
Sep 3, 2007
Britain's historic buildings - some of the jewels in our architectural crown - are crumbling, not because of a lack of money, but because of a shortage of traditional skills.
Watch stonemasons at work and as you feel the tang of dust in your throat, hear the clash of metal and material and see objects painstakingly appear, it's hard not feel a certain frisson of magic.
Never mind shopkeepers, ours used to be a nation of trades people and craftsmen, but now it is easy to think
Source: Michael Beschloss in Newsweek
Sep 3, 2007
Shortly before George Washington retired as president in 1797, two of his cherished house slaves—Martha's helper Oney Judge and their chef, Hercules—ran away. Tracked down at Washington's order, Oney tried to set strict conditions for her return, which the old general refused. As for Hercules, he just disappeared.
Despite Washington's indignation over the "disloyalty" of his "Negroes," slavery was one of the few subjects in his life that the first president was a
Source: BBC
Sep 2, 2007
Intimate, revealing and previously unpublished, the Mitford letters present a vivid portrait of the six sisters and the age they lived in. Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire and the sole surviving Mitford, talks to John Preston about some of their more surprising revelations.
In June 1937, Deborah Mitford visited Munich where she took tea with Adolf Hitler. 'I went with my sister Unity and our mother to his flat,' she recalls. 'The atmosphere was rather awkward because ne
Source: NYT
Sep 2, 2007
Again it comes, for the sixth time now — 2,191 days after that awful morning — falling for the first time on a Tuesday, the same day of the week.
Again there will be the public tributes, the tightly scripted memorial events, the reflex news coverage, the souvenir peddlers.
Is all of it necessary, at the same decibel level — still?
Each year, murmuring about Sept. 11 fatigue arises, a weariness of reliving a day that everyone wishes had never happened. It be
