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: http://www.sj-r.com
Jun 24, 2007
A firefighter from Tampa, Fla., recently has received confirmation that an 1858 Abraham Lincoln letter he bought at a yard sale for $8 is the real thing.
His discovery will be featured in a PBS "History Detectives" episode that was partly filmed in Springfield and that will air nationwide Aug. 27. The show's fifth season begins Monday.Joseph Skanks had been known by many around Tampa as the guy with the Abraham Lincoln letter. Maybe.
A few
Source: CTV
Jun 24, 2007
An empty lawn in the heart of what was once the Warsaw Ghetto will soon become a place not only of mourning, but of celebrating the Jewish life that flourished in Poland before it was destroyed in the Holocaust.
Jewish leaders and President Lech Kaczynski will break ground Tuesday for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. It sits on a highly charged site -- next to the city's monument to the Jews who resisted the Nazis during the 1943 ghetto uprising, and just down the street fr
Source: Independent
Jun 24, 2007
A dramatic first-hand account of how a prisoner managed to escape from Nazi Germany's most notorious death camp and help save more than 120,000 Jews from slaughter is to be told for the first time to an English-speaking audience.
Alfred Wetzler, a Slovak Jew, was one of the tiny number of people to escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau, Europe's heart of darkness during the Second World War, where an estimated 1.1 million Jews arrived of whom scarcely 7,000 survived the onslaught of the N
Source: http://www.asahi.com
Jun 23, 2007
-The Okinawa prefectural assembly Friday unanimously adopted a statement urging Tokyo to retract its decision to omit from history textbooks the Japanese military's involvement in mass civilian suicides during the Battle of Okinawa.
"It is an undeniable truth that (mass suicides by Okinawa residents) would have never occurred without the involvement of the Imperial Japanese Army," the statement said.
A group of assembly members traveled to Tokyo to submit the
Source: International Herald Tribune
Jun 23, 2007
An Israeli anthropologist is using modern forensics and an obscure Biblical passage to challenge the accepted wisdom about mysterious human remains found at Masada, the desert fortress famous as the scene of a mass suicide nearly 2,000 years ago.
A new research paper published Friday takes another look at the remains of three people found in a bathhouse at the site — two male skeletons and a full head of women's hair, including two braids. They were long thought to have belonged to
Source: BBC News
Jun 23, 2007
An American fighter plane will be arriving in Britain from the United States next week - 65 years after taking off. The P38 Lightning was one of eight aircraft forced to land in Greenland after encountering bad weather while en route to the UK in July 1942.
The planes became buried under 300ft of ice but 15 years ago the remains of one, renamed Glacier Girl, were dug up. The aircraft is due to take part in an air show at Duxford, near Cambridge. The
Source: CNN
Jun 23, 2007
Bob Bolus was flipping through Parade magazine two years ago when he came across an article about Sgt. William H. Genaust, who filmed the raising of the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima, Japan, in 1945.
Genaust is believed to have been killed in combat days after shooting the footage, and Bolus was disturbed to learn that his remains were never found. Despite having no connection to Genaust or his descendants, the businessman and one-time mayoral candidate from Scranton, Pennsylvania, decided
Source: BBC News
Jun 23, 2007
A replica of the 19th Century slave ship, Amistad, is beginning a 22,500km (14,000 mile) transatlantic voyage retracing the route of the slave trade. The trip commemorates the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade within the British Empire.
The Freedom Schooner Amistad will set sail from the US east coast and stop in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. In 1839, 53 slaves mutinied on board the Amistad. They were captured, but won freedo
Source: Washington Post
Jun 23, 2007
For years, W.B. Kranendonk was a lone ranger in Dutch politics -- the editor of an orthodox Christian newspaper in a nation that has legalized prostitution, euthanasia, abortion and same-sex marriage and allows the personal use of marijuana.
Today, with an orthodox Christian political party in the government for the first time, and with immigration anxieties fueling a national search for identity, the country that has been the world's most socially liberal political laboratory is re
Source: Air Force Link
Jun 23, 2007
The Veterans History Project, a program of the Library of Congress American Folklife Center, presents "The Great War," a tribute to World War I veterans, in a new section of its Web site at www.loc.gov/vets.
Rich in personal detail, photographs, journals and letters, "The Great War" provides a virtual tour of some of the most compelling collections in the Veterans History Project archives and features stories of nearly two d
Source: Europe Channel
Jun 23, 2007
The deputy head of a Hungarian church school who appeared in photographs wearing a Nazi SS uniform has been suspended from his duties, the head of the Hungarian Church's school authority said Thursday.
History teacher Akos Peter Kosaras, 36, posted pictures of himself dressed in the uniform on the internet, although the pictures have now been removed.
The teacher at a school in the small settlement of Budakeszi just outside Budapest was supposedly playing the role of
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Jun 23, 2007
Relatives of Anne Frank will loan a collection of photographs and letters to the museum housing the Jewish teenager's hiding place during World War II to mark next week's 60th anniversary of the publication of her diary.
The material, which comes from the Anne Frank archive in Basel, Switzerland, and from Anne's cousin, Buddy Elias, includes photos of Anne, her sister, Margot, her mother, Edith and her father, Otto, that have rarely or never been on public display.
Source: United Press International
Jun 23, 2007
Newly declassified documents show the CIA spied on and monitored the phone calls and movements of journalists and peace activists during the Vietnam War era.
The revelations, while more than 30 years old, carry with them a whiff of the current debate over the wiretapping of U.S. phone lines by the National Security Agency without court permission and the Pentagon's monitoring of anti-war groups.
The 1975 memorandum written by Associate Attorney General James Wilderrot
Source: New York Sun
Jun 23, 2007
A federal appeals court will soon hear oral arguments in lawsuits brought by citizens of Vietnam and American Vietnam War veterans who say their health has suffered from exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange.
The appeals are being brought under a variety of legal theories, and the court could arrive at opposite conclusions about whether the Vietnamese or American plaintiffs may go forward with their claims against the chemical companies that manufactured Agent Orange.
Source: Independent (Ireland)
Jun 23, 2007
ONE of the Viking warships that struck terror into the hearts of thousands of Europeans has been recreated for the first voyage of its kind in almost 1,000 years.
A replica of the battleship 'Sea Stallion' (pictured) will make the journey across the North Sea from Denmark next month. Built in 1042, it was one of the greatest seaborne weapons used by Ireland's bloodthirsty Viking invaders to fight battles at home and abroad. A mainly Danish cre
Source: Telegraph
Jun 23, 2007
President Vladimir Putin has raised the prospect of a return to Soviet-style academic censorship after he accused the West of plotting to distort Russian history in an attempt to crush patriotic sentiment in schools.
The Russian leader claimed that a generation of schoolchildren was learning a version of their past that had been deliberately skewed by historians in the pay of the West. "Many of our textbooks are written by people on foreign grants,&qu
Source: Japan Times
Jun 23, 2007
Japanese and South Korean historians began on Saturday a new phase of joint history studies to try to narrow differences in their countries' textbooks amid continuing disputes, such as the wartime sexual slavery issue.
The two sides agreed to hold two more years of discussions and compile a report based on their talks, according to representatives from the two countries..."We also agreed to hold the next plenary session on Nov. 24 in Seoul and t
Source: AP
Jun 22, 2007
A World War II fighter plane once entombed under hundreds of feet of snow and ice in Greenland is back on a mission it began nearly 65 years ago.
Dubbed "Glacier Girl" after being recovered, the P-38 left Teterboro Airport on Friday for another leg of a journey toward Duxford, England, where it's scheduled to land June 29.
Fighter pilot Brad McManus, the first member of his squadron to crash-land onto a glacier in Greenland, is now the only pilot still alive f
Source: NPR
Jun 22, 2007
Authorities in Poland want to change the name of the Auschwitz concentration camp to officially include the word"German" in the title. Poles hope that will end the problem of Poland being mistaken as the perpetrator.
The change was first discussed last summer. A decision will be made at the UNESCO conference at the end of June.Related Links
Cliopatria blog
Source: AP
Jun 22, 2007
NORWICH, Conn. — The Mohegans were wiped out long ago in the novel "The Last of the Mohicans," but today the real American Indian tribe is flush with casino cash and using it to restore its proud past.
The Connecticut tribe has reclaimed the Mohegan Royal Burial Ground and is restoring it to pay homage to its famed Chief Uncas and his descendants, who were mythologized in James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 work.
The project has been dubbed "The Lasting of the M
