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.state-journal.com
Jun 6, 2007
Helen Fairfax Holmes was a fire cat.
That's how Eastern Kentucky University visiting scholar and Frankfort resident Karen McDaniel describes her late friend.
Once, when the two were getting out of a car at Holmes' house, McDaniel tried to help the feeble woman to the door.
"She smacked my arm and said, "I don't need no help,'" McDaniel said. "I never tried to help her again like that. She was independent."
Holmes, forme
Source: http://miningjournal.net
Jun 6, 2007
More than 140 people came to learn about a forgotten time in history Tuesday at the Peter White Public Library in Marquette — leaving many in the audience astounded at the stories they heard and read.
“Vanished: German-American Civilian Internment, 1941-48,” put on by the Traces Museum in St. Paul, Minn., told the story of 15,000 German-Americans who were forced into internment camps.
The exhibits were displayed in one of the museum’s two converted buses, called a “BUS-
Source: The Onion is a satirical magazine with a wide audience
Jun 6, 2007
WASHINGTON, DC—Breaking a 211-year media silence, retired Army Gen. George Washington appeared on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday to speak out against many aspects of the way the Iraq war has been waged.
Washington, whose appearance marked the first time the military leader and statesman had spoken publicly since his 1796 farewell address in Philadelphia, is the latest in a string of retired generals stepping forward to criticize the Iraq war.
"This entire military ven
Source: http://www.henryherald.com
Jun 6, 2007
ANDERSONVILLE, Ga. — Archaeologists, Boy Scouts and volunteers have descended on Andersonville National Historic Site, intent upon gathering details of what life was like both inside and outside of the walls of the infamous Civil War prison.
Andersonville Prison, located north of Americus, was one of the largest Confederate military prisons established during the Civil War. It was built in 1864, and during its 14 months of existence confined more than 45,000 Union soldiers within i
Source: Fox News
Jun 6, 2007
A document said to be the flawed original version of President John F. Kennedy's death certificate is up for sale, 43 years after a typo helped make it void.
Don McElroy, a funeral home worker who helped load Kennedy's casket into the hearse at Dallas Parkland Hospital, believes he has the first death certificate from the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination.
The document mistakenly lists Kennedy's address as "600 Pennsylvania Ave." _ not 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., bette
Source: MSNBC
Jun 6, 2007
A young clerk with no knowledge of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown allowed a tribute to victims slip into the classified ads page of a newspaper in southwest China, a Hong Kong daily reported on Wednesday.
Officials at the Chengdu Evening News refused to answer questions about an advertisement it ran saluting the mothers of those killed in a bloody military crackdown on democracy activists at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
The one-line ad on Monday night read: “Paying tr
Source: Bloomberg News
Jun 6, 2007
Goldman Sachs Group donated $2 million to endow a chair at Morehouse College in Atlanta that will oversee the collected writings of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The chair will supervise the compilation of 10,000 pieces of Dr. King’s writings and manuscripts, Goldman Sachs said. Dr. King was a 1948 graduate of the all-male, historically black college. A group of civic leaders, businesses and philanthropists based in Atlanta bought the collection, which includes a draft of Dr. King’s 1963 “
Source: New York Post
Jun 6, 2007
FROM beauty queens who marched in heels to politicians who sported fake smiles to win some votes, to the controversial "Seinfeld" episode, the Puerto Rican Parade has made Big Apple history for over half a century.
March 1958 - Leaders from the Puerto Rican community decide to break away from the Hispanic Day Parade and create the Puerto Rican Day Parade. According to an editorial in "El Diario," the main objective of the Hispanic Day Parade, which was mainly ru
Source: Australian
Jun 6, 2007
Two hundred years ago, his ancestor Napolean Bonaparte laid siege to Europe, shaping modern history with one of the greatest military conquests of all time.
But for Charles Napoleon, who spent last weekend on the campaign stump, handing out leaflets at a market in the imperial city of Fontainebleau, a seat in the next French parliament would do just fine.
The 56-year-old is Napoleon's great-great-great-grandnephew. As head of the only branch of the Bonaparte family dir
Source: Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey)
Jun 6, 2007
Of all the stories of the Allied invasion at Normandy in World War II, perhaps none leaps off the pages of history like that of Leonard Lomell.
The 87-year-old Toms River resident was a staff sergeant and platoon leader with the elite 2nd Ranger Battalion, whose soldiers scaled a 100-foot seaside cliff during the invasion and destroyed five giant German guns to clear the way for allied troops.It's a story that's been told at countless reunions over the years, do
Source: AHA Blog
Jun 6, 2007
At 3:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944, Peter Fantacone was feeling queasy. He and his fellow sailors had spent the last few hours crossing the dark, choppy waters of the English Channel on a cramped landing craft, trying hard not to think about the grave danger that lay ahead. What the 18-year-old navy radioman saw next did little to settle his stomach. Two LCIs (Landing Craft for Infantry) that had been flanking his vessel were hit by German artillery fire, pitching bodies into the surf and staining the
Source: Press Release--David Wyman Institute
Jun 6, 2007
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel will deliver the keynote address at the fifth national conference of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, "Jewish Activists Who Shook the World: The Bergson Group, American Jewry, and the Holocaust."The conference will be held on Sunday, June 17, 2007, from 10 am to 5:30 pm, at the Fordham University School of Law, 140 West 62 St. (near Ninth Ave.), in New York City--right across from Lincoln Center. The confere
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Jun 6, 2007
Publishing houses initially viewed Google’s Book Search, as the project is called, as a serious threat to their economic well-being. Many publishers, it should be said, stick by that assessment. But others have come to appreciate Google’s method for dealing with books under copyright: The search engine typically displays small sections of those books alongside links to sites where the complete texts can be purchased.
This has been so effective, says a representative of Oxford Univer
Source: BBC
Jun 6, 2007
The hearse used to carry wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill is being offered to the families of veterans of WWII free of charge for funeral services.
The hearse carried the former Prime Minister's coffin to his final resting place in Bladon, Oxon in 1965.
Bristol-based MW Funeral Directors is beginning the new service on Wednesday as a mark of appreciation for the veterans' wartime contribution.
The gesture marks 63 years since the D-day landings.
Source: Reuters
Jun 6, 2007
Italy's prehistoric iceman "Otzi" died from a shoulder wound inflicted by an arrow, according to research into his perfectly preserved 5,000-year old body.
Otzi, the oldest mummy unearthed, was found in the Italian Alps in 1991 wearing clothing made from leather and grasses and carrying a copper axe, a bow and arrows.
Though Otzi's body underwent several scientific tests to study life in the prehistoric age, it had so far been unclear whether he died from an a
Source: http://www.gainesville.com
Jun 6, 2007
Deteriorating historical sites in St. Augustine will get some much-needed relief while providing students with a hands-on learning experience when management of the properties is handed over to the University of Florida.
"It's an incredible opportunity for the whole university," said Roy Eugene Graham, director of Historic Preservation Programs at UF. "I can't tell you how excited we all are."UF will take over management of the sites Ju
Source: BBC
Jun 6, 2007
Israel wiped out much of the Egyptian Air Force on the morning of June 5, 1967, the first day of the war. Egyptian pilot Mustafa Hafez was stationed at one of the 11 Egyptian air bases that were targeted.
He told military historian and BBC website reader, David Nicolle, what happened that day:
In the build-up to war, I was sent to a squadron based at Kabrit, flying MiG-17Fs and MiG-17PF night fighters.
We didn't really think that there would be a war, and i
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jun 6, 2007
History should be taught properly in schools as a way of teaching immigrants what it means to be British, David Cameron claimed yesterday.
The Tory leader warned that national identity had been deliberately weakened by constant attacks on the nation's culture.
He entered the debate about Britishness with an impassioned plea for a return to positive attitudes about the role of a citizen of the United Kingdom.
"You do not earn respect by constantly denig
Source: NYT
Jun 6, 2007
Queen’s Pier is a simple building, a few short columns and a low roof next to Hong Kong’s harbor, designed and built after World War II for official events like the arrival and departure of colonial governors.
The government’s Antiquities and Monuments Office classified the pier this spring in the highest category of historic buildings, as the scene of important events in the city’s colonial history. But the government planning office and an important legislative committee agreed on
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 6, 2007
Original copies of the dramatic dispatches sent by the Daily Telegraph correspondent who witnessed the Allied invasion of France go on display this week as the centre-piece of an exhibition at the D-Day Museum in Portsmouth.
F.W. (Freddie) Perfect was this newspaper's Special Naval Correspondent sent to cover the landings, reporting initially from on board the operations ship Largs, then from the beaches as the Allies forged into occupied France.
He went on to witness t
