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.thetimesonline.com
Jun 4, 2007
A plane with swastikas on its tail, based at the Gary/Chicago International Airport, won't land a home at Lansing Municipal Airport anytime soon.
Recent rumors about the German Junker Ju 52 moving to the village have been unfounded, said John Kowal, the volunteer public information officer for the Great Lakes Wing of the Commemorative Air Force.
Kowal, who said the Junker Ju 52 is used for historical re-enactments and education, is concerned about recent confusion about
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 4, 2007
ONE OF the greatest collections of historical letters ever amassed has been found in a laundry room.
Susannah Morris was called in to examine the hoard after the death of the secretive collector and was astonished to be led not into a library or a safe room but to the basement.
In the laundry room, wedged between a washing machine and a tumble dryer, was a plain metal filing cabinet. Miss Morris, who works for the auction house Christie's, opened it and could not belie
Source: USA Today
Jun 4, 2007
The immigration debate in the Senate has at times been intensely personal, with senators taking the floor to tell stories of their own immigrant roots. Children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Italy, Ireland, Ukraine, Lithuania and Cuba rose to describe how their families became American.
"Immigration always has been an issue that goes to the root of what America is all about," said Betty Koed, a Senate historian who wrote her dissertation on the passage of the 1965 im
Source: NYT
Jun 4, 2007
HONG KONG — A candlelight vigil here this evening to mark the 18th anniversary of the military crackdown on the Tiananmen Square demonstrations drew an unusually large crowd, apparently in response to the recent assertion by the leader of Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing party that no massacre took place in 1989.
By contrast, Tiananmen Square itself, in Beijing, remained quiet under tight security through a humid, sunny day, with the usual tour groups and pedestrians milling about. State sec
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 4, 2007
One of the greatest tapestries made in Elizabethan England has been rediscovered in America after it disappeared almost a century ago following a blunder by a prominent British art historian.
The giant hanging, measuring 15 ft by 6ft and made in the 1580s, with an idealised image of country life shows that wealthy Tudors had much the same aspirations to own a beautiful part of the countryside as their counterparts today.... The London dealer Simon Franses has id
Source: Independent (UK)
Jun 4, 2007
Frogs' legs, a delicacy most closely associated with the French, is in fact, a Czech dish, according to archaeologists. Although the edible amphibians are closely associated with Gallic cuisine - so much so that English people refer to the French by the derogatory nickname "the frogs" - ancient Czechs were eating them more than 5,000 years ago.
New research by archaeologists has uncovered the kitchen remains of hundreds of frogs' legs in a hill fort east of Prague. Most of
Source: BBC
Jun 4, 2007
Two very different finds, dug up close to each other by Trafalgar Square, shine new light on the greatest puzzle of London archaeology - the "silent" centuries after Roman rule.
Plenty happened in London in the 450 years following the end of Roman rule in 410. It became the seat of an English bishopric. Bede in the 730s called it "a mart of many nations".
The Anglo-Saxon town (Lundenwic) was west of the Roman Londinium
So why could archa
Source: http://www.fredericknewspost.com (Frederick, Maryland)
Jun 4, 2007
Teresa Felton Barrett laughed as she shared a tip someone gave her years ago, when she started exploring her family history.
"Don't totally discredit rumors, even if they seem far-fetched," the Middletown resident said.
Growing up in Florida, Barrett heard whispered stories about a man who killed his boss in a rage and then terrorized neighboring plantations. These out to be tales about a distant ancestor on her father's side, she said.
In July, Barrett
Source: Reuters
Jun 4, 2007
The elegant Baltic seaside resort of Heiligendamm has seen the best and the worst of German history since it was founded in 1793 as an exclusive summer spa for European nobility.
Proud to be Germany's first seaside resort, Heiligendamm -- this week hosting a summit of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations -- is less happy about of its Nazi past.
In 1932 it became the first town in Germany to name a street after Adolf Hitler and to make its infamous summer visit
Source: Seattle Times
Jun 4, 2007
Let's get on with The Show.
The curtain is raised at 7:30 in the morning, revealing the Manzo Brothers produce stall, which has been a top performer for half of Pike Place Market's 100-year history.
The choreography begins — green beans lined up individually in an interconnected pattern, creating the visual effect of a blanket woven on a loom.
A small fake lizard guards a sign placed on top of the beans: "Don't even think about disturbing the display,&
Source: BBC
Jun 4, 2007
To understand what is happening between Israel and the Palestinians now, you have to understand what happened in the Middle East war of 1967.
It took only six days for Israel to smash the armed forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria but over the last 40 years, the legacy of the war has shaped the conflict into what it is today.
The war made 250,000 more Palestinians - and more than 100,000 Syrians - into refugees. No peace is possible in the Middle East without solving their
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Jun 4, 2007
A university class from the Midwest passed through Philadelphia yesterday on a two-week tour of historic sites in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender equal-rights movement.
When their red-and-white bus, adorned with the University of Wisconsin badger mascot, pulled up in front of Independence Hall, Mark Segal, publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News, had a surprise for them.
He passed out hand-drawn picket signs, and asked the class to reenact the nation's first
Source: Newsweek
Jun 4, 2007
Four decades after the battle [for Jerusalem in 1967], Israeli leaders still refer glowingly to Jerusalem as the "eternal, undivided capital" of the Jewish state. But the mantra is accurate only as myth. Even as they celebrate the 40th anniversary of the war this week, a growing number of Israeli voices are saying the once unthinkable: that Jerusalem may never truly be united. The city is now Israel's poorest metropolis; ambitious young people prefer making their living in the country'
Source: Sandy Tolan at Salon
Jun 3, 2007
Little-noticed details in declassified documents from the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, indicate that top officials in the Johnson administration -- including Johnson's most pro-Israeli Cabinet members -- did not believe war between Israel and its neighbors was necessary or inevitable, at least until the final hour. In these documents, Israel emerges as a vastly superior military power, its opponents far weaker than the menacing threat Israel portrayed, and war itself something that
Source: Lawrence Journal-World & News
Jun 3, 2007
Here’s an interesting bit of American Civil War trivia: What many consider the first battle in the bloodiest war in the nation’s history — the Battle of Black Jack near Baldwin City — didn’t claim a single life.
That battle, a small skirmish between bands of pro- and anti-slavery men, occurred about five years before what many textbooks and historians refer to as the first official event in the Civil War at Fort Sumter in South Carolina in 1861.
But for a group of inter
Source: http://www.news-record.com (Greensboro, NC)
Jun 3, 2007
Blackbeard didn’t leave any fingerprints. No DNA. No signed confession.
Just a shipwreck. And a mystery.
The wreck, if found, likely would contain a mound of cannons, hand grenades, lead shot, trade beads, slave shackles, a syringe for treating syphilis and some flakes of gold.
As for the mystery, that’s been playing out for 10 years, far longer than anyone expected.
For the past decade, scores of historians, scientists and archaeologists have sifted
Source: BBC
Jun 3, 2007
A former Transport and Heritage minister is calling for Stonehenge to be removed from the list of World Heritage sites.
Salisbury's Conservative MP Robert Key says a failure to deliver long overdue improvements means Stonehenge no longer deserves the listing.
He claims money for improvements is being diverted to the Olympics.
He is writing to the UNESCO committee asking for the British government to be called to account.
Source: AP
Jun 3, 2007
BOGOTA, Colombia - The Spanish galleon San Jose was trying to outrun a fleet of British warships off Colombia's coast on June 8, 1708, when a mysterious explosion sent it to the bottom of the sea with gold, silver and emeralds now valued at more than $2 billion.
Three centuries later, a bitter legal and political dispute over the San Jose is still raging, with the Colombian Supreme Court expected to rule this week on rival claims by the government and a group of U.S. investors to wh
Source: http://www.dailypress.com
Jun 3, 2007
JAMESTOWN -- Alexander Hamilton remembered the pesky part of his long-ago fourth-grade class trip to Jamestown. But until recently, he didn't necessarily remember all the history.
He suspects that it was the same for many African-American families who came to Jamestown Settlement on Saturday for African Imprint Day, created to highlight the role of Africans in Virginia's early history.
"They remembered the flies," Hamilton joked about what memories remained of
Source: http://www.signonsandiego.com
Jun 3, 2007
There's a reason why reports of a rare strain of tuberculosis attracted worldwide attention: a history perhaps as deadly as the plague.
More than 4,000 years ago, tuberculosis killed an Egyptian whose mummified remains were dug up; the case was first described in 1910. Hippocrates called it consumption in 460 B.C.
Pathologist Thomas Dormandy of London, author of “The White Death: The History of Tuberculosis,” said TB may have killed more than the plague. Outbreaks of th
