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: Philadelphia Inquirer
Jun 3, 2007
It was a last-minute addition, almost an afterthought.
But against virtually all expectations, the archaeological excavation of the President's House, now more than two months running, has uncovered powerful physical evidence evoking presidents and slaves, eliciting excitement and deep interest from the thousands who have packed the public observation platform to view the site at Sixth and Market Streets.
In response, the city and Independence National Historical Park h
Source: NYT
Jun 3, 2007
First, in late 2002, came a red 1959 Seagrave from Elmwood Place, Ohio, a 12-cylinder quint — meaning it had a pump, an aerial ladder, a ground ladder, a booster tank and a hose. He bought it on eBay for $7,300. He’d collected antique all-wheel-drive dump trucks from the same company before. Why not try one of their fire engines?
Next came a cream-colored 1959 Pirsch ladder truck from Bergen County that was sitting by the road in Elizabeth, N.J., with a for-sale sign because the own
Source: David Sanger in the NYT
Jun 3, 2007
For the first time, the Bush administration is beginning publicly to discuss basing American troops in Iraq for years, even decades to come, a subject so fraught with political landmines that officials are tiptoeing around the inevitable questions about what the United States’ long-term mission would be there.
President Bush has long talked about the need to maintain an American military presence in the region, without saying exactly where. Several visitors to the White House say th
Source: NYT
Jun 3, 2007
HOW did the United States, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, come to adopt interrogation techniques copied from the Soviet Union and other cold war adversaries?
Investigators for the Senate Armed Services Committee are examining how the methods, long used to train Americans for what they may face as prisoners of war, became the basis for American interrogations.
Source: NYT
Jun 3, 2007
PERHAPS no fact is more revealing about Iraq’s history than this: The Iraqis have a word that means to utterly defeat and humiliate someone by dragging his corpse through the streets.
The word is “sahel,” and it helps explain much of what I have seen in three and a half years of covering the war.
It is a word unique to Iraq, my friend Razzaq explained over tea one afternoon on my final tour. Throughout Iraq’s history, he said, power has changed hands only through extrem
Source: Telegraph
Jun 2, 2007
A rare ceremony to honour Aboriginal war veterans was held in Sydney yesterday, reviving memories of how shabbily they were treated after they had fought for their country.
About 500 Aborigines volunteered for the First World War - a substantial number, given that the black population was just 80,000, and it was only in 1917 that "half-castes" were allowed to enlist. Up to 5,000 indigenous Australians joined up for the Second World War.
They included four brot
Source: http://www.courierlife.net
Jun 2, 2007
A key [Brooklyn] city historian offered his views last week on the Duffield Street abolitionist houses and appears to have landed on the side of preservationists.
Christopher Moore, a curator at Harlem’s Schomburg Center, and regarded as one of the city’s foremost African-American historians, is also a member of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC).
His name reportedly came up at the May 1 City Council hearing regarding the city’s plans to condemn and de
Source: NYT
Jun 2, 2007
When Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, or Jewish Community Vienna, decided to sell a vacant building in the summer of 2000, two employees were sent to look for any archival material that might have been left behind.
What they found exceeded any historian’s dream: Stacked floor to ceiling in two rooms of one apartment sat some 800 dusty boxes containing, among other things, about half a million pages of detailed records of the community during the Holocaust — archives not known to h
Source: NYT
Jun 2, 2007
A federal judge gave doctors for John W. Hinckley Jr., who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981, more flexibility to help Mr. Hinckley rejoin society. Officials at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, where Mr. Hinckley is under treatment, sought to loosen restrictions on how far in advance they must alert the Secret Service when they take Mr. Hinckley into the community to attend baseball games, the theater and other events. Hospital officials were required to alert the Secret Service of any
Source: http://www.splcenter.org
Jun 1, 2007
California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), is a multicultural wonderland, with classrooms filled by Golden Staters whose ancestors came to this lively, diverse beach community from every corner of the world. Double-stocked with both an Office of Equity and Diversity and a Multicultural Center, CSULB openly proclaims its commitment to educating all of California’s students, regardless of income, race, creed or national origin.
Given its diverse student body, it would seem that
Source: Fox News
Jun 1, 2007
Residents of Pompeii ate their meals on the run, just like many Americans do today, according to a new archaeological study of how households functioned in the ancient Roman city buried by volcanic ash.
Completely destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., Pompeii is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world.
Source: Congressional Quarterly
Jun 1, 2007
The same top Bush administration neoconservatives who leap-frogged Washington’s foreign policy establishment to topple Saddam Hussein nearly pulled off a similar coup in U.S.-China relations—creating the potential of a nuclear war over Taiwan, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says.
Lawrence B. Wilkerson, the U.S. Army colonel who was Powell’s chief of staff through two administrations, said in little-noted remarks early last month that “neocons” in the top rungs
Source: Catholic News Service
Jun 1, 2007
An SS general close to Adolf Hitler foiled a plot to kidnap Pope Pius XII during World War II and to put the Vatican and its treasures under Nazi control, according to a new book.
The book, "A Special Mission" by Dan Kurzman, refutes arguments that Pope Pius XII maintained a public silence about Nazi actions during World War II because he was anti-Semitic or because he was sympathetic toward Hitler.
"They were bitter, bitter enemies. They despised each ot
Source: Salem Statesman Journal
Jun 1, 2007
The Statesman Journal's three-part series, "Beyond Barbed Wire: Japanese Internment through Salem Eyes," follows Japanese immigrants through a riveting period in Northwest and U.S. history.
Japanese immigrants had established themselves in Oregon communities, but the tenor of the times changed dramatically with the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to send families of Japanese heritage to internment camps.
Source: http://www.thisisbucks.co.uk
Jun 1, 2007
A dispute has broken out over which watering hole has been serving ale the longest in south Bucks after a historian raised doubts about how old The Royal Standard of England is.
The pub in Brindle Lane claims to have served ale since the 11th century and is said to have housed both King Charles I and II through its history.
But these claims have been questioned by historian Miles Green, who believes the first evidence of it as a drinking venue is from as recently as 183
Source: http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com
Jun 1, 2007
Now retired, the nine-term Republican congressman from Georgia was on Maui to promote his historical novel, "Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th."
"History is actually lived forward – it's studied backwards, but it's lived forward," Gingrich said. "There's no finer place to teach former lessons that relate to today than Pearl Harbor."
Written by Gingrich and historian William R. Forstchen, the book is the pair's ninth collaboration and th
Source: MSNBC
Jun 1, 2007
Muammar Kaddafi has become something of a poster child in the administration's fight against terror. But back in 1981, he was said to be behind a hit squad bound for Washington, Ronald Reagan recalls in his newly published diaries. Just how serious was the Libyan threat?...
A former Reagan administration official, who asked for anonymity when talking about details that may still be sensitive, told NEWSWEEK that intelligence reporting at the time suggested a complex plot. The Libyans
Source: MSNBC
Jun 1, 2007
Who is Hillary Rodham Clinton? In his new biography, “A Woman in Charge,” Carl Bernstein, who shared a Pulitzer Prize with Bob Woodward for their coverage of Watergate for The Washington Post, tries to answer that question. He follows her life from her childhood in the Midwest to her college days at Wellesley to Yale Law School, where she meets Bill Clinton, to Arkansas to the White House and to New York as a U.S. Senator. With Hillary Clinton running for president, Bernstein gives readers anoth
Source: Newsday
Jun 1, 2007
The Coney Island History Project, an organization launched in 2004 to begin an oral history archive for the iconic area, opened the doors yesterday to its first home. Its exhibition space is located underneath the Cyclone roller coaster in a building that has sold souvenirs, ice cream and hot dogs over the years.
"It's absolutely incredible because not only is it great because the memories of Coney Island will be preserved for future generations, but the location couldn't be b
Source: Times (UK)
Jun 1, 2007
For centuries, rats and fleas have been fingered as the culprits responsible for the Black Death, the medieval plague that killed as many as two thirds of Europe’s population.
But historians studying 14th-century court records from Dorset believe they may have uncovered evidence that exonerates them. The parchment records, contained in a recently-discovered archive, reveal that an estimated 50 per cent of the 2,000 people living in Gillingham died within four months of the Black Dea
