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: NYT
May 25, 2007
DURBAN, South Africa: None of South Africa’s big cities are so redolent of colonialism as this old seaport, namesake of a British major general and headquarters, in the early 1800s, of a British colony at Africa’s southern tip. Durban’s baroque city hall is said to be a clone of Belfast’s. From Brighton Beach to Victoria Market, allusions to colonial dominance are inescapable.
So one could hardly blame Durban’s thoroughly postcolonial leaders for wanting to redress this imbalance,
Source: NYT
May 25, 2007
The dinner was first-class, with butlers serving hors d’oeuvres and the strains of “Blue Danube” tastefully muffling the festive din. This nine-course re-creation of the last supper aboard an ill-fated ocean liner was the culmination of Titanic Day at Laurel Hill Cemetery, one of a growing number of historic cemeteries to rebrand themselves as destination necropolises for weekend tourists.
Historic cemeteries, desperate for money to pay for badly needed restorations, are reaching ou
Source: http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews
May 24, 2007
The last time anyone from Alabama saw the flag of the 1st Alabama Infantry was when its own Confederate troops woke up for morning muster on a Mississippi River island off the Missouri shore on April 8, 1862.
In that day's surrender, Brig. Gen. Elazer Arthur Paine confiscated the 7-foot, red, white and blue banner as a trophy, and decades later, a Civil War historian would speculate only that the flag was still somewhere up North.
On Wednesday, Alabama got it back.
Source: NYT
May 24, 2007
Fannie Lee Chaney, a $28-a-week bakery worker who became a target of racial hatred herself after her son James Chaney and two other civil rights workers were killed by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964, died on Tuesday in Willingboro, N.J. She was 84.
Her son Ben, James’s younger brother, confirmed the death in a telephone interview.
Four decades after losing her son, Mrs. Chaney drew national attention in June 2005 when she testified for
Source: http://www.niagarafallsreview.ca
May 24, 2007
Jon Jouppien makes a living restoring old buildings. Today, he's looking to restore a misunderstood holiday.
Canada celebrated Victoria Day on Monday with sports on the tube, burgers on the grill and a day off work. But do most people know it's a day to mark Queen Victoria's birthday, he wondered? Or that it isn't even celebrated in Britain?
Or that the Queen's actual birthday is May 24 - today? It really hit home when he overheard som
Source: BBC
May 24, 2007
Military records featuring 90 million Americans who have fought in wars from the 1600s through the American Civil War to Korea and Vietnam have been brought together online.
The huge collection of documents, which includes draft registration cards, photographs, prisoner of war records and news reels, is the work of family history website Ancestry.com.
It hopes to help millions of Americans uncover their ancestors' pasts through their military records, and to shed a litt
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
May 24, 2007
ALL pupils would study British history up to the age of 16 under proposals being drawn up by the Conservatives.
As many as two-thirds of students abandon history at 14 but a future Tory government could make the subject compulsory for an extra two years.
Pupils would study 'our island story' between the ages of 11 and 16 with a special unit on the British Empire.
The aim is that they would leave school with a clear chronological understanding of history, h
Source: Christian Science Monitor
May 24, 2007
On the latest of Beijing's ancient lanes to be scheduled for demolition, a tale of two cities is unfolding. Their diverging stories have probably sealed the leafy alleyway's fate.
At No. 21, Li Xiaoling cannot wait for the bulldozers to roll up. After 17 years living with her daughter in a decrepit one-room rental shack thrown up in the middle of an old courtyard "this is a good chance for us to improve our living conditions," she says.
A few doors down, Xia J
Source: Czech News Agency (CTK)
May 24, 2007
Czech politicians and historians have agreed after a half-century of disputes that a monument to the Czechoslovak paratroopers who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, the German Reichsprotector of Bohemia and Moravia, in 1942 should be erected in Prague, the daily Lidove noviny says today.
A monument to Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik, who fatally wounded the widely hated Nazi leader, is to be built near the road curve in Prague 8's Kobylisy neighbourhood where the event occurred.
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
May 24, 2007
Its cache has been on the rise for more than a year now, boosted, among other things, by notice from trendsetting publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Esquire magazine.
You meanwhile may have been under the impression that Western Pennsylvania's rye distillers floated down the Ohio River following the 1790s Whiskey Rebellion, giving rise to Kentucky's corn bourbon tradition.
Here's the problem with that story: Most booze historians say it'
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 24, 2007
Kosovo Albanians plan to honour their “saviour” Bill Clinton by erecting a statue of the former United States president in the capital of Serbia’s breakaway province.
The 10ft tall monument is still under construction in a studio in Podujevo, 40km north of Pristina. “He is our saviour. He saved us from extermination,” Izeir Mustafa, the sculptor, said. “I was thrilled by the work because I know what he did for us.”
Kosovo has been under UN administration since 1999 afte
Source: AP
May 24, 2007
For every generation in this country there has been a war. And with wars come millions of records that can shed light on family history, detailing everything from the color of soldiers' eyes to what their neighbors may have said about them.
On Thursday, Ancestry.com unveils more than 90 million U.S. war records from the first English settlement at Jamestown in 1607 through the Vietnam War's end in 1975. The site also has the names of 3.5 million U.S. soldiers killed in action, inclu
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
May 24, 2007
Historians and other researchers may continue to access archival
records at Los Alamos National Laboratory, officials said last week.
But they also affirmed strict new limits on such access.
A story in Secrecy News (May 3) describing new restrictions on
researchers was based on a misunderstanding by Lab personnel,
Department of Energy and Lab officials said last week. Although there was a technical change in policy, access to the archives remains unaffected, the officials asserted.
Source: NYT
May 24, 2007
Pope Benedict XVI tried Wednesday to quell anger in South America over his recent comments about the conversion of native populations, conceding that “unjustifiable crimes” were committed in the conquest of the continent 500 years ago.
The pope told a weekly audience here in Italian that it was “not possible to forget the suffering and the injustices inflicted by colonizers against the indigenous population, whose fundamental human rights were often trampled.”
Source: http://www.cbc.ca/canada
May 23, 2007
One of the oldest veterans groups in the country held its final meeting Tuesday night at the Union Club in Saint John.
The Byng Boys started in 1919 after the First World War, and were named after Sir Julian Byng, commander of the Canadian army at Vimy Ridge and later a governor general. Club member George Pridham said that in those days there was a special requirement for membership.
"Originally, to be a Byng Boy you had to be carried off the field of battle, and
Source: http://www.thestreet.com
May 23, 2007
The question of the day: Just how much of the $500 million sunken treasure found in the Atlantic last weekend belongs to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards?
I put a call in to Edwards' campaign yesterday morning to find out, but I haven't heard back yet. The reality? The populist one-term senator will get an undisclosed piece of the action from the sunken 17th-century galleon.
The ship, laden with gold and silver, was found at the bottom of the Atlantic by a
Source: BBC
May 23, 2007
Roman soldiers descended on the Scottish Parliament to encourage MSPs to back an application for the Antonine Wall to gain World Heritage Status.
Scottish Conservative Deputy Leader Murdo Fraser MSP has put forward a motion calling on the parliament to support the application.
He has also called on the Scottish Executive to create a National Roman Centre in Scotland.
The 37-mile wall is the UK's official nomination for World Heritage status.
Source: AP
May 23, 2007
MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (AP) -- Amid the sound of battle cries and machine gun fire, the stories of the nation's war heroes are now being told in a renovated museum aboard a moored aircraft carrier.
The refurbished $1.5 million Medal of Honor Museum is set to open Memorial Day weekend aboard the USS Yorktown on Charleston Harbor as a tribute to the 3,444 recipients of the nation's highest military honor.
''It was absolutely breathtaking -- the tightness in the chest and th
Source: http://www.eux.tv
May 23, 2007
King Juan Carlos, 69, has been elected the most important Spaniard in history, well ahead of Don Quixote author Miguel de Cervantes and navigator Christopher Columbus, who came next.
The results of a poll among more than 3,000 Spaniards were presented Tuesday night at a television show called "The Spaniard of history."
The show staged by the private channel Antena 3 showed the popularity of the royal family. Queen Sofia took the fourth, Crown Prince Felipe t
Source: http://www.irrawaddy.org
May 23, 2007
Burma's ruling junta has effectively erased the history of modern Burmese rulers by suppressing their biographies, according to a Rangoon-based historian.
Than Win Hlaing, 40, planned to distribute a biographical study of Burma’s first prime minister, U Nu, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth on May 25.
But the Ministry of Information’s Press Scrutiny and Registration Division, the country’s notorious censorship body, has blocked its distribution.
