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: AP
Mar 21, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The Smithsonian Institution's eight art museums are "drastically underfunded" and have "seldom lived up to their names," according to an external review released Wednesday.
The voluntary review by a panel of seven prominent museum directors gives recommendations to strengthen each museum and is similar to an external examination of the Smithsonian's science programs in 2003. The review was adopted by the Smithsonian Board of Regents in January, thou
Source: Laura Miller at Salon.com
Mar 21, 2007
"The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the True Roles of Women in Prehistory," by J.M. Adovasio, Olga Soffer and Jake Page, promises to lay out everything the most current research has established about archaic women, and the truth is that it's pretty thin gruel. The authors can point out some embarrassing mistakes made by past experts and suggest some intriguing alternative interpretations of various facts and artifacts, but even so there's a lot of padding and extraneous material in this boo
Source: Boston Globe Editorial
Mar 21, 2007
PEOPLE WAITED in a milelong line to see the USS John F. Kennedy when it docked for a weekend at the North Jetty in South Boston earlier this month. The 82,000-ton aircraft carrier, soon to be decommissioned, had barely departed before cries went up to bring it back permanently as a floating museum.
The idea is intriguing, but no one should be planning a nautical outing anytime soon. The Navy doesn't abide hasty reuses for its decommissioned warships. And it doesn't appear to be nost
Source: AP
Mar 21, 2007
GUATEMALA CITY -- A newly created international council of experts will oversee and protect extensive police archives exposing atrocities committed during Guatemala's 36-year civil war, a top human rights official said Wednesday.
The official, Sergio Morales, said the so-called International Consultative Council will include archive specialists from Argentina, Uruguay and the U.S., including Kate Doyle of the Washington-based National Security Archive, a private, nonpartisan researc
Source: AP
Mar 21, 2007
NORFOLK, Va. -- Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip will visit Virginia May 3-4 to help commemorate the founding of Jamestown 400 years ago...
They also will attend the Kentucky Derby on May 5, then spend time in Washington May 6-8...She also is expected to visit Virginia's current Capitol, in Richmond.
As two years and $99 million in renovations to the state's seat of government Thomas Jefferson designed 200 years ago near completion, a new urgency has tak
Source: AP
Mar 21, 2007
LONDON -- A French-made piano that Frederic Chopin brought to London late in his life has been identified in a collection in England, the owner of the instrument said Wednesday.
The piano built by the Paris company of Camille Pleyel, Chopin's favored piano-maker, is in the Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands, an assemblage of antique keyboard instruments housed in an 18th century house southwest of London, Alec Cobbe said.
He said the connection was established a year ago by
Source: AP
Mar 21, 2007
SANTIAGO, Chile -- Authorities on Tuesday began exhuming the remains of dozens of victims of repression under the 1973-90 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in a renewed effort to determine their identities.
The remains of 13 people were unearthed with help from three foreign experts on the first day of exhumations ordered by Judge Carlos Gajardo. Some of the remains are being uncovered for a second time after the coroner's office acknowledged last year that the misidentified rem
Source: AP
Mar 21, 2007
AUSTIN -- Slave ownership and Confederate figures spilled into a tense debate on the [Texas] House floor Wednesday over a bill aiming to safeguard historical markers against possible removal or renaming.
Emotions over the bill, which its author ultimately pulled after two hours of debate, peaked when two lawmakers were separated during a spat over how the bill even made it to the House floor.
Under the bill, statues of figures like Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee or buil
Source: AP
Mar 21, 2007
MONROE, Conn. --Two antique iron chests recently discovered on Monroe Historical Society property are safeguarding their secrets a bit too well.
The 300-pound safes, discovered behind a furnace in an old farmhouse owned by the society, might hold treasures that help shed light on the 184-year-old town's rich history.
Or, they could be empty.
But it'll remain a mystery until the historical society finds someone who can coax open the old locks, the combinatio
Source: UPI
Mar 21, 2007
PHILADELPHIA -- Philadelphia officials began what the mayor called "digging for the truth" for the memorial to the first presidential home and the slaves who lived there.
While completion of the $5.2-million memorial to the house shared by Presidents George Washington and John Adams when Philadelphia was the nation's capital is months away, Wednesday's groundbreaking starts three to six weeks of archaeological research, the first ever done on that section of Independence M
Source: UPI
Mar 21, 2007
ROME -- A collection of Europe's most representative artworks will be on display in Rome to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome.
The treaty established the forerunner of the European Community, now part of the European Union.
The exhibition of works from the Stone Age to the 20th century is at Rome's Palazzo Quirinale, the official residence of Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, who asked the 27 European Union heads of state to each lend a
Source: UPI
Mar 21, 2007
TOKYO -- A study of the history of relations between China and Japan has ended because of different ideas on how to approach the project, a report says.
Japanese participants in the study said Tuesday the joint project was ending because both nations were unable to reconcile their positions on how to approach the study of international relations in Asia, the Japan Times reported.
Time constraints also played a significant part in the decision, involved historians said.
Source: Twin Falls (Idaho) Times-News
Mar 21, 2007
JEROME, Idaho -- More than 60 years ago, 13,000 Americans of Japanese descent were kept behind barbed wire at the Minidoka Relocation Camp during World War II.
Today, just 73 acres of the original camp make up the Minidoka Internment National Monument east of Jerome and north of Eden.
On Monday, Idaho Senators Larry Craig and Mike Crapo and Rep. Mike Simpson introduced legislation that would expand the site, according to a press release from the leaders...
The legislation autho
Source: AP
Mar 21, 2007
MUNICH -- Just blocks from where Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels ordered the destruction of Munich's main synagogue on Kristallnacht, the city is opening an $18-million museum dedicated to the heritage and future of its growing Jewish community.
The cube-shaped museum by Saarbruecken architects Wandel Hoefer Lorck is part of the new complex in the central Jakobsplatz square that also houses a new synagogue and community centre.
It's a sign of the revitalization
Source: PR Newswire
Mar 21, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress today announced that "Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers" is debuting online with more than 226,000 pages of public domain newspapers from California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah, Virginia, and the District of Columbia published between 1900 and 1910.
The text of the newspapers is fully searchable, and search terms can be limited to a particular state, a specific newsp
Source: AP
Mar 21, 2007
HAVANA -- Work to restore Ernest Hemingway's Cuban hideaway probably won't be finished until the end of 2009, held up in part by efforts to build a garage to house the author's long-lost Chevy convertible, museum officials say.
Hemingway lived at Finca Vigia, or Lookout Farm, on Havana's southeastern outskirts from 1939 to 1960. He wrote "The Old Man and the Sea" and children's fables at the home, which he shared with nearly 60 cats and at least 10 dogs.
Follo
Source: NYT
Mar 21, 2007
The former inspector general of the Smithsonian Institution says Lawrence M. Small, the institution’s top official, tried to head off an audit of the organization’s business ventures division.
In a telephone interview yesterday, the former official, Debra S. Ritt, said Mr. Small called her in April 2006, soon after she announced plans for the audit, to say that “he did not think it was a good use of our resources, and that we were being manipulated by disgruntled employees.”
Source: Independent
Mar 21, 2007
Their surname was one that Patrick Brontë, the father of the trio of literary sisters, in effect made up. But it proved so evocative of stories of passion and a wild Yorkshire landscape that it has since been adopted to brand everything from spring water to poultry-processing.
But now the cash-strapped Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire, has decided that it too should be entitled to some of the money being made from the business of trading in the family's name.
Source: Telegraph
Mar 21, 2007
At 6ft 5ins, Charles Napoleon would have towered over his diminutive ancestor, Napoleon Bonaparte.
And the 56-year-old pretender to France's imperial throne has embraced a brand of politics that is decidedly out of character for a Bonaparte.
While both Napoleon I and Napoleon III seized power by force and held imperial courts in Fontainebleau's royal chateau, today His Imperial Highness Charles Napoleon -- or "Napoleon VII" -- plans to recapture this dynastic
Source: AP
Mar 21, 2007
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Eighteen massive brass bells rescued from a Moscow monastery nearly 80 years ago during a Soviet-era crackdown on religion and donated to Harvard University are being returned to Russia...
In return, Harvard will receive 18 replicas, which are being cast at a foundry in Russia...
The bells, which have rung in the towers at Lowell House and Harvard Business School's Baker Library for decades, were cast in the 18th and 19th centuries and are decorated
