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: Telegraph
Mar 13, 2007
On the day that Charles Darwin married his first cousin and sweetheart Emma Wedgwood, she recorded the event in diary with customary common sense, writing simply: "Came to town." The day after, on Jan 30, 1839, the new Mrs Darwin records only that she bought an armchair.
But within the prosaic details of Emma Darwin's 60 pocket books lie the hidden secrets of six decades of family life.
They shed new light on the man who convinced scientists to believe in evo
Source: Guardian
Mar 13, 2007
BERLIN -- A newly discovered letter by Adolf Hitler's architect and armaments minister Albert Speer offers proof that he knew about the plans to exterminate the Jews, despite his repeated claims to the contrary.
Writing in 1971 to Hélène Jeanty, the widow of a Belgian resistance leader, Speer admitted that he had been at a conference where Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and Gestapo, had unveiled plans to exterminate the Jews in what is known as the Posen speech. Speer's insist
Source: The Age (Melbourne, Australia)
Mar 13, 2007
Prime Minister John Howard has set himself on a collision course with his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, by declaring there should be no "quibbling" over the degree of coercion used to force thousands of women to act as sex slaves for the Japanese military during World War II.
On the eve of their talks in Tokyo today, Mr Howard has made it clear he will not tolerate an attempt by Japan to rewrite history. He is expected to raise the issue with Mr Abe this afternoon.
Source: http://www.news-record.com
Mar 12, 2007
They're toiling 8 to 5, trying to rescue history. Occasionally, occupants of cars yell hostile words about the strangers in their midst.
Still, the angry are the exception.
Most New Orleans residents tolerate the presence of two UNCG professors and 12 graduate students in history and interior architecture.
They're devoting their spring break to helping rescue historic buildings damaged by Hurricane Katrina or years of neglect.
Source: Staci Kramer at http://www.paidcontent.org
Mar 12, 2007
In January ‘06, NYT.com began offering its premium TimesSelect for half price to academics. It seemed like a pretty good deal at the time, yet when I did the math last August, the academic subscriptions accounted for less than 2 percent of the paying subs—about 3,800 total then. Now the site is taking a new approach: TimesSelect will be free to registered college students and faculty with an .edu email address. Current students subs will get pro-rated refunds.
Source: National Geographic News
Mar 12, 2007
Julius Caesar's bloody assassination on March 15, 44 B.C., forever marked March 15, or the Ides of March, as a day of infamy. It has fascinated scholars and writers ever since.
For ancient Romans living before that event, however, an ides was merely one of several common calendar terms [calends, nones, ides] used to mark monthly lunar events. The ides simply marked the appearance of the full moon.
But the Ides of March assumed a whole new identity after the events of 44
Source: Rocky Mountain News
Mar 12, 2007
Did University of Colorado ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill see secret Canadian government files about child abuse in Indian boarding schools?
Highly unlikely, says a Canadian researcher who reviewed the files and cited them in his 1999 book about the history of the infamous boarding schools.
So how did references to those documents end up in Churchill's 2004 book on the schools?
"Unless he got himself into one of those black suits that Tom Cruise use
Source: Independent (UK)
Mar 12, 2007
Tony Blair's first envoy to Iraq, banned from publishing his own book on the crisis there, has used a roundabout route to make sharp criticism of the British and American governments for failing to study history before invading the country in 2003.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, a former ambassador to the United Nations, says American politicians ignored the lessons of British disasters, failed to delegate proper authority to commanders on the ground and lacked imagination in their leadersh
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
Mar 12, 2007
The steps by which the Justice Department conducts
investigations of unauthorized disclosures of classified
information ("leaks") were described by then-Attorney General
Janet Reno in 2000 testimony before a closed hearing of the
Senate Intelligence Committee.
At a moment when some, such as Senator Jon Kyl, are proposing to
enact new statutory penalties against leaks, it is noteworthy
that the Attorney General concluded that such p
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Mar 12, 2007
CLEARLAKE OAKS, Calif. -- For decades, young members of the Elem Pomo tribe have broken out in skin rashes and elders have suffered kidney failure.
The Elem Pomos' 50-acre reservation [in Lake County, north of San Francisco] is adjacent to the Sulphur Bank Mine, one of the nation's most polluted sites, and some Pomos believe the tribe's health problems may be related to the federal government's use of the mine's toxic tailings to build reservation roads and house foundation pads 37
Source: Guardian Newsblog
Mar 12, 2007
By 2020 the British Library reckons that 90% of books and research papers will be available in some kind of electronic format. Only 10% will be available in hard copy only.
Such stats makes some giddy with enthusiasm about the brave new digital world. Information will be so much more accessible and we can do away with filing all those dusty bits of paper, the theory goes. But others aren't so sure.
Family historians, for example, are concerned that we're in danger of wi
Source: AP
Mar 12, 2007
FLORENCE -- An Italian senator chained himself to a column near the gates of the Uffizi museum Monday to protest the loan of Leonardo da Vinci's "Annunciation" for a show at Japan's National Museum in Tokyo...
In protesting the loan, Sen. Paolo Amato said it exposes a priceless masterpiece to unnecessary risk and belittles its significance by using it in a commercial event.
Inside the museum, the 6 1/2-foot-by-3-foot painting was being bundled in three protect
Source: Live Science
Mar 12, 2007
Our ape-like predecessors kept their stout figures for 2 million years because having short legs ironically gave them the upper-hand in male-male combat for access to mates, finds a new study.
Living from 4 million to 2 million years ago, early hominins in the genus Australopithecus are considered immediate predecessors of the human genus Homo, and had heights of around 3 feet 9 inches for females and 4 feet 6 inches for males.
Until now, the squat physiques of australo
Source: Star-Press (Muncie, Ind.)
Mar 12, 2007
MUNCIE, Ind. -- The Delaware County Office of Geographic Information System stumbled onto what scientists believe to be a well-preserved earthwork built by pre-historic, Woodland Indians.
The site, only 150 feet from Ind. 32 between Muncie and Yorktown, recently came to the attention of the Indiana Department of Transportation, which plans to widen that segment of the highway to four or five lanes.
"It's absolutely critical we keep this one," said Don Cochran,
Source: UPI
Mar 12, 2007
Six decades after his death, the most notorious German of all times, Adolf Hitler, may be stripped of his German citizenship.Deutsche Welle Online reported Monday that a low-ranking official in the state of Lower Saxony, Isolde Saalmann, had convinced her colleagues from the governing Social Democratic Party to file a request to check whether the German citizenship given to Austrian-born Hitler in 1932 can be rescinded.
Hitler's application to become a German na
Source: Guardian
Mar 12, 2007
BAD AROLSEN, Germany -- Cornelis Brouwenstijn was forced to surrender his black leather wallet when he entered Neuengamme concentration camp in northern Germany in 1944. Inside it the 22-year-old, a handsome blond Dutch Jew, had tucked his passport, ration cards, some curly-edged photographs of family and friends and a love poem typed on two sides of an onion-skin page: "Ode to a Girl", whose "skin is clear as glass".
Brouwenstijn's now crumbling wallet is one of
Source: Washington Post
Mar 12, 2007
Every half-century or so, Virginia throws a party to commemorate the arrival of English colonists on its shores. This year comes a biggie: the 400th anniversary. The whole world's invited, and the guest list is especially long and prestigious.
Even the queen of the mother country plans to cross the Atlantic to help mark the occasion.
Already, the cost of activities surrounding the bash is upward of $200 million. The trick has been how to celebrate something long buried
Source: Los Angeles Times
Mar 12, 2007
ALCATRAZ ISLAND, Calif. —- For 150 years the lighthouse beacon here has alerted sailors to San Francisco's rocky, fog-shrouded coast. It beamed from the island when it housed a Civil War-era fort, a military prison, a maximum-security penitentiary and a national park.
Today, the public is free to roam the island's artillery batteries, prison cells and guardhouses —- virtually every building on the 22-acre island except its most recognizable structure, the towering lighthouse. The ol
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Mar 12, 2007
BERLIN -- As Germany's long, often-praised reconciliation with its Nazi past digs deeper, it brings forward characters such as Christian Nazi resister Helmuth James von Moltke.
On his centenary anniversary Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised him as a symbol of "European courage" and for having a vision of a democratic Europe far ahead of its time.
Mr. Von Moltke, descendant of one of Germany's greatest military generals, was executed in 1945 for co
Source: USA Today
Mar 12, 2007
Back in 1989, as a young graduate student at the University of Southern California researching a masters thesis, William Aceves asked the government for information about its"freedom of navigation" program involving international waters and air space.
The seemingly benign request, made under a 1966 law designed to let people find out what their government is doing, languished for years.
Just last month, Aceves, now a full professor at California Western School of Law in San Diego, go
