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: Australian
Dec 23, 2006
LAST year Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett's extended autobiography Memoirs of a Rebel Journalist was released, receiving generally favourable reviews from writer Ross Fitzgerald in The Australian and academic historian Stuart Macintyre in the online magazine New Matilda.
I have been interested in Burchett, who died in 1983, for some time and decided to do some research recently, while on a Fulbright fellowship in the US, into the most controversial aspect of his career: the r
Source: Times Online (UK)
Dec 23, 2006
A direct descendant of George Washington was held last night in a New York jail, facing extradition to France on charges that he beat a man into a coma with a bottle.
John Augustine Washington V, a history student at Oxford University, is accused of smashing the bottle over the head of Colin Hall, a fellow American, on July 24 in a bar in the French resort of St Tropez.
He was arrested in New York this week after federal police were tipped off about his whereabouts. I
Source: http://thestar.com.my
Dec 23, 2006
Bok House might have been merely a rich man’s house, but the mansion still warranted conservation, said the Malaysian Institute of Architects.
Its president Dr Tan Loke Mun said the building was among several houses owned by the wealthy and formed the streetscape of Jalan Ampang.
He said such buildings should be preserved if the Government was serious about heritage tourism.
“There is nothing wrong with it being a rich man’s home. It shows the lifestyl
Source: National Geographic News
Dec 22, 2006
A team of archaeologists has discovered what it says is evidence of humankind's oldest ritual.
Africa's San people may have used a remote cave for ceremonies of python worship as much as 70,000 years ago—30,000 years earlier than the oldest previously known human rites—the team says.
"The level of abstract thinking within the peoples of [this period] and the continuity of their cultural patterns is proving to be astonishing for such an early date," said Shei
Source: http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5851273
Dec 22, 2006
The British Airways Concorde jet that had been a featured attraction at New York's Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum floated down the Hudson River today to a temporary home in Brooklyn.
The sleek white supersonic aircraft sat atop a barge as it made its way to the historic Floyd Bennett Field. It will remain open to visitors there, while workers rebuild the Intrepid's Manhattan pier.The World War Two aircraft carrier has been docked at Pier 86 since 1982, when it was turned into a
Source: AP
Dec 22, 2006
BANGOR, Maine -- A woman who had a key role in a little-known incident in World War II -- when she spotted two Nazi spies who arrived by U-boat along the Maine coast -- has died. Mary Forni, of Hancock, was 91.
Forni died Dec. 16, according to Hancock town officials.
Forni recalled the incident in a 2001 story in the Bangor Daily News. She reported that on Nov. 29, 1944, she saw the two men on the side of a rural road as she drove home from a card game in Hancock Poin
Source: http://www.wlns.com
Dec 22, 2006
The Alabama Supreme Court is blocking a lawsuit against Troy University by the Rosa Parks estate.
The late civil rights leader's Detroit-based institute accused the school of violating an agreement when it expanded a museum bearing her name.The Rosa Parks Library and Museum was developed by Troy on its Montgomery campus and has become a civil rights tourist attraction.
The suit accused the university of exceeding the museum's authorized size and failing to collaborate with the inst
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Dec 22, 2006
Anger is growing at St. Francis Xavier University, in Nova Scotia, over a political science professor, Shiraz Dossa, who attended last week’s “conference” in Iran on the Holocaust — an event condemned worldwide as a platform for Holocaust deniers. More than 100 professors at St. Francis Xavier have signed a letter stating that while they uphold Dossa’s academic freedom “to espouse any views that he pleases,” they are “nevertheless profoundly embarrassed by his participation in the Holocaust-deni
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Dec 22, 2006
The committee appointed by President Bush to pick the site for his presidential library announced Thursday that it was entering into final negotiations with Southern Methodist University as the site. While the announcement is not a final agreement, it suggests that SMU will emerge as the winner of the competition to be the host of the library. The other finalists were Baylor University and the University of Dallas. SMU, which counts alumna Laura Bush among its trustees, has been pushing hard for
Source: BBC
Dec 22, 2006
The Spanish flu virus that killed up to 50 million people in 1918-19 was probably a strain that originated in birds, research has shown.
US scientists have found the 1918 virus shares genetic mutations with the bird flu virus now circulating in Asia.
Writing in Nature, they say their work underlines the threat the current strain poses to humans worldwide.
A second paper in Science reveals another US team has successfully recreated the 1918 virus in mi
Source: WaPo
Dec 22, 2006
An influenza pandemic of the type that ravaged the globe in 1918 and 1919 would kill about 62 million people today, with 96 percent of the deaths occurring in developing countries.
That is the conclusion of a study published yesterday in the Lancet medical journal, which uses mortality records kept by governments during the time of "Spanish flu" to predict the effect of a similarly virulent outbreak in the contemporary world.
The analysis, the first of its kin
Source: NYT
Dec 22, 2006
The board that oversees the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here publicly distanced itself on Thursday from a member who recently condemned the first Muslim elected to Congress for planning to use a Koran during the private part of his swearing-in ceremony.
In November, the board member, Dennis Prager, a conservative commentator and radio show host, said that Keith Ellison, the newly elected Muslim member of Congress, should give up his post if he could not take his oath on
Source: Australian
Dec 22, 2006
WESTERN Australia's new Education Minister wants to change the teaching of high school history to give students a deeper understanding of international conflicts and Australia's role in them.
Mark McGowan, who has inherited the state's troubled gradeless curriculum, said an assessment and possible overhaul of the state's history curriculum was a priority.
The former naval legal officer landed the state education portfolio last week from Ljiljanna Ravlich, who stumbled
Source: http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php
Dec 21, 2006
On Wednesday, December 20, Washington-area Muslim leaders met at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to encourage humanity to take the lessons of the Holocaust to reaffirm a commitment to preserving human dignity for all people. Muslim American leaders—including Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, Imam Mohamed Magid, and MPAC board member Dr. Hassan Ibrahim—called for remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust and commemorated the struggles endured by survivors.
Source: Time
Dec 21, 2006
On the face of it, the Washington Capital Area Historical Autograph and Manuscript Show seemed like many such shows held around the country each year. Some 20 top dealers gathered at an Alexandria, Va., hotel on Dec. 9 to peddle thousands of autographs, letters and official papers of the famous — many of the more expensive items locked in glass cases. But among the customers wandering through the exhibits this time were two investigators from the National Archives. They passed out brochures on h
Source: Daily Times (Lahore)
Dec 21, 2006
The new national curriculum of history for classes VI to VIII has chapters on religious tolerance and cultural syncretism to teach the young generation about the “soft image” of Muslim rulers of South Asia, Daily Times learnt on Wednesday.
The curriculum has been sent to the provinces for implementation from the academic year 2007 as a compulsory subject.
The main feature of the new curriculum is that it not only highlights the political developments during Muslim rule
Source: Reuters
Dec 21, 2006
The Japanese war shrine at the center of a long-running dispute between Japan and China has decided to soften the references to China in a war museum on its premises, a Japanese newspaper reported Wednesday.
Relations between Japan and China deteriorated to their worst in decades under former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, partly because of his annual visits to the site, the Yasukuni Shrine, which is seen by critics as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism.
Bilateral t
Source: National Security Archive
Dec 21, 2006
In his March 2003 executive order 13292, President Bush affirmed
that on December 31, 2006, with certain limitations, "all
classified records that (1) are more than 25 years old and (2)
have been determined to have permanent historical value under
title 44, United States Code, shall be automatically declassified
whether or not the records have been reviewed."That December 31 deadline is now almost here, the New York Times
noted in a front page story today.
Source: NYT
Dec 21, 2006
It will be a Cinderella moment for the band of researchers who study the hidden history of American government.
At midnight on Dec. 31, hundreds of millions of pages of secret documents will be instantly declassified, including many F.B.I. cold war files on investigations of people suspected of being Communist sympathizers. After years of extensions sought by federal agencies behaving like college students facing a term paper, the end of 2006 means the government’s first automatic d
Source: CNN
Dec 20, 2006
Searching for the perfect present for your children, one that won't get shoved in a closet or cost a fortune? Hoping to engage your children in activities other than video games and television over their winter break? Look no further than those piles of shoe boxes bursting with old photographs. This holiday season give kids the gift that they will treasure for a lifetime -- a family history.
"Family history is about stories, not necessarily who married whom and all the way back
