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: NPR
Nov 1, 2006
For more than a century, Lt. Stephen Atkins Swails has lain in an unmarked grave in Charleston, S.C., his life story largely forgotten. But recently, local historians held a long overdue ceremony honoring the life of the extraordinary African-American soldier and statesman.
Swails was a member of the famous 54th Massachusetts Regiment, one of the country's first black fighting units, famous for storming Fort Wagner in South Carolina. The unit's story was told in the Hollywood film G
Source: Reuters
Nov 1, 2006
A Moroccan won first prize on Wednesday in Iran's
International Holocaust Cartoons Contest, which had sparked outrage in
Israel, the West and among Jewish groups.
Iran's best-selling newspaper, Hamshahri, launched a competition in
February to find the best cartoon about the Holocaust, in which 6 million
Jews were killed by the Nazis.
The contest was a retaliation for last year's publication of caricatures
of the Prophet Mohammad in Danish and other European newspapers that
ange
Source: BBC
Nov 1, 2006
The French are normally assiduous about remembering military anniversaries - even the nasty ones like Dien Bien Phu, Mers el-Kebir or Trafalgar. But there is something about the Suez crisis that has inspired collective amnesia. It's not that the French are embarrassed by what happened. It is just that they have forgotten. While in Britain, the 50 years since the airborne invasion of the canal zone are being marked with reams of hefty analysis and a three-part BBC
Source: WaPo
Oct 31, 2006
"[...]Aldrena Thirkill doesn't know what happened to her. As an adult,
she can remember surprisingly little of her life between 1959 -- when
the schools closed, with bitter fanfare and flamboyantly racist rhetoric
-- and 1964, when the county was grudgingly compelled to reopen public
schools on an integrated basis. Five years of her life:
lost. And so, Aldrena has begun to try to reconstruct what happened --
to her personality, her education, her family -- during this traumatic
period of
Source: AP
Oct 31, 2006
The earliest confirmed autopsy in North America was conducted more than 400 years ago by French colonists desperate to determine what was killing them as they endured a rugged winter on St. Croix Island, scientists concluded.
A team of forensic anthropologists from the United States and Canada confirmed that the skull of a man buried on the island over the winter of 1604-05 showed evidence of having undergone an autopsy, scientists said.
Source: Pasadena Star News
Oct 31, 2006
While thousands of trick-or-treaters celebrated Halloween by collecting candy or attending parties, 70 years ago some Caltech students and local residents marked it by bringing rocket propulsion to Pasadena.
The seven men test fired a rocket in the Arroyo Seco at a site not far from the present-day Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
That first test more closely resembled a Keystone Kops episode than today's sophisticated launches, but it paved the way for space exploration.
Source: Cliopatria
Oct 31, 2006
The history blogosphere has grown from about 145 to over 500 blogs in the last 18 months. We've just opened nominations for The Cliopatria Awards, 2006, the second year in which they've been given.
Nominations for six Awards are open throughout November and can be made in Comments at the links available here: http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/31289.html.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Oct 31, 2006
Fifty years ago, with a rare mix of altruism, guilt, and admiration, colleges and universities throughout the Western world opened their doors to thousands of student refugees from the failed Hungarian revolution. Most of the students arrived with few belongings — let alone transcripts or other records — and those who ended up in English-speaking countries often needed intensive English instruction before beginning classes.
The warm reception from Western higher education that greet
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Oct 31, 2006
The fall rush to buy textbooks is over, but a campaign led by the State Public Interest Research Groups to rally against the practices of the college textbook publishing industry is not.
In a report released today that is largely a summary of previous findings, PIRG accuses publishers of undermining the used book market and unnecessarily inflating prices. Studies show that the cost of textbooks is rising faster than the rate of inflation, and the price issue has gained traction with
Source: NYT
Oct 31, 2006
Halloween is big business here now. According to The Observer of London, Britons spend an estimated $228 million a year on Halloween-related items, a tenfold increase from five years ago. Sainsbury’s, one of Britain’s largest supermarket chains, has sold 450,000 pumpkins and 40,000 sets of glow-in-the-dark fangs this year, not to mention items like fake cobwebs and cookies that look like severed fingers. “It’s a very important time for our customers,” said Melanie Etches, a spokeswoman.
Source: AP
Oct 31, 2006
P.W. Botha, the apartheid-era president who led South Africa through its worst racial violence and deepest international isolation, died Tuesday. He was 90.
Botha died at his home on the southern Cape coast at 8 p.m., according to the South African Press Association. "Botha died at home, peacefully," Capt. Frikkie Lucas was quoted as saying.
The African National Congress issued a statement expressing condolences and wishing his family "strength and comf
Source: AP
Oct 31, 2006
The Headless Horseman and Ichabod Crane returned to Sleepy Hollow for Halloween, and this time they won't disappear afterward into the mists of legend.
Just in time to frighten young trick-or-treaters, an 18-foot-high steel sculpture of the Horseman and his gangly patsy was erected Tuesday alongside Route 9, not far from the grave of Washington Irving, author of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
A cheer rose from a crowd of about 50 as the rust-colored structur
Source: AP
Oct 31, 2006
The Foreign Legion isn't what it used to be. Murderers on the run are no longer welcome, and unhappy recruits have a year to back out without being branded deserters.
These days a bigger issue faces the 175-year-old force that made its name fighting France's overseas battles in jungle and desert. Its key role -- to be a crack professional force available for rapid, no-questions-asked deployment in far-flung conflicts -- has all but evaporated.
In campaigns from Algeri
Source: AP
Oct 31, 2006
An unpublished sonnet that Sylvia Plath wrote in college while pondering themes in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel "The Great Gatsby" will appear Wednesday in a Virginia online literary journal.
Plath, who committed suicide in 1963 at age 30, wrote "Ennui" in 1955 in her senior year at Smith College, said Anna Journey, a graduate student in creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University. While researching Plath archives at Indiana University, Journey discovered
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 31, 2006
In the 18th century, porcelain was so coveted by Europeans that they called it "white gold". Not much has changed. A porcelain lion and lioness are expected to smash the world record for Meissen when they are sold at Christie's in December.
Though the beasts, made in the 1730s, are chipped, suffer from cracks and have a slightly haughty air, Rodney Woolley, Christie's top ceramics expert, has valued them at up to £5 million — £1.5 million above the previous record price f
Source: WaPo
Oct 31, 2006
It could be the perfect Halloween treat -- or trick -- for that person who
already has everything else: a gallows.
About to be auctioned is the gallows that was built to hang anarchist
labor organizers convicted in the Haymarket Affair in the late 19th
century. It continued to be used for decades to hang some of Chicago's
most infamous criminals.
Since 1977 the gallows has stood in a Wild West theme park run by two
history-buff brothers in small-town Union, Ill. Before that it h
Source: BBC
Oct 30, 2006
In 1956, a Polish man living in the English midlands published an extraordinary book that became one of the classic tales of escape and endurance.
In The Long Walk, Slavomir Rawicz described how, during the Second World War, he and a group of prisoners broke out of a gulag in the Soviet Union in 1941. They walked thousands of miles south from Siberia, through Mongolia, Tibet, across the Himalayas, to the safety of British India.
The only question is: is it true? From
Source: BBC
Oct 30, 2006
Archaeologists have identified fossils belonging to some of the earliest modern humans to settle in Europe.
The research team has dated six bones found in the Pestera Muierii cave, Romania, to 30,000 years ago.
The finds also raise questions about the possible place of Neanderthals in modern human ancestry.
Source: Reuters
Oct 30, 2006
BEAUFORT, North Carolina (Reuters) - Nearly three centuries ago, the
notorious pirate Blackbeard ran aground in his ship, the Queen Anne's
Revenge, off what is now a North Carolina beach town.
This month, a crew of 13 heads out to sea each day, hoping for
clear-enough weather to dive the 20 to 25 feet (6 to 7.5 metres) to the
ocean bottom to excavate what they believe is Blackbeard's ship.
The team has found cannons, a bell, lead shot of all sizes, gold dust,
pewter cups and med
Source: CBS Evening News
Oct 30, 2006
At the hilltop presidential library where Ronald Reagan is buried and his life is on display, his widow, Nancy Reagan, and political luminaries gathered on Monday to celebrate the beginning.
As CBS News correspondent Jerry Bowen reports, 40 years ago Monday, Reagan was elected governor of California.
"When Ronald Reagan was elected governor, he blew everybody's expectations of him losing out of the water," says historian Douglas Brinkley, a CBS News consulta
