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: Iverness Courier
Oct 17, 2006
THE remains of a 2000-year-old city have been discovered under Inverness and it is being hailed as one of the most important recent discoveries in Scotland.
The find near Inverness Royal Academy was uncovered by a team who spent almost a year excavating the remains of seven large roundhouses and almost a dozen iron kilns.
Last year The Inverness Courier revealed the team from Headland Archaeology had uncovered the ancient city's "industrial estate" where iron
Source: AP
Oct 17, 2006
Austria launched an online database Tuesday to find the owners of art and other cultural items that may have been looted under Nazi rule and are now in some of the country's museums.
The database -- accessible at http://www.kunstrestitution.at -- contains information about objects that were likely to have been expropriated between 1938 and 1945, when Austria became a part of Nazi Germany.
Source: Reuters
Oct 17, 2006
What you had for breakfast on Tuesday could make history.
That meal, or perhaps the way you went to work or what you saw on TV on this one day, Tuesday October 17 are wanted by a Web site hoping to create a national online archive.
The National Trust is aiming to create Britain's biggest blog as part of its History Matters campaign.
The blogs can include everyday events, but bloggers are encouraged to include an historical twist, even if it is only to d
Source: Reuters
Oct 17, 2006
LONDON Only one of the ancient wonders of the world still survives -- now history lovers are being invited to choose a new list of seven.
Among 21 locations shortlisted for the worldwide vote is Stonehenge, the only British landmark selected.
The 5,000-year-old stones on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, will be up against sites including the Acropolis in Athens; the Statue of Liberty in New York; and the last remaining original wonder, the Pyramids of Giza in Cairo.
Source: AP
Oct 17, 2006
The body of Argentine strongman Juan Domingo Peron arrived at a new mausoleum for his reburial Tuesday, greeted by the cheers but also a violent scene as rival groups hurled rocks at one another.
As Peron's cortege traveled from downtown Buenos Aires to the new mausoleum at his former weekend estate, thousands of weeping admirers tossed carnations and confetti.
Many in the crowd at the rural mausoleum, while awaiting the caravan, scattered and at least two men were seen
Source: Guardian
Oct 17, 2006
One of the most beautiful and infamous treasure hoards of the 20th century, 14 pieces of Roman-era silver of staggering quality, will resurface today on display in London, to the consternation of leading archaeologists who regard it as archaeological loot.
Although Bonhams auction house, which will display the Sevso Hoard, insists no sale is planned, the Marquess of Northampton who bought the silver for an undisclosed sum in the 1980s recently said he "hopes" the silver w
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 17, 2006
Britain's most distinguished explorers are to argue the case tomorrow for Sir Wally Herbert, the Yorkshire-born polar pioneer, to be recognised as the first man to reach the North Pole by muscle power alone.
They say Sir Wally's achievements have been hugely underestimated.
Record books currently show that Robert Peary, an American, was the first to reach 90 degrees North on April 6, 1909, but at a testimonial gala in honour of Sir Wally, 71, the explorers Pen Hadow and
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 17, 2006
A woman who claims to be the secret love child of Juan Perón, the former Argentine leader, has forced authorities to carry out a paternity test while his body is being moved to a new burial place.
Martha Holgado, 72, claims to be the product of a brief affair between Gen Perón and her mother, Maria Demerchi, reportedly a married socialite, when Gen Perón was a young army officer.
After battling objections from the Perón family for more than a decade for her claim to be
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 17, 2006
The slave trade and its abolition 200 years ago could become a compulsory subject in schools, it emerged yesterday.
The move is being considered as part of a review of diversity within the National Curriculum ordered by Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary.
Many teachers are already bringing the issue of slavery into history lessons
The development was revealed by David Lammy, the Culture Minister, in a speech highlighting preparations to mark the bicenten
Source: NYT
Oct 17, 2006
For more than a decade, one piece of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s informal biography has been that she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary, the conqueror of Mount Everest. The story was even recounted in Bill Clinton’s autobiography.
But yesterday, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign said she was not named for Sir Edmund after all.
“It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add,” said Jennifer Hanley, a spokeswoman
Source: NYT
Oct 17, 2006
Wang Guangmei, the widow of President Liu Shaoqi and a powerful figure in China before she was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution, died Friday in Beijing. She was 85.
Her death was confirmed by a family member.
Ms. Wang was once widely known in China as its beautiful, articulate, sophisticated first lady.
Liu Shaoqi was president from 1959 to 1967, when he became one of the first high-level officials to be denounced as a “capitalist roader” and purg
Source: Daily India
Oct 17, 2006
A letter documenting the famous Christmas Day truce of 1914 when guns fell silent along the Western Front, and feuding German and British soldiers engaged in a friendly soccer match in the icy mud of No Man's Land in France, has been found 92 years after it was first written. The letter, written in the British trenches by a British private, details the truce when the Kaiser's soldiers and British Tommies exchanged pleasantries and celebrated Christmas together, and engaged i
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Oct 17, 2006
Genovese nobleman or Catalan pirate? Adventurous explorer or greedy tyrant? What if the Italian gentleman who discovered America was in fact a brutal torturer and slave owner? And what if he wasn't even Italian?
Schoolchildren may learn about a daring hero who proved the Earth wasn't flat, but because his biography is pocked with holes, Christopher Columbus is a figure around whom elaborate theories and enigmatic rumors have long circulated. This year, the 500th anniversary of his d
Source: National Security Archive
Oct 16, 2006
Washington, DC, October 16, 2006 - The CIA's reliance on high-level informants including the President and a future President of Mexico for "intelligence" about the student protest movement in 1968 that culminated in the infamous Tlatelolco massacre misled Washington about responsibility for the repression, according to documents obtained by journalist Jefferson Morley and posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
The declass
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 16, 2006
Three Britons are due to go on trial in Italy today accused of illegally salvaging more than £320,000 worth of gold, silver and diamonds from a shipwreck.
Nicholas Pearson, David Dixon, and Kerr Sinclair are accused of illegally diving and damaging the wreck of the Pollux, an Italian steam ship which sank off the coast of Elba in 1841.
The three men, along with five other Britons, chartered a salvage ship in 2000 and bought a £2,500 licence to retrieve tin ingots from t
Source: Turkish Daily News
Oct 16, 2006
Excavations in the Harran district of Şanlıurfa have uncovered a stamp dating back to 4,000-5,000 B.C., said the excavation leader on Saturday, reported the Anatolia news agency.
Harran excavation team leader Nurettin Yardımcı said the excavations have been ongoing since 1983 and that recent work in the area has focused on the Harran tumulus and Ulu Cami as well as the Neolithic settlement of Tellidris.
“Our work has indicated
Source: AP
Oct 16, 2006
CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN AIR FORCE STATION, Colo. - Dr. Strangelove would have a heart attack: America’s vaunted underground war room deep inside this granite mountain is being retired. Not only that, but Russian military men have been inside the place.
During the long nuclear standoff with Moscow, the nation’s super-secret nerve center was a symbol of both Cold War might and apocalyptic dread, depicted in such movies as “WarGames” in 1983.
But with the end of the
Source: AP
Oct 16, 2006
BUDAPEST, Hungary -- Officials unveiled a memorial Monday honoring a Swiss representative of the International Red Cross who helped save thousands of people, including Jews, in Hungary at the end of World War II.
The commemorative plaque at Pannonhalma Abbey was dedicated to Eduard Benedek Brunschweiler, who took charge of the site in October 1944 and kept it under Red Cross protection until Soviet forces expelled him in April 1945. Some 3,000 people, mostly children, spent the end
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Oct 16, 2006
Institutional review boards — never designed for oversight of journalism programs or surveys by sociology majors — have gone way beyond their mandates and purpose, to the detriment of scholarship, says a new report from the American Association of University Professors.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Oct 16, 2006
A civil-rights organization filed a lawsuit on Friday in a state court in Baltimore alleging that Maryland has failed to follow its own and federal laws with regard to historically black institutions in the state.
"This case is about the ability of historically black colleges and universities to attract students of all races, to ensure that the programs that they offer are distinguished and not duplicated" at nearby institutions that are traditionally white, said David J.
