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: NYT
Sep 16, 2006
Michel Lévi-Leleu, who discovered his father’s suitcase at a Holocaust exhibition in Paris, [is fighting to keep it on display there. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland wants it back.]
Source: NYT
Sep 16, 2006
Normally, there's very little desire to highlight Germany's Nazi history here.
And normally, when it comes time to decommission a Protestant church here, it's a straightforward affair.
But Berlin's Martin Luther Memorial Church seems bound to be an exception on both counts.
From the outside, it's an ordinary church with a bell tower in need of renovation. The inside seems standard at first, until one takes a closer look at the elevated lectern. Carved into
Source: NYT
Sep 16, 2006
Pope Benedict is sorry Muslims were offended by a speech on Islam that provoked fury around the world and led to calls for the leader of the Catholic church to apologize, an aide said on Saturday.
``The Holy Father is very sorry that some passages of his speech may have sounded offensive to the sensibilities of Muslim believers,'' said Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone in a statement.
The worst crisis since Benedict was elected in April 2005 was spark
Source: WSJ
Sep 15, 2006
In June of 1662, Mary Sanford was convicted of "familiarity with Satan." She was one of several people caught in a witch hunt in Hartford, Conn., that was set off by a young woman and an 8-year-old girl. The two, according to witness accounts, blamed their "strange fits" and sicknesses on several local women.
Rebecca Greensmith, a contemporary of Mrs. Sanford who admitted to being a witch, testified that she and three other women, including Mrs. Sanford, had met
Source: Hamilton Spectator
Sep 15, 2006
Oilsands activity has uncovered vast wealth of a different kind -- a 10,000-year-old quarry rich with tools and weapons from some of the first Albertans, including a pristine spearpoint still smeared with the blood of a woolly mammoth.
"It's got this echo of the Ice Age world," said Jack Ives, Alberta's provincial archeologist, who described the find in a hearing before the province's energy regulator yesterday.
"There's quite a rich concentration of arti
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
Sep 15, 2006
Development in this booming Utah County city is nearly impossible to slow down.
Unless, of course, you run into 6,000-year-old petroglyphs.
That's the predicament developers for Eagle Mountain Ranch LLC faced when they learned part of their property slated for a residential subdivision contained archaic rock art.
"It is some of the oldest rock art in Utah," Nina Bowen, archivist for the Utah Rock Art Research Association, said in a news release. &quo
Source: BBC
Sep 15, 2006
Pollution and old age is causing so much damage to Canterbury Cathedral that it could have "disastrous consequences", its curators have said.
A global campaign to raise money for repairs to the Kent cathedral, which was founded in 597 by St Augustine, will be launched next month.
It costs more than £6m a year to run the cathedral, which is visited by more than one million people annually.
Source: Yahoo
Sep 15, 2006
Peru celebrated the return Friday of a prized 1,300-year-old embossed gold headdress looted from an ancient tomb nearly 20 years ago.
With a feline face at its center and eight curving tentacles, the artifact — which collectors say could be among Peru's most valuable treasures and worth close to $2 million — was recovered last month in a raid on a London lawyer's office.
The golden headdress was made in the image of an ancient sea god and dates back to around 700 A.D.,
Source: The Australian
Sep 15, 2006
MYTH or main course? The idea of cannibalism has divided anthropologists for decades but for one Australian expert, there's no doubt human flesh has been consumed with gusto in many parts of the world in recent years.
Australian National University historian and anthropologist Chris Ballard said ritual cannibalism had been practised in parts of the Pacific and Central America, and most recently in Papua and PNG, where human flesh had been eaten within living memory.
''I
Source: The Scotsman
Sep 15, 2006
THE remains of Edinburgh's medieval tolbooth have been unearthed during road repairs on the Royal Mile.
Historians have always known the tolbooth was located somewhere between St Giles' Cathedral and the City Chambers, but until now had been unable to pinpoint its location.
The archaeological investigations, carried out as part of a GBP 1.5 million upgrade of the Royal Mile, have discovered a large section of the lost building's northern wall which they believe dates to
Source: UPI
Sep 15, 2006
Historians working on a new curriculum for Australian high schools plan to weave the study of religion's influence into it.That would include a study of Aboriginal beliefs on the Dreamtime, a look at the division between Catholic and Protestant Australians, which affected the country for decades, and reading the Koran and learning about Islam, the Brisbane Courier-Mail reported.
"Religion has played a key role in many aspects of society including the legal
Source: Arutz Sheva (Israel)
Sep 15, 2006
A secret mission to find 60-year-old mass Jewish graves in eastern Europe has now become public, following its first "success." The operation is being funded by the Simon Weil Holocaust Research Fund in France, the Holocaust Museums in Paris and Washington, and the Zaka Organization. It was initiated by the Catholic liaison to the Jewish community in France, historian Patrick Dubois.The participants made contact with Christian leaders in Ukraine, asking for help in
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
Sep 15, 2006
State archaeologists in Utah have unearthed a 150-year-old crime scene that could shed light on the slaying of seven American Indians in Nephi. Archaeologists have excavated seven bodies from a mass grave in downtown Nephi. They say the men were the victims of a killing during the Walker War in 1853.
The skeletons, tangled together in a shallow grave, were discovered last month, when a home builder dug into an old ravine, now filled with about 6 feet of sand, to
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Sep 15, 2006
In the annals of academic conferences, few may have been more ill-fated than the aborted conclave on academic boycotts planned by the American Association of University Professors.
When the conference was called off in March, organizers hoped that they could salvage something good from the idea by taking papers planned for the conference and publishing them in a special issue of Academe, the AAUP’s magazine.
The issue is out, but the controversy continues. Authors who a
Source: Guardian
Sep 15, 2006
"Among the many useful discoveries which this age hath made, there are very few which, better deserve the attention of the public than what I am going to lay before your lordship."
This is the less than modest introduction to Edmund Stone's account in 1763 of the medicinal properties of willow bark, writes James Randerson. "There is a bark of an English tree," he wrote, "which I have found by experience to be a powerful astringent, and very efficacious in cu
Source: Times Online (UK)
Sep 15, 2006
IRAQ’S archaeological riches face a dangerous new threat following the appointment of a minister from a radical Islamic party to run the department responsible for antiquities.
Within months qualified staff have been purged from their posts, archaeologists have been threatened by gunmen and some of Mesopotamia’s ancient sites have been left open to looters. There are fears that Iraq may lose many of its Sumerian and Babylonian treasures for ever.
“We are really worried that I
Source: Cliopatria
Sep 15, 2006
The History Carnival is a twice-monthly roundup of blogging about history and historians. Ralph Luker hosts this edition at HNN blog Cliopatria.
Source: Japan Times
Sep 15, 2006
As the three candidates running for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's job continue to debate the issues, Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe has avoided giving clear positions on many of them, particularly Japan's responsibility for the war.
Abe is expected to be elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party on Sept. 20 and be made prime minister several days later. So what he has to say about the war responsibility issue could either put Sino-Japanese ties back on track or dama
Source: Yahoo/AP
Sep 14, 2006
It's more than idle doodling and the meaning is unclear. But there's one thing researchers are sure of: The insect, ear of corn, inverted fish and other symbols inscribed on an ancient stone slab is the earliest known writing in the Western Hemisphere...."We are dealing with the first, clear evidence of writing in the New World," said Stephen Houston, a Brown University anthropologist. Houston and his U.S. and Mexican colleagues detail the tablet's dis
Source: NYT
Sep 14, 2006
An international team of scientists thinks it has solved the ultimate mystery of the Neanderthals: where and when they made their last stand before extinction. It was at Gibraltar 28,000 years ago, the scientists say, about 2,000 years more recently than previously thought.
The archaeologists and paleontologists reported yesterday finding several hundred stone tools in Gorham’s Cave, on the rugged Mediterranean coast near the Rock of Gibraltar. They were made in the Mousterian stone
