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: Wa Po
Aug 14, 2006
Five months after Congress voted to bestow its highest honor on the Tuskegee Airmen -- pioneering aviators who during World War II broke the color bar banning black pilots in the U.S. military -- the Congressional Gold Medal is still not in their hands.
"Every time you pick up a newspaper, one or two more are gone," said retired Lt. Col. Spann Watson of Westbury, N.Y. "We'd like people who are still living to be able to receive them. I want to get my medal in my hand.
Source: Boston Globe
Aug 14, 2006
The Old State House in Boston -- a grand national landmark and symbol of revolutionary Massachusetts -- needs $3 million in repairs to prevent it from rotting and crumbling, according to the Bostonian Society, the historical preservation group that manages the building.Blue scaffolding and green mesh shroud the building's exterior, as the society mounts a campaign to refurbish the Old State House by next month. Lashed by Tropical Storm Wilma in October, the venerable, 293-ye
Source: Monsters and Critics News
Aug 14, 2006
For some cultural warriors attending a crucial conference in Canberra this week on the teaching of history in schools, it comes down to this: Did Captain James Cook 'discover' Australia in 1770 and claim it for the British crown or did he 'invade' and steal ancient Gondwana from its dark-skinned inhabitants?Prime Minister John Howard reckons the former interpretation is the truth and decries the later as a sorry part of a politically correct 'black armband' view of Australia
Source: China Daily
Aug 14, 2006
China has decided to team up with the United States and Britain on putting Iris Chang's international bestseller, "The Rape of Nanking", on the silver screen, sources with the Chinese investor in the movie revealed on Monday, on the eve of the 61st anniversary of Japan's surrender in the World War II."We hope we can make the film a classic on a massacre in the Second World War, just like the Shrindler's List about the miserable experience of Jewish people duri
Source: Deutsche Welle
Aug 14, 2006
Nobel prize winning author Günter Grass is facing a backlash from contemporaries and commentators after he admitted that he was drafted into Nazi Germany's notorious Waffen SS elite force during World War II.The 78-year-old Grass told the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that the stunning confession would feature in his memoir "Peeling Onions," which is due to appear in September. So far, it had only been known that the author, best known abroad for his 1959 no
Source: H-Net
Aug 14, 2006
H-Empire seeks to bring together scholars and others interested in sharing resources, research and questions concerning the origin, development, working and decline of empires, rather broadly defined across academic disciplines and professional interests, chronological time periods, and geographical regions. Topics could range from the politics of the early-modern Ottoman Empire to the literature of nineteenth-century British Inida, from questions of theory concerning postcolonialism to question
Source: Baltimore Sun
Aug 13, 2006
With its pillars and stone walls on a prominent hilltop in Ellicott City, the Patapsco Female Institute was once a 19th-century vision of a Greek temple: an academy to educate and refine young ladies and "future mothers."
But in southern Anne Arundel County, a humble, even homely one-room structure built several decades later was all the Nutwell School could offer its students.The myth of the little red schoolhouse has only a kernel of truth, say
Source: LAT
Aug 13, 2006
SAN MARINO - Reclaiming a neglected part of California's past, historians have unveiled an immense data bank that for the first time chronicles the lives and deaths of more than 100,000 American Indians in the Spanish missions of the 18th and 19th centuries.In an eight-year effort, researchers at the Huntington Library here used handwritten records of baptisms, marriages and deaths at 21 Catholic missions and two other sites from between 1769 and 1850 and created
Source: Wa Po
Aug 13, 2006
IT WAS THE PROSPECTOR WHO FOUND IT FIRST. Maybe 30 years ago, back when uranium was worth a lot, when people thought nuclear power was your friend. He was working a ridge up at Spring Creek, Wyo., looking for ore with a scintillometer, a modern-day Geiger counter. He was getting a lot of hits.
But there was something else. Big, off-color rocks in strange shapes were lying loose on the ground where the wind had blown the dirt off them. The prospector was a geologist. He knew what tho
Source: AP
Aug 13, 2006
NEW TOWN, N.D. (AP) — Tribal officials here will use a Lewis and Clark event to celebrate the life of the American Indian woman who guided the explorers from present-day North Dakota to the Pacific Northwest.
The event, titled "Reunion at the Home of Sakakawea" will be held Thursday through Sunday on the 4 Bears peninsula west of New Town. It is named for the woman Three Affiliated Tribes Chairman Tex Hall calls the most celebrated woman in American history.
&
Source: Wa Po
Aug 13, 2006
STANFORD, Calif. If it is really true that Google is going to digitize the roughly 9 million books in the libraries of Stanford University, then you can be sure that the folks who brought you the world's most ambitious search engine will come, in due time, for call number E169 D3.
Google workers will pull Lillian Dean's 1950 travelogue "This Is Our Land" -- the story of one family's "pleasant and soul-satisfying auto journey across our continent" -- from a shelf
Source: NYT
Aug 13, 2006
An influential federal panel of medical advisers has recommended that the government loosen regulations that severely limit the testing of pharmaceuticals on prison inmates, a practice that was all but stopped three decades ago after revelations of abuse.The proposed change includes provisions intended to prevent problems that plagued earlier programs. Nevertheless, it has dredged up a painful history of medical mistreatment and incited debate among prison rights advocates a
Source: Sam Tanenhaus in the NYT
Aug 13, 2006
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN’S DEFEAT in the Senate Democratic primary in Connecticut is a reminder that intramural contests are often the most bruising in our two-party system, and can leave the party involved vulnerable to attacks from the opposition.
Indeed, those who feared that Senator Lieberman’s defeat would be exploited by Republicans eager to portray his opponent, Ned Lamont, as a stand-in for an entire party “soft” on terrorism, were vindicated, almost instantly, in the days follow
Source: Wa Po
Aug 12, 2006
On one of the scariest days yet in the five-year battle with terrorists, President Bush prepared to make a speech to reassure the American people. But the White House press corps was 1,000 miles away in Texas.
Bush had left his ranch vacation and jetted north for a scheduled closed-door fundraiser. No press plane accompanied him. And so when news broke that Britain had broken up a major terrorist plot, the only ones there to convey the president's reaction were a handful of local r
Source: Brownsville Herald
Aug 12, 2006
Efforts to place a marker commemorating black soldiers who served at Fort Brown and other border outposts continue.
Although the fort’s service in the U.S-Mexican and Civil wars is well-documented, black soldiers’ four decades of service to the area are less so. They served there from 1865-1906.
The fort was the home of the 25th Infantry Regiment, a black unit that was stationed there during the Brownsville Raid in August 1906. Several months later, the Army tempo
Source: BBC
Aug 12, 2006
The ruins of an extensive mountain village have been found on the slopes of the Sugar Loaf, near Abergavenny.
Scouts working with the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers have spent a week hacking back brambles to reveal the 25-house village.
It is thought the Y Graig settlement in Glangrwyne, Powys, was abandoned in the 19th Century after its landlord increased villagers' rent.
Conservationists believe there may be more buildings to be uncovered.
Source: BBC
Aug 12, 2006
A crime that has remained undetected for 1,500 years has been uncovered by an archaeological team working at the village of Sedgeford, in Norfolk.
A human skeleton was found hidden in what would have been a Roman corn drier, and experts believe the person was deliberately put inside.
The six-week excavation on the former Roman farm will end this week.
The skeleton was found by a team from Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project (SHARP).
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Aug 12, 2006
Gunter Grass, the German-born winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature and author of such acclaimed novels as "Tin Drum," has admitted to joining the Waffen SS, a special force of the Nazi Party, as a 17-year-old.
Now 78 and preparing to publish his memoirs in September, Grass came forward with details of his past in an interview Friday with the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Having been a member of the SS had "oppressed" him,
Source: NYT
Aug 12, 2006
ANLONG VENG, Cambodia The site of Pol Pot’s cremation on this barren mountainside eight years ago is collapsing from neglect, its small fence broken, its low metal roof rusting and curling. But Pol Pot, who as the Khmer Rouge leader was one of the most brutal mass murderers of the last century, has become a sort of bookie for those who pray to him for numbers.
For many here in this former Khmer Rouge stronghold, he is the guardian spirit of the Dangrek Mountains, curing ailments an
Source: http://www.horshamonline.co.uk
Aug 11, 2006
Ruins of the previously undiscovered houses, in The Causeway, Horsham, have been buried in St Mary's Church Vicarage garden for over 600 years.
A team of historians from Archaeology South East found the small settlement during an investigative dig for developer Chalvington Barns, which is set to build three new homes on the site later this year.
Senior archaeologist Simon Stevens said the team had also unearthed two quarries that would have been used from as early as th
