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: IHT
May 31, 2006
HANOI A lost wartime diary by a female doctor that tells of love, loneliness and death on the Ho Chi Minh Trail has become a best seller in Vietnam, bringing the war alive for a new generation of readers.
The journey of the diary itself has given it a special postwar symbolism for people here. It was returned to her family just last year by a former American soldier who recovered it after she died on the battlefield in 1970.
The writer, Dr. Dang Thuy Tram, was killed at
Source: Guardian
May 31, 2006
Archaeologists fear 1,000 years of history may be shovelled into skips as time runs out on a key site in London. Harvey Sheldon, an officer of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, called the situation at the church of St George the Martyr, in Southwark, where substantial evidence of Roman buildings may be destroyed without being recorded, "a disgrace". Yesterday he made a last ditch appeal to church authorities to give more time for excavation, before heavy machinery moves
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
May 31, 2006
Four officials of a Connecticut library organization stepped forward on Tuesday to describe what they said was a harrowing experience -- receiving a secret order from the federal government that required them to turn over library patrons' records without telling anyone.
In a meeting with reporters at a news conference here, the four officials confirmed that it was their organization, Library Connection Inc., of Windsor, that was the target of the order, which was issued under expan
Source: BBC
May 31, 2006
The most important sea engagement of World War One - the Battle of Jutland - is being commemorated 90 years on. The Imperial War Museum is holding an exhibition on HMS Belfast, while wreaths have been laid at the scene of the confrontation, off Denmark's coast.
One of the last survivors, 109-year-old Henry Allingham, from Eastbourne, East Sussex, was at the exhibition's launch.
Some 8,648 British and German sailors lost their lives in one day's fighting on 31 May into
Source: The Independent
May 31, 2006
The thirteenth-century warlord Genghis Khan is best known as one of history's most bloodthirsty rulers, and at first glance appears an unlikely subject for a Jesus Christ Superstar-type rock opera. But in his native Mongolia, a rock opera has opened that gives the medieval empire builder the Genghis Khan Superstar treatment, claiming he had a softer, more appealing side which was overlooked."He was a good husband, a good son, and a good friend and I wanted to show
Source: ABC
May 31, 2006
The globe Adolf Hitler gazed upon while contemplating world domination is in remarkably good condition but for one blemish the bullet hole directly through Berlin, inflicted by a Soviet soldier after the Nazi dictator's defeat in 1945. The oversized orb is just one highlight of the more than 8,000 artifacts in the German Historical Museum's new permanent display on the country's 2,000-year history, which seeks to help Germans rediscover their identity.
Wi
Source: The Times (London)
May 31, 2006
World Cup soccer fans trooping into the Olympic Stadium in Berlin will be confronted with some of the most powerful ghosts of the Nazi era: broad-shouldered statues sculpted at the behest of Adolf Hitler to celebrate the Aryan master race.
Now, leading Jewish activists are calling for the bronze statues to be draped in canvas, or removed entirely, to shield fans from what they regard as Nazi propaganda.Lea Rosh, who led the campaign to build a Holocaust me
Source: Chicago Tribune
May 31, 2006
South Korea has requested more information from the U.S. government about a 1950 letter in which the U.S. ambassador to Seoul told the State Department that American soldiers would shoot refugees approaching their lines.The letter was dated the day of the U.S. Army's mass killing of South Korean refugees at No Gun Ri during the 1950-53 Korean War. It is the strongest indication yet that such a policy existed for all U.S. forces in Korea, and the first evidence that the
Source: aljazeera.net
May 30, 2006
Three years after the Baghdad Museum was looted, thousands of archaeological artefacts have still not been accounted for, the museum remains closed and all excavation and research in Iraq has ground to a halt.Dr Lamia Al-Gailani-Werr, an Iraqi archaeologist and member of the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and former adviser to the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council, says the destruction of Iraq's heritage is leaving a bitter legacy for future generati
Source: BBC
May 30, 2006
Italian archaeologists digging in the Roman Forum have found a well-preserved skeleton of a woman who lived 3,000 years ago.
The astonishing fact about this discovery is that it dates back to at least 300 years before the traditional date of the founding of Rome, 753 BC.
It has long been known that Bronze Age people were living on the site where the ancient Romans founded their city.
But few traces of their society have ever been brought to light.
Source: NBC Nightly News (video)
May 30, 2006
It was a story in Newsweek 2 decades ago that sparked fear and fury among American women. Wait until 40 and you're more likely to get killed by a terrorist than to get married.
Source: Wa Po
May 30, 2006
Sixty-six years ago, Hiram Bingham IV, a blue-blood American diplomat in France, defied U.S. policy by helping Jews escape the Nazis in the early years of World War II.
Bingham's actions cost him his Foreign Service career but won him the undying gratitude of the more than 2,000 refugees he helped save by issuing them travel visas and false passports, and even at times sheltering them in his home. Only in recent years has his heroism been officially recognized by his own country.
Source: AP
May 30, 2006
The FBI is wrapping up its two-week search of a suburban Detroit horse farm after finding no trace of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa's remains, a local prosecutor said Tuesday.
Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca told The Associated Press he was informed by Bloomfield Township police that the search was ending without any remains found at the Hidden Dreams Farm in Milford Township.
Source: NYT
May 30, 2006
The German Historical Museum in Berlin is to open its first permanent exhibition, "German History and Testimonials From Two Millennia," on June 3. About 8,000 objects will testify to 2,000 years of German politics, struggles and developments in the context of European history. The museum director, Hans Ottomeyer, in charge of the project since 2000, said in a recent interview with the news magazine Der Spiegel that the exhibition is "like an open book that wants to show all chapte
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
May 30, 2006
Picking beets, cherries and cotton and shoveling manure on farms across the United States as a Mexican guest worker in the 1940s and 1950s, Cecilio Santillana was glad to earn a few dollars a day.
He didn't complain about living in horse stalls without bathrooms or doing stoop work for 12 hours a day without breaks for fear he would be sent back to Chihuahua and lose the steady work that allowed him to support his family in Mexico.
But the 78-year-old San Jose man opp
Source: NYT
May 30, 2006
By some reckonings, the death of two journalists working for CBS News on Monday firmly secured the Iraq war as the deadliest conflict for reporters in modern times.
Since the start of the war in 2003, 71 journalists have been killed in Iraq, a figure that does not even include the more than two dozen members of news media support staff who have also died, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. That number is more than the 63 killed in Vietnam, the 17 killed in Korea, an
Source: Boston Globe
May 30, 2006
A cane rested in his lap and a baseball cap cast a shadow over a frown as World War I veteran Antonio Pierro recalled American artillery blasting away in the forest and enemy shells screaming overhead.``During the war everything was action," said Pierro, 110 years old, who lives in Swampscott with his brother and a nephew. ``You're at the front line, you duck the shells coming your way. It was no fun being out at the front lines, being shot at. You gotta duc
Source: News8
May 30, 2006
Centuries ago, prehistoric Native Americans built imposing mounds and domelike houses across East Texas.
One of those sites is now the Caddoan Mounds State Historic Park where scientists are uncovering the past. Researchers have found a new way to explore beneath the earth without lifting a shovel.
"Culturally this is an important site. It's important to the people of Texas and it’s important interpreting American culture … The more we know about these folks, the b
Source: Boston Globe
May 30, 2006
To the remorseless beat of a deerskin drum, three Native Americans in tribal regalia chanted a list of battles and wars their ancestors had fought since the ``Praying Indians" settled here in the 1650s.In prayers and song, the tribe paid homage to warriors whose sacrifice had been all but forgotten -- Native Americans who converted to Christianity and were believed to have fought with the Colonists during the Revolutionary War.
On Main Streets a
Source: BBC
May 30, 2006
The anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta has been chosen as the best date to celebrate Britishness.
The charter imposed on King John on 15 June 1215 by rebel barons limited the power of the monarch and gave ordinary people rights under common law.
Its anniversary was picked by 27% of the 5,002 people polled by BBC History magazine, with VE Day, 8 May, taking 21%, and D-Day, 6 June, attracting 14%.
