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: BBC
May 22, 2006
The mysterious "London stone" is going to be rescued from a building due to be demolished. Does it mean that London is going to be saved from an ancient legend?
You couldn't get much less of a romantic setting for an historic monument. It's in a kerbside cage, stuck on the wall of a sports shop in Cannon Street due for demolition.
But this is the neglected setting of the London Stone - an ancient and mysterious object mentioned by Shakespeare, William Blake a
Source: Common Dreams
May 22, 2006
Prosecution of a politically-connected developer who destroyed irreplaceable Confederate breastworks in a national park has been hampered by the intervention of a powerful U.S. Senator and the Deputy Director of the Park Service who bought a condominium in the development, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The case was finally settled, more than four years after the violation, for far less than had been originally assessed a
Source: AP
May 22, 2006
A 15-year-old girl led a small protest march Monday over her high school's ban on Confederate flag clothing, which she is also challenging in court.
Candice Hardwick walked with about a dozen people, about half of them family members and some wearing Confederate T-shirts, a few blocks to Latta High School. Hardwick wore a Confederate belt buckle and button and had the Confederate flag on her cell phone cover. She removed those items before entering the school, where she is a sophomo
Source: SAFE
May 22, 2006
Research study to understand the public's attitudes toward ancient objects and the shared past of humankind. This survey is conducted by SAFE/Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE), a non-profit organization that raises public awareness about issues related to cultural heritage.
Source: China Daily
May 22, 2006
Chinese and French archaeologists claim to have discovered the ruins of an ancient city which disappeared in the desert in Northwest China more than 2,200 years ago.
The ancient city, shaped like a peach, is located in the center of the Taklimakan Desert, the second largest shifting desert in the world, covering a total area of 337,600 square kilometers, in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
The perimeter of the city walls is 995 meters, with the height ranging fro
Source: Reuters
May 22, 2006
The Egyptian authorities have given the go ahead for the underwater exploration of what appears to be a Roman city submerged in the Mediterranean, Egypt's top archaeologist said on Monday.
Zahi Hawass said in a statement that an excavation team had found the ruins of the Roman city 35 km (20 miles) east of the Suez Canal on Egypt's north coast.
Archaeologists had found buildings, bathrooms, ruins of a Roman fortress, ancient coins, bronze vases and pieces of pottery th
Source: BBC
May 22, 2006
Richard McIlkenny, one of the Birmingham Six wrongly imprisoned for IRA bombings in the 1970s has died in a Dublin hospital. Born in Belfast, Mr McIlkenny, who was aged 73, was released 15 years ago. Six Irishmen resident in Birmingham were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975 for pub bombings in the city which killed 21 people. They served 16 years.
Despite pleas that the confessions had been obtained through beatings, they were not freed until M
Source: Houston Chronicle
May 22, 2006
Saying that more role models could help alleviate the social estrangement and high suicide rates of gay students, the California Senate voted last week to teach the historical contributions of gays in the U.S.If approved by the state Assembly and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the measure, the first of its kind nationwide, could once again stake out California in the vanguard on gay civil rights.California's Legislature last year became the first to authorize gay marriage, but Schwarzenegger vetoed the measure. He hasn't taken a public position on the textbook bill.Books meeting the bill's requirements would be incorporated into California classes in 2012. Social science courses would include "age-appropriate study" of the "role and contributions" that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have made to the "economic political and social development" of California and the U.S.Schools are already required to teach the historical and social roles of blacks, women, American Indians, Hispanics, Asians and other ethnic groups.
Source: The Daily Telegraph
May 22, 2006
Archaeologists exploring one of Rome's oldest catacombs are baffled by neat piles of more than 1,000 skeletons dressed in elegant togas.
The macabre find emerged as teams of historians slowly picked their way through the complex network of underground burial chambers, which stretch for miles under the city.
They say the tomb, which has been dated to the first century AD, is the first known example of a "mass burial''. The archaeologists are unable to explain why so
Source: Christian Science Monitor
May 22, 2006
The Luding Bridge battle is the most famous moment in the Long March, itself the defining legend of modern China. The Red Army is hotly pursued in 1935. Soldiers hoof it 24/7 for 140 miles. They must cross the Dadu River, or be wiped out! But a 300-year-old chain-suspension bridge is closely guarded. So a suicide squad shimmies over the chains, under machine-gun fire, and wipes out the dreaded Nationalist enemy. The Red Army crosses! The China of Mao is saved!
Mao told the story to
Source: blog4history
May 21, 2006
Still looking for a way to go down in history? You could buy your way in through the purchase of a Civil War-era fort up for auction on eBay.
The stone Civil War-era Fort Montgomery, built in 1844, is up for auction on eBay. Set on Lake Champlain in Northern New York, adjacent to the border with Canada, it was manned during the Civil War, but didn?t see any action, according to the Associated Press. The fort is in need of restoration and the auction also includes 365 acres of land,
Source: NYT
May 21, 2006
As a general rule, it can be an unpleasant career move for a Democrat to run for president, streak to primary victories, win his party's nomination and, ultimately, fall short. For his troubles, he will automatically be consigned by large sectors of his party to a distinctive Democratic pariah status — his campaign ridiculed, second-guessed and I-told-you-so'd endlessly by insiders and operatives who bemoan how "winnable" his election was and "unlikable" his personality is.
Source: NYT
May 21, 2006
Nearly every immigrant group has been caught at that crossroads for a time, wanted for work but unwelcome as citizens, especially when the economy slumps. But Mexicans have been summoned and sent back in cycles for four generations, repeatedly losing the ground they had gained.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
May 20, 2006
The graduating class at commencement ceremonies at the University of San Francisco stood and gave an ovation Friday -- long, sustained applause and cheers -- to 11 old men who played football a lifetime ago.
They were members of USF's 1951 team -- distinguished in their time because they never lost a game they played, and honored by the class of 2006 for a game they never played. The team was the school's best ever, but it never went to a bowl game,
Source: Pantagraph
May 20, 2006
BLOOMINGTON -- Every school kid can recite lines from Abraham Lincoln’s most famous speeches: “Four score and seven years ago …”; “A house divided against itself cannot stand …”; “With malice toward none and charity for all …”
But no one can quote with certainty from a speech Lincoln gave in Bloomington 150 years ago this month. The date was May 29, which this year falls on Memorial Day, when the speech will be commemorated with an afternoon program.
In what is known as
Source: CNN
May 20, 2006
Margaret E. Wagner, a senior writer and editor at the Library of Congress, is author of the new volume, "The American Civil War: 365 Days." It has nearly 500 photographs, lithograph, paintings, drawings and cartoons from the hundreds of thousands in the library's keeping.
Many are rarely seen and some may never have been published, Wagner said.5-20-06
Source: BBC
May 20, 2006
Next month the British army will make its biggest deployment in southern Afghanistan in more than a century.
Their ancestors packed up and left southern Afghanistan in 1881 after two disastrous wars.
The Afghan militants today don't outwardly look much different from their forefathers who picked off the British troops struggling down the snowbound passes after the first Anglo-Afghan war.
But today's British soldier is almost unrecognisable. Their leaders
Source: Press Release -- Gilder Lehrman
May 19, 2006
MOUNT VERNON, Va. – The second annual George Washington Book Prize will be awarded at Mount Vernon on May 23 at 6:30 p.m. to the author of the most important book on the founding era published in 2005. Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City, and the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association collaborated in 2005 to create the prize, awarded in its inaugural year to Ron Chernow for Alexander Hamilton. The black-tie event will celebrate
Source: Lee Formwalt in the OAH Newsletter
May 19, 2006
Back in the fall of 2004, the OAH Executive Board voted to require that all future hotel contracts include "labor disputes" in its escape clause [to avoid the situation faced in San Francsico in 2005]. Until that point, our contracts provided that disruptions caused by strikes would annul a hotel contract, but in San Francisco we faced a lockout and then a boycott, neither of them a full-fledged strike. "Labor disputes" in future contract language would allow us to get out of
Source: Scripps-Howard
May 19, 2006
What if the Japanese battleships got past the big guns that were the key coastal defenses around San Francisco and the Golden Gate? What then? The U.S. Army had an answer. On the night of Dec. 7, the Army assigned every available soldier at the Presidio of San Francisco to get to work digging slit trenches and field fortifications to stop a Japanese invasion.Trenches were dug on the bluffs above the Golden Gate. Machine guns were sited to cover Baker Beach on the western edg
