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: History Today
May 4, 2006
Friends and family of Cruz Hernandez, believed to be the oldest person in the world, gathered together yesterday to celebrate her 128th birthday. The festivities were attended by more than 200 people some of whom came dressed as figures from Salvadoran mythology. According to the National Birth Registry in El Salvador, Hernandez was born on May 3rd 1878. However, although officials sent her documents and records to the Guinness World Records organisation last year, they are still waiting to hear
Source: NYT
May 4, 2006
Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi acknowledges that Clyde
Kennard suffered a grievous wrong at the hands of state
officials more than 45 years ago. But he says he will not
grant a posthumous pardon to Mr. Kennard, a black man who was
falsely imprisoned after trying to desegregate a Mississippi
college.
Mr. Kennard moved home to Hattiesburg, Miss., after seven
years in the Army in Germany and Korea and three years as an
undergraduate at the University of Chicago. He wanted to
finish
Source: Bloomberg
May 4, 2006
France and Germany plan to unveil a new common history book for high-school students, going from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the French and Dutch rejection of the European Constitution last year. French publisher Nathan released today the French version of the manual's first volume, realizing a project agreed on in 2003 by former German Chancelor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac.
The manual, the first such project, was unveile
Source: NYT
May 4, 2006
In their demonstrations across the country, some Hispanic immigrants have compared the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s struggle to their own, singing "We Shall Overcome" and declaring a new civil rights movement to win citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.
Civil rights stalwarts like the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia; Julian Bond and the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery have hailed the recent protests as the natural progression of the
Source: Ryan Lizza in the New Republic
May 4, 2006
It's hard to make out, because the video is fuzzy. The copy I obtained was originally recorded off a television using VHS in 1993 and then transferred to a second tape, further degrading the quality. But, once you know what it is, it makes sense. It sits folded on a bookcase of trophies and bric-a-brac behind George Allen, who is seated at a desk in his home office. It's right there next to the fax machine. You can see the red field. You can make out the diagonal blue bar. And you can see what l
Source: Rocky Mountain News
May 4, 2006
TOWAOC - Though wildfires burned more than half of Mesa Verde National Park in the past decade, most of its famed cliff dwellings escaped serious damage, according to the latest results from the first comprehensive survey of those sites.
The southwestern Colorado park, near Cortez, is visited by about 500,000 people each year. Tourists are drawn mainly to the multistory masonry structures built in shady recesses, called alcoves, beneath overhanging sandstone cliffs.
Only a
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
May 3, 2006
Three decades of war have devastated Afghanistan's cultural heritage. Warlords bombed and pilfered the national museum in the early 1990s. Looters plowed archaeological sites into moonscapes. And the Taliban committed the most monstrous act by demolishing two colossal ancient Buddhas carved into the cliffs in the Bamiyan valley.
The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, still busy fighting Islamic extremists more than four years after the Taliban were expelled, has devoted scant resour
Source: BBC
May 3, 2006
Many archaeologists believe they are a vital part of their work, while some dismiss them as mere treasure hunters. Now a new code of conduct is recognising the role of metal detector enthusiasts in mapping the UK's history.
Source: Toledo, Ohio Blade
May 3, 2006
A group of Toledo peace activists will take part tomorrow in ceremonies marking the 36th anniversary of the 1970 shootings at Kent State University.
Members of the Northwest Ohio Peace Coalition, which initially was formed to oppose the blanket bombing of Afghanistan, were to take about 2,700 tombstones to Kent, Ohio, and display them during tomorrow’s events.
The tombstones are to be placed on the Kent State soccer field where four students protesting the Vietnam War w
Source: NYT
May 3, 2006
Elma Gardner Farnsworth, who helped her husband, Philo T. Farnsworth, develop television and was among the first people whose images were transmitted on TV, died Thursday in Bountiful, Utah. She was 98.Her death was reported by Mary Rippley of the Avalon Care Center, where Ms. Farnsworth lived.
The Farnsworths married in 1926, and Ms. Farnsworth worked by her husband's side, then fought for decades to assure his place in history after his death in 1971.
Source: allafrica.com
May 3, 2006
On Sunday April 16, a gigantic pot was found in Kano city. It is about 129cm in height, 99cm in diameter, with a depth of 139cm, and the size of the flip is 50cm. It is estimated to have been buried over one thousand years ago. It was discovered in Gwammaja quarters of the Dala local government in Kano state. Charcoal, bones, suspected to belong to that of the cat family, clay and pot sherds were found in the pot, when it was excavated, and about 20 people gathered to remove it from the hole in
Source: Thanh Nien
May 3, 2006
Hunters and collectors are raiding the Lang Vac archaeological site in the central province of Nghe An on the rumor that a valuable bronze statue found there sold for millions of dong.
Over the past two months, hundreds of people in Nghia Hoa commune, Nghia Dan district made their way to Dong Hieu rubber tree plantation located in Lang Vac (Vac Village) to hunt for antiques.
The wave of collectors began after a rumor that a person found a pair of ancient elephant statu
Source: Yahoo News
May 3, 2006
Nearly seven dozen Montana residents convicted of sedition during World War I are finally getting official pardons from the governor, years after their deaths.In a ceremony Wednesday afternoon, Gov. Brian Schweitzer, the grandson of German-Russian immigrants, planned to sign posthumous pardons for 78 men and women convicted in 1918 and 1919 for criticizing the U.S. government or its war effort.
Relatives of some of those being pardoned were expected to attend.
Source: AP
May 2, 2006
Thirty-three percent of respondents couldn't pinpoint Louisiana on a map.
Fewer than three in 10 think it important to know the locations of countries in the news and just 14 percent believe speaking another language is a necessary skill.
Two-thirds didn't know that the earthquake that killed 70,000 people in October 2005 occurred in Pakistan.
Six in 10 could not find Iraq on a map of the Middle East.After more than three ye
Source: NYT
May 2, 2006
Inscribed on Sumerian clay tablets more than 4,000 years ago, the Code of Ur-Nammu may be the earliest known recorded set of laws in the world: dozens of rules written in cuneiform about commerce and taxes, family law and inheritance.
But many scholars won't go near the one largely intact version of the code, and the top American journal of cuneiform research won't publish articles about it. The reason? The tablet was bought by a private Norwegian collector on the open market and do
Source: BBC
May 2, 2006
It's been called the project of the century: a mission to connect two continents with a $2.6bn rail-tunnel running deep beneath the Bosphorus Straits.
The idea of linking the two sides of Istanbul underwater was first dreamt of by Sultan Abdul Mecit 150 years ago.
Now that Ottoman dream is finally being realised.
But the modern version of that vision has hit a historical stumbling block.
Istanbul archaeologists have uncovered a 4th-Century port a
Source: Piottsburgh Post-Gazette
May 2, 2006
George Westinghouse IV greeted archaeologist Christine Davis with a handshake and a question: "Did you find the grave?"A startled look flashed over Davis' face. Last fall, she and her crew had done exploratory excavations on his great-grandfather's Point Breeze estate -- now Westinghouse Park -- and found a tantalizing array of artifacts, but no tombstones.
"What grave?" she ventured.
"Thomas Edison is buried in
Source: Reuters
May 2, 2006
SALAMINA, Greece (Reuters) - On a deserted green hill above the Aegean Sea, archeologists have unearthed what may be the palace of Ajax, one of the greatest heroes in Greek mythology.
From a rocky outcrop among the tranquil ruins, it is easy to imagine the warrior-king of Homer's Iliad setting sail from the island for Troy over 3,300 years ago, as crowds lined the pine-covered slopes to wave farewell.
The idyllic location on Salamina island perfectly matches historica
Source: Wilson Quarterly
May 1, 2006
Politicians in the image-conscious Nationalist government that ruled China from 1911 to 1949 were infuriated by The Good Earth’s depiction of starving peasants, concubines, and banditry. When MGM began filming the movie version in China in 1934, government officials were determined to prevent the portrayal of anything they considered embarrassing. [Later, communists objected because she was a well-known anti-communist.]
As China has grown stronger and more confident during the past
Source: Robert Schneider in the AHA Perspectives (May 2006)
May 1, 2006
We at the American Historical Review have decided on a change of policy on reviewing films; our intention is to replace individual film reviews with extended review essays on films of historical interest. What is the source of this change? What kinds of review essays are we seeking?
The American Historical Review has been reviewing films of historical interest on a regular basis since 1988. An AHR Forum in the December issue of that year, introduced by Robert A. Rosenstone, examined
