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: Chronicle of Higher Education
Apr 25, 2006
A top official at the National Archives and Records Administration said on Monday that the main purpose of the organization's controversial deal with the CIA was to make sure agents did not mishandle documents as they reviewed them for possible reclassification.
Last week the National Archives acknowledged that, soon after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it struck a secret, classified agreement with the Central Intelligence Agency spelling out how the two federal agenc
Source: WLOX
Apr 25, 2006
These are the graves of the men who fought under the confederacy during the Civil War, risking their lives for each state to be able to govern itself.
And these are the veterans hundreds of people, which included many of their descendants, honored Saturday afternoon.
"Well over a million Americans were casualties of that conflict. The South was totally destroyed in the process. Just as the ideals and virtues, families and fortunes were laid upon the altar of indepe
Source: Clarion Ledger
Apr 25, 2006
The former home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina, should be rebuilt as quickly as possible, say many Civil War buffs as well as officials at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
But civil rights groups and at least one congressional budget hawk decry congressional plans to provide money for rebuilding Beauvoir, the majestic house in Biloxi built in the 1850s that served as Davis' retirement home after the Civil War. Damage to th
Source: Columbus Dispatch
Apr 25, 2006
Are the footprints of surprisingly ancient Americans preserved in 40,000-year-old volcanic ash in southern Mexico? In December, an article in the journal Science cast a cloud of doubt over that claim.
The authors, Michael Waters and Paul Renne, argue that the ash dated to 1.3 million years ago, much too old for humans on this continent, and that the so-called footprints were nothing more than marks made by the tools of modern workers quarrying the stone with crowbars.
Source: fredericknewspost.com
Apr 25, 2006
Chance Enterprises is a long way from No Casino Gettysburg. Instead of a phone, laptop and fax machine in the living room of a rustic farmhouse, Chance Enterprises has lined up a collegiate economic study, public relations executives, lawyers, architects and the backing of financial giant Morgan Stanley.
Chance Enterprises is the parent company of Crossroads Gaming Resort and Spa. Crossroads is a proposed $300 million, 3,000-slot casino at the U.S. 15-U.S. 30 intersection at Gettysb
Source: Wa Po
Apr 25, 2006
For emotional wallop, there are few rivals to the windswept, grassy field outside of Shanksville, Pa., where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001.
But for three years, that field has made do with a makeshift monument while one member of Congress, Rep. Charles H. Taylor (R-N.C.), has blocked a $10 million request to buy the land for a permanent memorial to the 40 passengers and crew members who overpowered hijackers bent on crashing their jet into the Capitol or the Wh
Source: LA Times
Apr 25, 2006
A lawsuit questions how Massachusetts schools portray the Armenian tragedy. But for victims on the 91st anniversary, there can be no doubt.She was only 3 when her family fled their Turkish homeland 91 years ago. Alice Shnorhokian and her brother were too small to walk the long road to safety in the Syrian desert, so their parents strapped them in boxes on the sides of a donkey that carried the family possessions.
On the eve of what came to be called the Armenian
Source: Jewish United Fund
Apr 25, 2006
Poland has long wanted its name not to be used in reference to concentration camps that existed on Polish soil during World War II. Now Poland has made an official request to change Auschwitz's name -- to mixed reviews. The Polish government made the request last month to change the name of the site from ``Auschwitz Death Camp" to ``former Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp" to UNESCO, the U.N. cultural organization since the site of the death camp is a U.N.
Source: News Release -- Society of American Historians
Apr 25, 2006
On April 25, 2006, the Society of American Historians, Inc. passed the following resolution suspending Smithsonian Books as a publisher-member of the SAH:
The SAH has noted with mounting concern the Smithsonian Institution’s increasingly commercial approach to its mission.
Earlier this year Smithsonian Books withdrew from publication hundreds of works of history or transferred publication rights to trade presses, often with no consultation with the authors.
Now S
Source: NYT
Apr 25, 2006
Native Canadian protests spread across southern Ontario on Friday over a land dispute dating back to the Revolution, with Mohawks stopping at least a dozen freight trains and interrupting passenger train service between Montreal and Toronto.
There were no reported arrests or injuries. The demonstrations began at the end of February, when Mohawks of the Six Nations, a confederacy of Native groups, occupied a road outside Caledonia, an Ontario farming
Source: New-York Historical Society
Apr 25, 2006
The SteepleChase Films production The New-York Historical Society: A Celebrationcan now be viewed at the New-York Historical Society's new Media Center. This compelling and visually engaging production is a tribute to the first 200 years of the New-York Historical Society as well as a look toward the future and the Society's continued importance and relevance as one of the premier cultural and educational resources in the nation. Directed by renowned documentary
Source: AP
Apr 25, 2006
Jane Jacobs, an author and community activist of singular influence whose classic "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" transformed ideas about urban planning, died Tuesday, her publisher said. Jacobs, a longtime resident of Toronto, was 89.
Jacobs died in her sleep Tuesday morning at a Toronto hospital, which she entered a few days ago, according to Random House publicist Sally Marvin. Jacobs' son, James, was with her at the time. The author, who would have turne
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Apr 25, 2006
As Chinese leaders fret over rising peasant protests, political instability, and a decay of traditional values, the Communist Party is experimenting with multiple new messages - designed to capture the hearts and minds of ordinary people.
"It is a very intelligent strategy," says a Western historian here. "If people are nostalgic for Mao [Zedong] and old moral values, they've got Lei Feng [a model soldier lauded for selfless service]. For those who say China has lost
Source: AP
Apr 24, 2006
BENTON, Ill.
Just outside town, Bob Rea stands on a muddy, scrubby swath of land and calls it hallowed -- the place where 119 coal miners, in the flash of a blast hundreds of feet below him, lost their lives in a 1951 disaster.
The insurance man, bent on turning the 10-acre patch into a tourist-drawing memorial and museum, knows he has his work cut out for him. The land already is a graveyard -- one of rusty hulks of junk cars, discarded furniture and shattered glass.
Source: Guardian
Apr 24, 2006
Deep in the dark heart of a passage grave on Anglesey, archaeologists have discovered a decorated slab carved 4,500 years ago for the dead and their guardians, missed when the tomb was originally excavated over half a century ago.
The newly revealed carving at Barclodiad y Gawres, a chevron design pecked into the rock with a stone chisel, brings to six the number of decorated slabs with lozenges, cupmarks, concentric circles and spirals in a tomb already regarded as one of the most specta
Source: Yahoo
Apr 24, 2006
A team of scientists from Tennessee, including experts from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, are looking at the mystery of the sinking of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship.
The group, which also includes scientists from the University of Tennessee and the Y12 National Security Complex, was here Monday examining the sub.
The visit is the result of the university's relationship with best-selling crime author Patrici
Source: Wa Po
Apr 24, 2006
PATERSON, N.J. -- Situated in the heart of one of the Garden State's grittiest cities, the Great Falls National Historic Landmark District embodies an odd mix of industrial decay and roaring natural beauty. Water rushes down 70-foot cliffs into the polluted Passaic River below, just yards away from a shuttered red-brick plant with streaked, aging windows.
One of America's founding fathers once believed Paterson would be the model of how Americans could build a manufacturing center t
Source: NYT
Apr 24, 2006
In the late 1960's, an anguished President Lyndon B. Johnson sought advice from a respected elder statesman on the Vietnam quagmire. In part because of the private counsel of former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, a onetime hawk turned skeptic on the war, Johnson shifted course in 1968, halting the bombing of North Vietnam and announcing that he would not run for re-election.The analogy is far from perfect, but Republicans and Democrats are seeing parallels between th
Source: NYT
Apr 24, 2006
Since this city was not built in a day, it is perhaps unsurprising that a plan to house Caesar Augustus's Ara Pacis, or altar of peace, in a new museum has taken 10 years to be realized. Romans, after all, feel possessive about their city. And, in this case, the idea of inviting Richard Meier to design a dazzling white modernist building for Rome's historic center was the stuff of heated debate — and multiple delays.Rome's mayor, Walter Veltroni, went ahead with its sc
Source: NBC Nightly News
Apr 24, 2006
Tonight we close with a television exclusive. You're about to see, for the first time, a piece of American history that's been missing since that January day in 1961 that became famous for the words, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
The poet Robert Frost played a big role in that sparkling Inauguration Day, but until now, the history of that day.. has been incomplete.“I only wish that I’d bee
