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: Live Science
Mar 20, 2006
If the ancient Greeks sold kitschy postcards to tourists 2,000 years ago, they would have depicted much different views of the popular sites that visitors flock to today. Archaeologists say many of the stony ruins looked much different in their prime. Many were brightly painted in hues that have faded with time and, in some cases, with forced removal. The Parthenon in Athens was once covered in colorful splashes of paint, for example.
It has long been known that
Source: US News & World Report
Mar 20, 2006
March 12 to 18 is the second annual Sunshine Week, a nationwide initiative backed by the news media and watchdog groups to spark dialogue on the importance of open government. At a time of increasingly frequent battles over access to government records, U.S. News sat down with Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, to discuss his relentless push for greater freedom of information. For 15 years, Aftergood has
Source: Reuters
Mar 19, 2006
A court case in which two historians accuse Dan Brown of copying their work in his novel ``The Da Vinci Code'' is due to finish on Monday, ending one of the most closely watched copyright claims of recent years.Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh wrote ``The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail,'' a work of historical conjecture published in 1982, which shares some of the same themes as Brown's best-selling religious thriller.
Authors warn that should the historian
Source: NYT
Mar 19, 2006
Speeches by Supreme Court justices are usually sleepy civics lessons studded with references to the Federalist Papers and the majesty of the law. That seems to be changing.This month, former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor told an audience at Georgetown University that a judiciary afraid to stand up to elected officials can lead to dictatorship. Last month, speaking in South Africa, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the courts were a safeguard "against oppressive govern
Source: Toronto Star
Mar 18, 2006
The moment Pietro Casasanta came face to face with ancient Rome's most powerful gods, his breath cut short and his knees buckled.
"I almost had a heart attack," says Casasanta, one of Italy's most successful tombaroli, or tomb robbers. "I knew I had discovered something very beautiful and very valuable."Casasanta, his son and an associate working a small Caterpillar power shovel were digging in broad daylight at an archeological site east of
Source: cronaca.com
Mar 18, 2006
Over seven years a California archeologist analyzed 5,700 bird bones from a huge Indian shell/waste mound on the shores of San Francisco Bay. The bones laid out a 1900-year history of the Indians’ bird hunting. They’d hunted dozens of wild bird species to local extinction, starting with the biggest geese and working their way clear down to tiny sandpipers. . .
The early European settlers found birds in abundance only because Spanish explorers had inadvertently brought such epidemi
Source: Press Release -- Network of Concerned Historians (NCH)
Mar 18, 2006
Amnesty International reports once again about death threats against members of a Guatemalan forensic anthropology team. These teams can be perceived as "protohistorians": they excavate mass graves to find evidence for the genocide and other crimes against humanity committed during the civil war (1960-96) and are therefore of great concern to the historical profession. URGENT ACTION APPEAL
16 March 2006
UA 238/05 (originally issued
Source: CNN
Mar 17, 2006
OYSTER BAY, New York (AP) -- A group of mostly white seventh and eighth graders sleepily sauntered into their school library one recent morning, soon to get a surprise awakening about a part of their town's history they never knew existed.
"Did anybody in this room know there were 60 enslaved Africans, people, human beings, buried a mile from here?" Alan Singer, a professor at Hofstra University, asked them. "Those people have been erased from history. It is as if the
Source: cronaca.com
Mar 17, 2006
A £1 MILLION Egyptian statue has been removed from Bolton museum after staff discovered it was fake. The exhibit, known as the Amarna Princess, was bought for £440,000 two years ago by council bosses who claimed it was worth £1 million.
Detectives from the Metropolitan Police's Arts and Antiques unit have taken the statue off display and launched an investigation.
Other exhibits have also been removed from a London Museum.
Source: Press Release -- History Channel
Mar 17, 2006
Each of the 10 films has been created by a different award-winning documentary filmmaker or filmmaking team and spotlights an event that triggered a seismic shift in America's political, cultural or social landscape. Using a range of storytelling techniques including recreations and even animation as well as interviews, archival footage and historical artifacts, the series offers viewers a fresh perspective on well-known historical incidents while also shining a light on the tremendous impact of
Source: BBC
Mar 17, 2006
General Franco and his fellow generals began a revolt in 1936 against the democratically elected socialist Popular Front government of the Spanish Republic. It followed plans to strip the rich, including the Catholic Church, of its power and wealth and improve workers' rights. Fascism was on the rise in Europe and, in the Irish Free State, the sacked chief of police, Eoin O'Duffy, led the right-wing Blueshirt movement.Irish Republicans attacked their meetings, which frequent
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Mar 17, 2006
The Latin American Studies Association has announced that it intends to move its future congresses outside the United States, after the Bush administration again prevented all Cuban scholars from attending this year's meeting, which is now under way in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Decrying visa denials as a violation of academic freedom, the group's executive council said in a written statement that it had made the potentially costly decision unanimously.
Source: Oregonian
Mar 17, 2006
GRESHAM -- The effort to honor former Gresham Mayor Herbert H. Hughes with a monument is officially over.
The City Council killed the proposal Thursday after learning that Hughes' role in an anti-Japanese group during World War II was larger than first thought. "It just needs to go away," City Council President Shane Bemis said Thursday. "It would be difficult to honor someone with that background."
Hughes, who serv
Source: Seattle Times
Mar 17, 2006
Just three years ago, students at the Bellevue Community College bookstore would throw a pile of textbooks on the counter each quarter and wait for the verdict. The cost was usually $200 to $250.
Now the typical cost is $350 to $400 — an amount distressing to many students, said Kristen Connely, store manager.
So this summer, BCC will become one of a few colleges in the state — and in the country — to offer a formal textbook rental program.
Source: Chicago Sun-Times
Mar 17, 2006
Alabama lawmakers are considering pardoning hundreds, possibly thousands, of people who were arrested decades ago for violating Alabama's segregation laws.The idea of a mass pardon gained traction after the death last year of civil rights icon Rosa Parks, who had refused to give up her bus seat to a white man half a century earlier.
Even though the law allowing segregated seating on city buses was eventually overturned, Parks' conviction is still on the re
Source: AP
Mar 17, 2006
Although the 1955 killing helped galvanize the civil rights movement, those responsible for Emmett Till's death were never brought to justice. Now, more than 50 years after the black teen died, the FBI says too much time has passed to bring the case to federal court.In a long-awaited report Thursday, the FBI said that no federal charges will be filed in the brutal death of the 14-year-old Till, who was beaten and shot for purportedly whistling at a white woman.
Source: NYT
Mar 17, 2006
Anne Braden, a prominent civil rights activist who in the 1950's was indicted on charges of sedition in a famous case after she helped buy a house for a black family in an all-white suburb of Louisville, Ky., died March 6 in Louisville. She was 81.
Source: NYT
Mar 17, 2006
For nearly two decades, Kurds have gathered peacefully in this mountainous corner of northern Iraq to commemorate one of the blackest days in their history. It was here that Saddam Hussein's government launched a poison gas attack that killed more than 5,000 people on March 16, 1988.
So it came as a shock when hundreds of stone-throwing protesters took to the streets here Thursday on the anniversary, beating back government guards to storm and destroy a museum dedicated to the memor
Source: AP
Mar 16, 2006
A new book by Pope John Paul II's longtime personal physician recounts the pontiff's final days and minutes, saying doctors realized on a few hours before his death that further medical intervention would have been fruitless.John Paul died April 2 at 9:37 p.m. after slipping into a coma two hours earlier, Dr. Renato Buzzonetti writes in his book ''Let me go.'' The title refers to the pope's final words ''Let me go to the house of the Father,'' which he uttered in Polis
Source: National Coalition for History
Mar 16, 2006
On 8 March 2006, by a vote of 409 to 12, the U.S. House of Representatives granted approval to the Secretary of the Interior to designate President Bill Clinton's birthplace in Hope, Arkansas, as a National Historic Site thus making it a unit of the National Park System. The bill is somewhat unusual as it empowers the Secretary of the Interior to designate the home rather than have the site created through the more common process where Congress alone makes the designation.
