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: Washington Times
Feb 11, 2006
Former President Jimmy Carter, who publicly rebuked President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program this week during the funeral of Coretta Scott King and at a campaign event, used similar surveillance against suspected spies. "Under the Bush administration, there's been a disgraceful and illegal decision -- we're not going to the let the judges or the Congress or anyone else know that we're spying on the American people," Mr. Carter said Monday in Nevada
Source: CBS
Feb 11, 2006
A red-faced auction house was forced to withdraw a letter it believed was written and signed by the late President Ronald Reagan while he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease after it discovered it was a forgery. The autographed letter was supposed to be auctioned off this month, but Bill Panagopulos, president of Alexander Autographs in Greenwich, Conn., told CBSNews.com the letter was withdrawn after the forger came forward and admitted his handiwork.
Source: Washington Times
Feb 11, 2006
The Governor's Palace at Colonial Williamsburg is set to reopen Friday, after having been closed for about a month for its first significant reinterpretation in a quarter-century. The makeover is tied to the upcoming "Revolutionary City" program.
Beginning March 20, the palace and other historic area sites, as well as Colonial Williamsburg's costumed interpreters, will bring to life the period from 1774 to 1781.
At the palace, rooms ar
Source: History Today
Feb 10, 2006
Around 85% of US Civil War soldiers suffered from ill health after the conflict, a University of California study has discovered. The researchers examined 15,000 records in the Archives of General Psychiatry and found heart, stomach and mental health problems affected the lives of combatants after the 1861-1865 war. Poor health was likely to affect soldiers under 17 in 93% of cases compared with those aged over 31 years. Prisoners-of-war and those in high-risk regiments also
Source: BBC News
Feb 10, 2006
Divers have salvaged a 2m (6ft) bronze imperial eagle from the German World War II battleship Graf Spee that was scuttled in the River Plate. Three divers had to loosen 145 bolts securing the 300kg (661lb) eagle to the stern of the craft in the muddy waters off Uruguay's capital, Montevideo.
"The eagle is really impressive... it's all virtually intact," said team leader Hector Bado.
The ship was scuttled in December 1939 to stop it falli
Source: CNN
Feb 10, 2006
An Italian judge has dismissed an atheist's petition that a small-town priest should stand trial for asserting that Jesus Christ existed, both sides said on Friday.Luigi Cascioli, a 72-year-old retired agronomist, had accused the Rev. Enrico Righi of violating two laws with the assertion, which he called a deceptive fable propagated by the Roman Catholic Church.
"The Rev. Righi is very satisfied and moved," Righi's attorney, Severo Bruno, said. &
Source: CNN
Feb 10, 2006
The first tomb to be discovered in the Valley of the Kings since King Tut's in 1922 contains five sarcophagi with mummies, breaking the nearly centurylong belief that there's nothing more to find in the valley where some of Egypt's greatest pharaohs were buried.The tomb's spare appearance suggests it was not dug for a pharaoh, said American archaeologist Kent Weeks, who was not involved in the University of Memphis team's find but has seen photographs of the site. &quo
Source: National Geographic News
Feb 10, 2006
It's not in the most glamorous location, but British archaeologists are still excited about the remains of a 500-year-old royal chapel that have been discovered under a parking lot in the Greenwich district of south London. Generations of British monarchs worshipped at the lost chapel, including Henry VIII, the Tudor king who had six wives.
The ancient tiled floor emerged by chance when a bulldozer's bucket scraped against some brickwork three weeks ago.
Source: Pittsburg Post-Gazette
Feb 9, 2006
Cemetery Lane in Ross is home to cemeteries that are Jewish, Catholic and Protestant, but few know that an old African-American cemetery also is there on an overgrown hillside hugging the road.Two posts with a fallen chain between them are all that mark the rutted road that leads to the cemetery. Woods crowd the hillside graveyard which, on a recent afternoon, was bone quiet except for a distant train whistle.
"When I first saw it, I thought it
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Feb 9, 2006
It was the lost treasure in the philatelic world -- the only known envelope bearing a 90-cent Abraham Lincoln stamp from 1869. For years, collectors assumed the envelope, or cover, as it's known in the stamp world, had been destroyed sometime after it was stolen from a home in Indianapolis in 1967. Then, a month ago, a couple casually walked it into a Chicago stamp shop, and ever since, collectors have been salivating at the prospect of getting their hands on the
Source: BBC News
Feb 9, 2006
A bit of old Belfast has come to light with archaeologists excavating in the Cathedral quarter before development begins on a former industrial site. Part of the old 17th and 18th century town was exposed.
Although it is little more than the outline of brick walls, it has given an insight into the city's past.
It is thought about 1,000 people lived in what was a squalid area, most of them with just a room and a small yard to their name.
Source: In These Times
Feb 9, 2006
Sometimes it’s the small abuses scurrying below radar that reveal how profoundly the Bush administration has changed America in the name of national security. Buried within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 is a regulation that bars most public access to birth and death certificates for 70 to 100 years. In much of the country, these records have long been invaluable tools for activists, lawyers, and reporters to uncover patterns of illness and pollution that officials
Source: Inside Higher Education
Feb 9, 2006
A planned conference by the American Association of University Professors imploded Wednesday amid reports that the group accidentally distributed to invited attendees an anti-Semitic article, published in a magazine affiliated with Holocaust deniers.The conference was already under fire over an invitation list that critics said was tilted toward scholars who have backed academic boycotts of Israeli universities. The additional turmoil of the article prompted AAUP
Source: National Coalition for History
Feb 9, 2006
The United States Senate Historical Office and the House Office of History and Preservation have published an updated and revised 2005 edition of “The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-2005." The massive 2,218 page 2005 edition is the first revision of the printed edition since 1989.
The new edition includes biographical profiles of each of the nearly 12,000 individuals who have served in the Congress of the United States, from 1789 thro
Source: National Coalition for History
Feb 9, 2006
Unlike previous years, the Bush administration has not spared history and archives related programs. For the second year in a row the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) is zeroed out from the president’s budget; there are no funds whatsoever for grants and only $510,000 is requested for staffing and administration for the remaining ongoing grants. Once they are completed the program would be terminated.Also zeroed out is all funding for Sen
Source: Wa Po
Feb 9, 2006
On the vast flatlands of eastern Mongolia, enclosed by a two-mile wall in the form of an oval, diggers have uncovered tantalizing clues to the solution of one of history's enduring mysteries: the site of Genghis Khan's secret grave.Finding the spot where the great Mongolian conqueror was laid to rest in 1227 by his famed horseback warriors would fill in a blank that has fascinated historians for centuries. Although he and his descendants galloped out of Mongolia to sub
Source: Reuters
Feb 9, 2006
A group of Japanese sued over a history textbook that critics say whitewashes Japan's wartime aggression and has angered Asian neighbors, demanding on Thursday that a local government cancel its adoption of the text.Japan's Education Ministry approved the new edition of "The New History Textbook," written by nationalist scholars, last April, prompting outrage in China and South Korea, where bitter memories of Japan's aggression until 1945 persist.
Source: NYT
Feb 9, 2006
A grandfatherly figure, his bearded face wrinkled into a smile, peers down from billboards around town. It is surprise enough that the man is Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, the once-exiled writer, Nobel Prize winner and, of late, octogenarian scold. It is even more so that the billboards advertise his adaptation — broadcast on state television, no less — of one of his fiercely anti-Soviet novels, "The First Circle."The show, a 10-part series that bega
Source: Toronto Star
Feb 9, 2006
Ernst Zundel, a German white supremacist extradited from Canada on accusations he repeatedly denied the Holocaust, returned to court Thursday to face charges of incitement, libel and disparaging the dead.Zundel's trial at the Mannheim state court was halted in November when the judge dismissed two members of the defence team, saying he doubted they would mount a "regular" defence after one described Jews as an "enemy people." Zundel has since expanded his
Source: Bloomberg
Feb 9, 2006
Five centuries after Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes laid waste to the Aztec capital, Mexico may be about to recover its most precious artifact: the headdress of Emperor Montezuma II. ``We've never been closer than we are right now,'' said Xoko Gomora, a 54-year-old Mexican Indian who has spent three decades lobbying officials in Austria, where the headdress now lies in a Viennese museum.
Museums and governments are being pressed by countries from Mexico to I
