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: Chicago Tribune
Jan 7, 2006
Fire swept through Bronzeville's historic Pilgrim Baptist Church on Friday, sending flaming walls and timbers crashing into the grand sanctuary where gospel music was born. The building, a cornerstone of Chicago's African-American community and a landmark work by architect Louis H. Sullivan, was a total loss, fire officials said.
As the ruins steamed Friday evening, that loss had to be assessed from many angles.
A neighborhood had lost a church; worshipers, a church ho
Source: ABC
Jan 7, 2006
New Orleans has 20 different neighborhoods on the National Register of Historic Places — more than any other city per capita — with some 37,000 structures ranging from Greek revival mansions to Creole cottages and shotgun shacks. Because these neighborhoods were built by early settlers who understood the dangers of their environment; they sit in the city's highest parts, and came through the storm in the best shape.The Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans
Source: ANSA
Jan 7, 2006
The Italian partisan who captured Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini at the end of WWII has died .
Urbano Lazzaro, whose 'nom de guerre' was Bill, died Tuesday night in a Vercelli hospital aged 81 .
Lazzaro, a member of the partisans' Garibaldi Brigade, took Mussolini off a truck at Dongo near the Swiss border on April 27, 1945 .The dictator, who ruled Italy for over 20 years from 1922, was disguised as a German soldier .
Mus
Source: BBC News
Jan 6, 2006
Archaeologists have unearthed a Roman road, a Bronze Age ditch and some medieval artefacts during major road improvement works in Wiltshire.
The historical remains - including three iron horseshoes - were found in the upper layers of the Roman road.
Archaeologist Neil Holbrook said the findings had been recorded and added: "The Romans didn't have horseshoes.
"We seem to have proved by the discovery that the road continued in use into the medieval per
Source: CNN
Jan 6, 2006
CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- A massive fire Friday destroyed a landmark South Side church where Mahalia Jackson and other gospel royalty often sang during the 20th century and the man considered the father of gospel music led the choir.
The fire gutted Pilgrim Baptist Church, collapsing its roof and steeple. No major injuries were reported, and the cause of the fire was not immediately known, though repair work had been under way on the roof, fire officials said.
Source: KATC-3 Acadiana
Jan 6, 2006
Chalmette Battlefield park will reopen for the first time since Hurricane Katrina left it under water. Saturday marks the 191st anniversary of the famous battle, when Andrew Jackson turned back British forces seeking to seize the port of New Orleans at the close of the War of 1812. Commemorations have been held at the site since the late 1800s, but this year's event is different because Chalmette, where the battlefield is located, was devastated in the hurricane."We're
Source: Washington Times
Jan 6, 2006
Cuba's secret service was behind the assassination of President Kennedy, according to a German filmmaker who claims to have eyewitness evidence solving one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century.
Wilfried Huismann, director of a documentary to be screened on German public television tonight, said he has witnesses saying Lee Harvey Oswald, was acting on behalf of G2, Cuban President Fidel Castro's foreign intelligence service. Mr. Castro, said
Source: HNN
Jan 6, 2006
Allegations of conservative political bias at the National Endowment of the Humanities have been made over the last several years, but few scholars have come forward to tell their stories. On Saturday 7 January, at a panel sponsored by the American Historical Association Professional Division, the Coordinating Council for Women in History, and the Committee on Lesbian and Gay History, historian of sexuality Marc Stein, an associate professor at York University in Toronto, will go public. Unan
Source: chichestertoday.co.uk
Jan 5, 2006
Chichester Cathedral will be seen in all its glory – without external scaffolding – for the first time in 40 years in around 18 months' time. This will follow the completion of a major part of the restoration work now under way on the 900-year-old building's magnificent Lady Chapel, costing £870,000.But it will not mark the end of work elsewhere in the cathedral. And meanwhile, the task ahead is to raise more than £1,000 a week in the coming year and beyond.
Source: http://www.adnki.com
Jan 5, 2006
Iran has decided to rewrite and revise the history of the Holocaust. Following the repeated declarations by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and other senior government officials on the need to re-examine the history of the genocide of the Jews during the Second World War, the association of Islamic Journalists of Iran has been tasked with quickly putting together an international conference on the Holocaust.
"President Ahmadinejad has placed at the centre of intern
Source: USA Today
Jan 5, 2006
Visitors to Machu Picchu see well-preserved ruins hidden among the majestic Andes: palaces, baths, temples, tombs, sundials and farming terraces, along with llamas that roam among hundreds of gray granite houses. However, curious tourists won't find many bowls, tools, ritual objects or other artifacts used by the Incas of the late 1400s.
To see those, they have to go to New Haven, Conn.
Yale historian Hiram Bingham rediscovered Machu Picchu in 1911, and backed by the National
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 5, 2006
The Muslim Council of Britain is to boycott the National Holocaust Day for the second year running, the organisation said last night. A spokesman said it would not participate in the event on Jan 26 because it was not sufficiently inclusive."The MCB would be honoured to participate in a national memorial day providing that it clearly affirmed that the lives of all people, regardless of race or religion, are to be valued equally," he said. "This is why the Musl
Source: WaPo
Jan 5, 2006
Windswept and rocky, the knobby point overlooking the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal in present-day Potomac provided a strategic lookout but little shelter for the Union soldiers who fortified the spot in 1862.
Beginning that winter of the Civil War, soldiers of the 19th Massachusetts Infantry are believed to have guarded this Montgomery County site on the C&O, then an important commercial route parallel to the adjacent Potomac River. From their perch, Northern soldiers attempted t
Source: WaPo
Jan 5, 2006
From October 1771 to March 1816, Francis Asbury was a traveling evangelist in the American Colonies and fledgling United States. No American during that period is known to have traveled as widely as he.
Those travels left a legacy of Methodist churches, particularly those serving African Americans, that bear his name. In Washington, Asbury United Methodist Church has been at 11th and K streets NW since 1836, when it was founded by blacks fed up with discriminatory treatment, said Lo
Source: History Today
Jan 5, 2006
Over 200 new entries have been made to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The new list of those intended to represent the nation include the late Queen Mother, Princess Margaret and comedian Spike Milligan. Editor Lawrence Goldman wrote of the Queen Mother: ‘By the time of her death the monarchy, and the royal family more generally, had come to represent the nation, both to itself and to the rest of the world.’ Labour politician Barbara Castle and Moors murderer Myra Hindley are also a
Source: CNN
Jan 5, 2006
Archaeologists excavating a pyramid complex in the Guatemalan jungle have uncovered the earliest example of Mayan writing ever found, 10 bold hieroglyphs painted on plaster and stone.
The 2,300-year-old glyphs were excavated last April in San Bartolo and suggest the ancient Maya developed an advanced writing system centuries earlier than previously believed, according to an article published Thursday in the journal Science.The glyphs date from betwee
Source: Wa Po
Jan 5, 2006
Montgomery County has agreed to buy an 18th-century house with an attached log cabin that was once home to a former slave whose autobiography inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin," county officials said.
The Montgomery Planning Board is expected to approve the $1 million contract today for the three-bedroom home and acre on Old Georgetown Road, just south of Tilden Lane in Rockville. A log cabin off the dining room was once a detached "summer kitc
Source: Civil War Courier
Jan 5, 2006
As recently as Feb. 2004, Franklin, the battlefield where the Army of Tennessee was broken Nov. 30, 1864, was considered lost. No one had ever reclaimed battlefield ground of that size once development had taken place.
One hundred forty-one years later, preservationists in Franklin became the first.
On that date, several hundred people were on hand to witness the tearing down of the Pizza Hut on Columbia Pike, believed to be the spot where Confederate Gen. Patrick Clebu
Source: BBC News
Jan 5, 2006
In an obscure corner of the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, lies one of Islam's most sacred relics - the world's oldest Koran.
It is a reminder of the role which Central Asia once played in Muslim history - a fact often overlooked after seven decades of Soviet-imposed atheism.
The library where the Koran is kept is in an area of old Tashkent known as Hast-Imam, well off the beaten track for most visitors to this city.
Source: Juan Cole's Blog (Informed Comment) (1-4-06 & 1-5-06)
Jan 5, 2006
Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports [Ar.] that the Debaathification Committee in Iraq has begun pulling all works that praise the Baath regime in Iraq, which ruled 1968-2003, from the shelves of university libraries. The newly banned works include theses, research papers, books and other publications. They will be sequestered in a high-security special library and kept away from university students because "they are far from the scientific spirit" and because they glorify "the Baath ideolog
