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: Newsday
Dec 12, 2005
Earlier this year, a book considered whether he was gay. Another explored whether he was depressed. Then came the bestseller extolling his leadership abilities.
And these are a fraction of the high-profile volumes now tumbling from publishing houses - not to mention the TV histories and films in the works - all centering on a man who died 140 years ago: President Abraham Lincoln."Lincoln does seem to be speaking to the country," says Doris Kearns
Source: NYT
Dec 12, 2005
Room 117, known as the map room at the New York Public Library, is scheduled to reopen Thursday after a $5 million restoration project that has brought back the Beaux Arts luster of the area that is home to some of the rarest maps in the world.
Source: Financial Times (UK)
Dec 12, 2005
Nicolas Sarkozy, France's populist interior minister, yesterday attempted to defuse a furious row over the country's colonial past saying France must confront its history to avoid a "repetition of evil" but should refrain from an "excess of repentance".
In an article in Le Journal du Dimanche, Mr Sarkozy said France must acknowledge the legitimate suffering of the victims of its colonial past. However, the frontrunner in the 2007 presidential election race also
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dec 12, 2005
The Atlanta Public Schools Archives & Museum draws connections between the school system's many accomplished alumni as it chronicles the district's rich history. A few of the famous folk who once roamed the hallways of an Atlanta school: boxer Evander Holyfield; comic Nipsey Russell; civil rights advocate Vernon Jordan; and TV judge Glenda Hatchett. Former mayors Ivan Allen Jr. and Maynard Jackson attended Atlanta schools, as did construction magnate Herman Russell and Chick-fil-A founder Tr
Source: USA Today
Dec 12, 2005
A total of 7.9 million immigrants have come to the USA since 2000, making the first half of this decade the highest period of immigration in U.S. history despite tougher scrutiny after 9/11, figures released Monday show.
Almost half, or 3.7 million, entered illegally, according to an analysis of Census data by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C., group that advocates controlling the flow of legal and illegal immigrants.The report comes
Source: BBC News
Dec 12, 2005
One might struggle to see the ethical side of bodysnatching, that grisly activity epitomised by Burke and Hare. But, according to a senior curator at the Royal College of Surgeons, some of the greatest discoveries in medical history might not have been possible without it.Few crimes can make the flesh crawl like body snatching, but it was prevalent in the 18th Century.
The image of freshly raided graves scandalised the public, but few of the perpetrators and pr
Source: Günter Bischof, in an email to HNN
Dec 12, 2005
The quiet determination of the University of New Orleans to be up and running as quickly as possible seems to be the best kept secret in town and has not been reported in the media here. UNO reopened classes on Oct. 11 on its satellite campus in Jefferson parish (1,000 students enrolled in regular classes and 7,000 in on-line classes); meanwhile the main Lakefront campus opened again early in December and so did the Library; intercession classes begin last week and the regular spring term on Jan
Source: NYT
Dec 12, 2005
Vice President Dick Cheney was one of the first members of the Bush administration to say it, at a campaign stop in Lake Elmo, Minn., in September 2004.
The word getting the workout from the nation's top guns these days is "caliphate" - the term for the seventh-century Islamic empire that spanned the Middle East, spread to Southwest Asia, North Africa and Spain, then ended with the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258. The term can also refer to other caliphates, including the o
Source: NYT
Dec 12, 2005
Scores of extras loiter, their faces covered in soot. A man sprays gray insulation foam - in lieu of concrete dust - at what looks much like the corner of Church and Vesey Streets in Lower Manhattan. Another tosses reams of paper in the air. Nearby, others are debating precisely how to crush a fire truck and an ambulance.
A continent removed from the scrutiny of scarred New Yorkers, Oliver Stone's film about 9/11 rescue workers is deep into its second month of principal photography
Source: CP
Dec 12, 2005
A British commander's draft report on the 1759 Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec, dated two days after the French surrender, will be put up for sale Thursday at Christie's auction house in New York. The 4 1/2-page report is by George Townshend, who commanded the victorious British forces during the last stage of the battle after the death of Gen. James Wolfe. The outcome of the battle - in which Wolfe's counterpart, French Gen. Louis Montcalm, was also k
Source: Bloomberg
Dec 12, 2005
Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi won't ``own up'' to his country's history of violence in Asia, making him the cause of a rift in relations with China and a breakdown in talks between the neighbors, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said at a regional meeting in Malaysia. Wen canceled an annual trilateral summit with Koizumi and South Korea's President Roh Moo-Hyun during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur because
Source: CBS5 San Francisco
Dec 12, 2005
Students from a Christian high school are suing to force the state university system to accept credits from religious-themed classes.
The six students from Calvary Chapel Christian School about 80 miles southeast of Los Angeles claim the University of California system violated their rights to free speech, religion and association and equal protection. They cited UC's decision to dismiss as "too narrow" high-school classes such as "Christianity's Influence on American
Source: Payvand's Iran News
Dec 12, 2005
A chronicle written by Fazli Isfahani, a historian of the Safavid era, which was surprisingly discovered in the old library of Christ's College of Cambridge University has been edited and will be published digitally in December/January in Britain. "David Brown Book, a publication company in the U.K, is to provide a digital reproduction of a unique manuscript which records the major events of the reign of Shah Abbas Safavid, the greatest king of the Safavid d
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 11, 2005
Teachers in France have accused their government of using the tactics of dictators by enacting a law that imposes an "official history" of their country, requiring them to highlight the "positive aspects" of the French empire.They claim the legislation ignores the torture, slavery and massacres "that sometimes went as far as genocide" and sometimes accompanied French colonialism.
The law aims to protect the reputations o
Source: NYT
Dec 11, 2005
THE Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently announced that it would give $450 million toward eclectic inventions to aid the world's poor: more nutritious bananas, easier-to-use vaccines and chemicals that leave mosquitoes unable to smell their would-be victims, for example.
But the Gateses were not the first to see that money could sometimes move mountains in public health. They are following in the footsteps of the industrial giants of the late-19th century, said Dr. Howard Mark
Source: BBC News
Dec 11, 2005
Leading politicians and civic dignitaries were in mid Wales on Saturday to remember Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last Prince of Wales. Welsh MPs, AMs, members of the House of Lords and political leaders gathered at the Cefn-y-Bedd Memorial in Cilmeri near Builth Wells in Powys. A ceremony is held every year on the nearest Saturday to the day the prince was killed.
Source: CNN
Dec 11, 2005
Using radar equipment along a wall of a landmark building, military specialists Saturday quickly found a time capsule buried more than a century ago by King Kamehameha V.
Historians knew the capsule contained priceless pieces of the islands' history, including photos of royal families dating back to Kamehameha the Great and a constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom. But until now the capsule's exact location was unknown."We found it within the first 10 m
Source: NYT`
Dec 11, 2005
To better understand the potential for catastrophic damage from future hurricanes, scientists are looking to the past.
And the future looks very expensive, the scientists said this week at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. With wealth and property values increasing, and more people moving to vulnerable coasts, by the year 2020 a single storm could cause losses of $500 billion - several times the damage inflicted by Hurricane Katrina.Roger
Source: NYT
Dec 11, 2005
It started as a joke and ended up as a shot heard round the Internet, with the joker losing his job and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, suffering a blow to its credibility.
A man in Nashville has admitted that, in trying to shock a colleague with a joke, he put false information into a Wikipedia entry about John Seigenthaler Sr., a former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville. Brian Chase, 38, who until Friday was an operations manager at a small
Source: NYT
Dec 11, 2005
Eugene J. McCarthy, the sardonic Senate dove who stunned the nation by upending President Lyndon B. Johnson's re-election drive amid the Vietnam War turmoil of 1968, died early yesterday. He was 89.
A courtly, sharp-witted presence in capital politics for half a century, Mr. McCarthy, a Minnesota Democrat, died in his sleep at an assisted-living home in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, where he had lived for the last several years.
