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: Boston Globe
Dec 4, 2005
SOME legal historians have been chipping away at one of the key anecdotes of 20th-century history: Franklin Roosevelt's showdown, in 1937, with the ''nine old men'' of the Supreme Court, and the famous ''switch in time that saved nine.'' The academic debate over what happened-or didn't happen-in 1937, says Laura Kalman, a history professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, ''is really a debate about whether judges are moved by law or politics.'' It's a timely subject, given the u
Source: NYT
Dec 4, 2005
There could be no doubt about the theme of President Bush's Iraq war strategy speech on Wednesday at the Naval Academy. He used the word victory 15 times in the address; "Plan for Victory" signs crowded the podium he spoke on; and the word heavily peppered the accompanying 35-page National Security Council document titled, "Our National Strategy for Victory in Iraq."
Although White House officials said many federal departments had contributed to the document, its
Source: Ralph Luker at Cliopatria blog
Dec 3, 2005
The New York Times five best non-fiction books of 2005 includes four works of history: George Packer, The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq; Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swann, De Kooning: An American Master; Jonathan Harr, The Lost Painting; and Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. At Ghost in the Machine, Kevin Murphy points out that Columbia's Eric Foner recently listed the five books that most influenced his work. There were three works of history: E. P. Thompson's The Making of th
Source: NYT
Dec 3, 2005
An Istanbul prosecutor filed charges against five prominent newspaper columnists who had criticized court rulings that tried to block an academic conference on the Armenian genocide, its first public discussion in Turkey. The conference, blocked by a court in May and again in September, was held on Sept. 24 after organizers changed its location. The conference, blocked by a court in May and again in September, was held on Sept. 24 after organizers changed its location. The j
Source: NYT
Dec 3, 2005
The National D-Day Museum, looted and vandalized in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, reopened Saturday with a smaller staff but with its artifacts and exhibits intact.
About 300 people were on hand for the opening and more filed in through the day to see the nation's first museum dedicated to World War II, with interactive video and audio exhibits that complement the artifacts, war planes and military vehicles on display.Unlike much of the city, the mus
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Dec 2, 2005
For more than a century, the only violent overthrow of a local government in US history has been hidden in mystique.
Now, a new report challenges the view that held sway for many years - that a provocative statement about white women and black men by a mixed race (then known as mulatto) newspaper editor caused the 1898 riot in a South gripped by fears of miscegenation.As a horse-drawn machine-gun regiment fired into crowds and frightened
Source: WP
Dec 2, 2005
Down the slope from the Old City's Dung Gate, rows of thick stone walls, shards of pottery and other remains of an expansive ancient building are being exhumed from a dusty pit.
The site is on a narrow terrace at the edge of the Kidron Valley, which sheers away from the Old City walls, in a cliffside area the Bible describes as the seat of the kings of ancient Israel.What is taking shape in the rocky earth, marked by centuries of conquest and development, is as
Source: NYT
Dec 2, 2005
New information points to four Ku Klux Klan members as almost certainly responsible for the unsolved murders of two civil rights activists who died when their home exploded in 1951, Florida officials say.
Attorney General Charlie Crist announced Friday that investigators had begun excavating the site of Harry and Harriette Moore's home, which was blown up on Christmas night in 1951.
Detectives were searching for detonators and other evidence that could prove what type o
Source: NYT
Dec 2, 2005
There was a scheduling conflict, so a certain McLennan County rancher will not show up Monday in Waco for jury duty after all.
"The president has other commitments," said the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan.
No problem, said Judge Ralph T. Strother of State District Court, though President Bush's name had popped up on a random list of Texans summoned for jury service. Judge Strother said he had now given Mr. Bush, who owns a 1,600-acre ranch outside Cra
Source: NYT
Dec 2, 2005
Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan was a Queens homemaker in 1964 when The New York Times revealed her notorious past as a vicious Nazi death camp guard.
Nearly a decade later, she became the first United States citizen to be extradited for war crimes. She was sent to West Germany, where she was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison.That was in 1981, and little has been written about her since, although a German newspaper took note of her release,
Source: NYT
Dec 2, 2005
Michael A. W. Evans, a photographer whose picture of Ronald Reagan in a well-worn cowboy hat was on the covers of Time, Newsweek and People after Mr. Reagan's death last year, died yesterday at his home in Atlanta. He was 61.The cause was cancer, the National Press Photographers Association said.
Mr. Evans worked for Time magazine, The New York Times and other publications, but was best known as the official White House photographer during the Reagan
Source: National Geographic News
Dec 2, 2005
Two centuries ago, the president of the United States sent an odd, obsessed, and self-destructive man to the Mediterranean to lead what amounted to the nation's first war against terror.
Two new books—one by Richard Zacks of Pelham, New York, and the other by Joshua London of Washington, D.C.—tell the story of this campaign against North African pirates in 1805. At the center of the story is William Eaton, who accomplished his task against staggerin
Source: CNN
Dec 2, 2005
Peru has formally warned Yale University that it will be sued if relics taken from Machu Picchu by famed U.S. explorer Hiram Bingham nearly a century ago are not returned, the Foreign Ministry said Friday.
"Peru has notified Yale University President Richard Levin that a lawsuit is prepared if its rights to the archaeological pieces are not recognized," the ministry said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press."We are convinced
Source: US Newswire
Dec 2, 2005
While the full impact of the tragic events following Hurricane Katrina will not be fully understood for some time, historians and curators at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History have begun collecting artifacts and photographs to preserve the impact of the disaster and its aftermath on the nation. The museum is working to build a focused collection of objects and photographs that reflects specific aspects of the hurricane's impact alo
Source: Guardian
Dec 1, 2005
British diplomats in Jakarta and the Foreign Office lied about their knowledge of Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor and worked with the US and Australia to cover up details of atrocities committed by Jakarta's troops during the attack, declassified documents have revealed.
The duplicity led relatives of two British journalists killed by Indonesian troops in East Timor in the run-up to the invasion yesterday to intensify their demands for a judicial inquiry into their deaths. B
Source: Hobart Mercury (Australia)
Dec 1, 2005
Emily Read, a Year 9 student at Bellerive's Clarence High, received the title of Young Historian of the Year at a ceremony in Canberra.
The 15-year-old said she was both astounded and thrilled."I had seen the other entries and they were all so good -- so I was very surprised when I was chosen," she said.
...
She won top honours for her outstanding essay on the Snug District Disaster Appeal Committee.
The committee was formed
Source: National Coalition for History
Dec 1, 2005
The total number of doctorates awarded by universities across the United States has increased in 2004, though the number of history PhDs awarded continues to decline slightly. The total number of doctorates awarded is the largest one-year increase since 1992, according to the annual Survey of Earned Doctorates.Over the past 40 years, the total number of doctorates awarded has increased by an annual average of 3.5%, although in recent years, the number has been flat or
Source: National Security Archive Update
Dec 1, 2005
The largest U.S. intelligence agency, the National Security Agency today declassified over 140 formerly top secret documents -- histories, chronologies, signals intelligence [SIGINT] reports, and oral history interviews -- on the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident. Included in the release is a controversial article by Agency historian Robert J. Hanyok on SIGINT and the Tonkin Gulf which confirms what historians have long argued: that there was no second attack on U.S. ships in Tonkin on August
Source: NYT
Dec 1, 2005
Over Sunday dinner at his home last spring, Martin Sheen, the star of "The West Wing," casually mentioned to his wife, Janet, and son Emilio Estevez that he had been lobbying members of the Los Angeles school board to proceed with the demolition of the old Ambassador Hotel, where Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 on the night he won the California presidential primary.
Officials were planning to replace the long-shuttered grande dame of Wilshire Boulevard
Source: Independent (UK)
Dec 1, 2005
Two hundred years ago, Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Austerlitz sealed his reputation as a military genius. Today, his country seems undecided as to whether he was a hero or a villain. In period uniforms, and thermal underwear, military enthusiasts from all over the world will gather on Saturday to re-enact one of the greatest victories in French history. They will come from the United States, from Australia, from Canada, from Russia, from Britain, and even some from
