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: NBC17.com
Nov 18, 2005
The shipwreck believed to be the remains of Blackbeard's flagship was almost destroyed two months ago by Hurricane Ophelia. Now, archaeologists are scrambling to launch a major salvage effort before the wreck's secrets are lost to the sea.History records Blackbeard's flagship, the 40-gun Queen Anne's Revenge, ran aground near Beaufort Inlet in 1718. Archaeologists believe a treasure of information about the notorious pirate lies in a jumble of cannon and timber on the ocean
Source: Armenian News Network/Groong
Nov 18, 2005
In what has already become a source of heated debate in Massachusetts,a Lincoln-Sudbury High School history teacher and student, along with another teacher and the Washington-based Assembly of Turkish American Associations, have filed a lawsuit against the state regarding the Department of Education's curriculum guide concerning the teaching
of genocide.
Lincoln-Sudbury High School history teacher Bill Schechter said in the original draft of the curriculum guide, composed in
Source: AP
Nov 18, 2005
More than a quarter century after the laborious work began, the New Testament has finally been translated into Gullah, the creole language spoken by slaves and their descendants for generations along the sea islands of the Southeast coast.
Gullah is an oral language, so the translation was painstaking, beginning in 1979 with a team of Gullah speakers who worked with Pat and Claude Sharpe, translation consultants with Wycliffe Bible Translators.Many efforts have
Source: Yahoo News
Nov 18, 2005
Perhaps no era in human history has provided more cinematic fodder than Germany's Nazi reign. But until recently, most filmmakers have steered clear of any attempts to humanize the period's everyday German, especially the myriad Nazi followers.
The newest film to tackle Germany's Nazi past is Dennis Gansel's "Before the Fall" (Napola), which Picture This Entertainment opens Friday in Los Angeles, also engages the verboten with an evocative coming-of-age story told against
Source: Guardian (UK)
Nov 18, 2005
David Irving, the controversial British historian, has been arrested in Austria on suspicion of giving speeches in which he allegedly denied the existence of the gas chambers in the Nazi death camps.
The state prosecutor's office in Vienna yesterday confirmed that Mr Irving, 67, who lost a libel case against Penguin Books and an American historian five years ago and was financially ruined as a result, was in investigative custody pending inquiries as to whether he would be tried on
Source: Independent (UK)
Nov 18, 2005
Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of a 1,200-year-old massacre in Guatemala that could provide clues to one of the enduring mysteries of central American history - the precipitous collapse of the once glorious Maya civilisation.The team spent the summer excavating ruins of the ancient city of Cancuen in central Guatemala and dug up at least 45 skeletons belonging to members of the Mayan royal court who appear to have been ritually slaughtered by an as-yet unknown horde
Source: The Dougout (Blog)
Nov 17, 2005
This is the official history published by the U.S. Army's Center of Military History. The volumes produced in the United States Army in World War II series represent one of the most ambitious historical writing projects ever conducted. Popularly known as the "Green Books," the series itself constitutes but a fraction of the historical material available on World War II. A broad foundation of records and recollections, carefully documented and annotated in the footnotes of each volume,
Source: CNN
Nov 17, 2005
A diamond necklace believed to have been made for 18th century Russian empress Catherine the Great fetched over $1.5 million (euro1.3 million) at auction Thursday night in Geneva, but sold at just below the high-end estimate.Another record was set for the price of a single pearl, when the drop-shaped "La Regente" sold for 3.27 million francs ($2.5 million; euro2.1 million), three times the low-end estimate.
That pearl, which weighs over 30
Source: The Toronto Star
Nov 17, 2005
Relics from the War of 1812 have sparked another cross-border row, this one over the fate of booty plundered from the White House when the British sacked Washington, D.C.
A Canadian filmmaker has launched a crusade to stop U.S. treasure hunters from scavenging the wreck of HMS Fantome, which many believe was returning to Halifax with loot from the White House and Capitol Building when she sank in a storm on Nov. 24, 1814."It is not beyond imagination to see
Source: Jewish News Weekly
Nov 17, 2005
When Diana Wang won the right to change her religious affiliation from Catholic to Jewish on her 1947 entry papers to Argentina, it represented another step forward by the current government to right past wrongs.
And it was an emotionally charged moment for Wang, president of Generation of the Shoah, a group in Argentina. “It has been nice to celebrate the New Year as my real self,” she said. The government announced it would make the revision for Wang; that wou
Source: Romanesko
Nov 17, 2005
Former Californian reporter Nada Behziz frequently plagiarized and, in some cases, invented sources and then attributed plagiarized quotes to them, according to the Californian's investigation. "Work from major newspapers such as the New York Times and Los Angeles Times shows up [in Behziz's plagiarized stories]," writes Gretchen Wenner. "So do stories from far-flung titles including the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Detroit Free Press, along with closer-to-home publications such
Source: Yahoo News
Nov 17, 2005
Even after Richard Nixon's secret war in Cambodia became known, the president persisted in deception. "Publicly, we say one thing," he told aides. "Actually, we do another."
Newly declassified documents from the Nixon years shed light on the Vietnam War, the struggle with the Soviet Union for global influence and a president who tried not to let public and congressional opinion get in his way.They also show an administration determ
Source: PanArmenian.net
Nov 17, 2005
The British Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through its Ambassador to Turkey Sir Peter Westmacott, refused to consider the request made by the Turkish Parliament last April to reconsider the "Blue Book", a 1916 parliamentary report, formally titled, "Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-16," that documents the systematic, deliberate and politically motivated nature of the Armenian Genocide.In a letter, Sir Westmacott officially explained that th
Source: KCBS News
Nov 17, 2005
Researchers at San Jose State have confirmed that a chunk of bone donated to the University's Center for Beethoven Studies is in fact a part of the remains of the master.
The Center spent six years conducting forensic tests on the bone fragment, on loan from a Danville business man whose great granduncle was a doctor in Vienna. Researchers authenticated the bone, obtained when Ludwig van Beethoven's body was exhumed in 1863, by comparing it to a strand of the co
Source: Telegraph (London)
Nov 17, 2005
Dick Cheney, the American vice-president, has dismissed criticism of the Bush administration's use of intelligence in the build up to the Iraq war as "dishonest and reprehensible".
"The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone - but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history," he said.Democrats have exploited rising anti-war feeling in the US in recent weeks and accused the adm
Source: NYT
Nov 17, 2005
Archaeologists and forensic experts in Guatemala have made a grisly discovery among the ruins of an ancient Maya city, Cancuén.
In explorations during the summer, they found as many as 50 skeletons in a sacred pool and other places, victims of murder and dismemberment in a war that destroyed the city and, it seems, served as a beginning of the collapse of the classic period of the Maya civilization. The precipitous decline of the Maya is one of the enduring mysteries of American arc
Source: NYT
Nov 17, 2005
Some appeals judges who ruled on civil rights cases with Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. have accused him over the years of minimizing America's history of racial discrimination, weakening the courts in dealing with bias claims and placing barriers in the path of employees' civil rights suits.
But his record on civil rights is not one-sided. A look at scores of his decisions on race and other civil rights issues shows that he often takes a highly technical approach to volatile issues. His
Source: NYT
Nov 17, 2005
Three years ago, directors of some of the world's top museums, meeting in Munich, commiserated over a major annoyance: the growing demands from countries like Greece and Italy that they return ancient artifacts.
What emerged from the meeting was a defiant statement defending their collecting practices. Signed by the directors of 18 museums - from the Louvre to the Hermitage in Russia to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles - the document argued
Source: BBC News
Nov 16, 2005
One of Wales' oldest wells, thought to be a pagan site rededicated by early Christians, is to be restored.
Ffynnon Rhedyw in Llanllyfni, near Caernarfon, is believed to be older than nearby St Rhedyw's church, which dates from 600AD. "This site is an interesting example of a class of little-understood monuments which are numerous across Wales, but which are often overlooked," said David Thompson, the trust's head of heritage management.
Source: NYT
Nov 16, 2005
A federal appeals court decided Tuesday that it was unreasonable to require a historical accounting of money the government has been managing for American Indians, saying the bookkeeping would "take 200 years."
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with the government and the Indians in their effort to block a lower court order for a detailed tally of money owed the Indians going back to 1887. The a
