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: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History
Sep 2, 2005
Journalists have discovered one document of particular interest to historians and archivists as it relates to John Roberts's views on government openness with respect to presidential records and the Presidential Records Act (PRA). On 29 August 1985, in his capacity as a lawyer for President Reagan, Roberts vigorously argued that White House internal files should be kept secret and should not be released even to the U.S. Senate if requested by that body to win confirmat
Source: Willie Drye at website of National Geographic News
Sep 2, 2005
Hurricane Katrina's rampage across the U.S. Gulf Coast is causing uneasiness among officials in South Florida, where an even stronger hurricane blasted the Florida Keys 70 years ago today. Like the devastating hurricane that tore into Louisiana and Mississippi last Monday, the unnamed storm that struck the Keys on Labor Day 1935 rapidly intensified as it neared landfall. It became the most powerful hurricane ever to strike the United States. Katrina's rapid inten
Source: Hurricane Katrina: Civil War Damage Assessment
Sep 2, 2005
Virtually everything in the Latin Quarter and the Garden District suffered some damage. Much of the turquoise-and-white facade of Commander's Palace in the Garden District is gone. So is one wall of Antoine's, famous for Oysters Rockefeller.The Cafe du Monde, home of smoky chicory coffee, did not appear to suffer extensive damage. Many of the city's oldest neighborhoods, including the Bywater and the 9th Ward on the east side, were lost under the floods. On Burgundy Street,
Source: Wired Magazine
Sep 1, 2005
The Cherokee kept black slaves until 1866, when an emancipation treaty freed them from bondage and granted them full tribal citizenship. Known as the Freedmen, these men and women were embraced by the Cherokee as equals, and often married the offspring of their former masters.
There are at least 25,000 direct descendants of Freedmen who cannot join Oklahoma's largest tribes. Once paragons of racial inclusion and assimilation, the Native American sovereign nations have done an about
Source: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Sep 1, 2005
"Over the past five years, a distorted and hostile attitude toward Israel has prevailed at the University of California-Santa Cruz, creating an intimidating environment for members of the campus community, particularly Jewish students. Much of the anti-Israeli bias has been generated by the university's predominantly leftist faculty members, who have injected their personal ideology into course curricula, classroom lectures and discussions, and events and speakers sponsored by departments,
Source: AP
Sep 1, 2005
Sirens wailed and religious leaders led prayers for the dead as the presidents of Poland and Germany stood together solemnly Thursday on the Baltic peninsula where World War II began 66 years ago. Horst Koehler is only the second German president to attend the annual ceremonies on the Westerplatte peninsula, following the example of his predecessor, Johannes Rau. His presence comes amid signs of deepening friendship between the former foes, despite some lingering bitterness.
Source: NYT
Sep 1, 2005
After years of inertia, governments throughout Latin America have recently shown surprising vigor in prosecuting human rights violations that occurred, in some cases, 30 years ago or more. Chile, for instance, has offered reparations to torture victims and forced the army to apologize for its abuses, while the Supreme Court in Argentina in June declared unconstitutional a pair of amnesty laws from the 1980's.Why this sudden activity? After all, reopening issues like fo
Source: News Release from the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Sep 1, 2005
A leading Holocaust research institute has criticized actress Jodie Foster for her comments defending Nazi propaganda filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, whom Foster intends to play in an upcoming film. Foster said in a just-released interview that Riefenstahl has been "libeled so many times" by people accusing her of membership in the Nazi Party or of having a romance with Adolf Hitler.But according to Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for
Source: Romanesko
Sep 1, 2005
"If New Orleans is to be pumped out, its soffits re-replastered, its live oaks replanted before I'm gone, I'll be happily surprised," writes 62-year-old former NYT executive editor Howell Raines. "For now, we wait and ponder this question: If it's gone or permanently altered, what memorial would be fitting? Surely it would not be some monument of stone, but perhaps a political memorial to the city of Huey P. Long and his fictional iteration Willie Stark, or a spiritual remembrance
Source: Wa Po
Sep 1, 2005
Their bags are packed with safety glasses, gloves, masks, boots and suits. As soon as they hit the ground in New Orleans, they plan to set up triage tents and long tables. Then the emergency team from the National Park Service will begin its work: blotting, washing, drying, straightening and preserving centuries of historical artifacts that tell the story of one of the oldest U.S. cities.Their biggest enemy is mildew.
"When we do retrieved artif
Source: NYT
Sep 1, 2005
Asphalt is being laid over many cobblestone streets in Rome, a jarring sight, no doubt, for anyone convinced that Rome never changes."The massacre of the cobblestones," as one Roman official put it, is well under way, part of a city program to lay asphalt on streets that are used mostly by cars, buses and scooters. On pedestrian walkways and piazzas treasured by tourists, like Piazza Venezia, the city has pledged to keep the cobblestones, called sampietrini.
Source: ClioWeb
Sep 1, 2005
It’s that time again…the History Carnival! We’ve got a great crop of posts this time, so enjoy!
Source: BBC
Sep 1, 2005
British people were happier in the depression of the 1930s than they are now, researchers have claimed. The Cardiff University team said that people were more content in pre-war Britain, despite poorer living standards and more unemployment. Professor Mansel Aylward, who led the study, said health care and wages had improved in the last 70 years, but expectations had also gone up.
But historian Dr John Davies said life in the 1930s was "less comfortable&quo
Source: History Today
Sep 1, 2005
Leo Amery (1873-1955), Secretary of State for India in Churchill’s wartime Cabinet, had a Jewish ancestry which was not publicly known despite his strong pro-Zionism. Through the war years, however, he suffered a personal and political tragedy, as his son John allowed himself to be used as a propaganda tool by the Nazis and was finally hanged for treason in December 1945. Details of Leo’s attempts to do his best for his son over this difficult period have just come to light.
Source: Newsday (NY)
Aug 31, 2005
Rolling Stone, the magazine that was home for years to Hunter S. Thompson, will publish a note written by the gonzo journalist days before he committed suicide in February.
Douglas Brinkley, the presidential historian who is also Thompson's official biographer, writes that a Feb. 16 note may be Thompson's final written words, The Associated Press reports.
It reads:
"No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swim
Source: Foreign Policy in Focus
Aug 31, 2005
“The Iraq Quagmire” is the most comprehensive accounting of the mounting costs and consequences of the Iraq War on the United States, Iraq, and the world. Among its major findings are stark figures that quantify the continuing of costs since the Iraqi elections, a period that the Bush administration claimed would be characterized by a reduction in the human and economic costs. According to current estimates, the cost of the Iraq War could exceed $700 billion. In current dollars, the Vietnam War
Source: LAT
Aug 31, 2005
Concluding a monthlong vacation marked by antiwar protests outside his Texas home and a rising death toll in Iraq, President Bush on Tuesday invoked the anniversary of the Japanese surrender in World War II and the postwar rebirth of that country as a parallel to present-day U.S. efforts in the Middle East. Bush spoke against the dramatic backdrop of the Ronald Reagan, a 1,092-foot, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier docked at North Island Naval Air Station, where he drew repeated applause from an
Source: Independent (UK)
Aug 31, 2005
The anti-war message of the original 'Godzilla' film was taken out when America remade it. Now British audiences will be able to see the real meaning behind the movie. When the Japanese monster movie Godzilla was sold to an American distributor 50 years ago, it was re-edited to excise every mention of the strong anti-nuclear message that had made it such a hit in Hiroshima and Tokyo.
Without the politics, the re-cut dubbed story of the dinosaur-like creature wit
Source: NYT
Aug 31, 2005
Jude Wanniski, a journalist, consultant and, most of all, a fierce and unconventional partisan who marshaled intellect and salesmanship to promote big tax cuts as the best cure for an ailing economy, a theory embraced and executed by President Reagan, died yesterday in Morristown, N.J. He was 69. The cause was a heart attack.Mr. Wanniski coined the phrase "supply-side economics" to describe his idea that a reduction in personal tax rates would stimulate produ
Source: AFP
Aug 31, 2005
For more than 500 years, historians have believed that the last Viking king, Sven Estridsen, was laid to rest with his mother, Estrid, after his death in 1074.
But a test on the pulp of molars extracted from skeletons in the tomb at Roskilde Cathedral, on the island of Sjaelland, shows that the two sets of remains are unrelated, the British weekly New Scientist reports in next Saturday's issue. Jorgen Dissing, at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Copenhagen,
