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: USA Todday
Aug 26, 2005
DNA testing has confirmed that the body buried in Emmett Till's grave is the 14-year-old who was slain in Mississippi a half-century ago, just as his mother and relatives have said these long years, the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger reported Thursday.The results come as Till's relatives plan to mark the 50th anniversary of the murder that galvanized the civil rights movement by laying a wreath at Till's grave on Sunday.
Source: Daily Telegraph (London)
Aug 26, 2005
A First World War soldier singled out by the Canberra government as the embodiment of Australian values was a British-born sailor who jumped ship and who would be regarded today as an illegal immigrant, historians said yesterday.A legend has grown up around the life of Pte John Simpson Kirkpatrick, who saved soldiers at Gallipoli by retrieving them from the battlefield and taking them to safety on his donkey.
For nearly a month in 1915 he carried wou
Source: WSJ
Aug 26, 2005
Overlooked in all the commotion about Bill Weld was a serious character flaw. The problem isn't drugs or alcohol or greed but a compulsion much more dangerous and difficult to suppress. The sad fact is that William Weld is a novelist, which of course calls into question his judgment if not his sanity.it won't be the first time that novelists have sought public office. Mario Vargas Llosa, Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal, among others, have been political candidates in the past.
Source: Washington DC Newsletter of the NATIONAL COALITION FOR HISTORY (NCH)
Aug 26, 2005
With the approval of the White House, recently the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) released some 57,385 Roberts-related materials documenting much of Robert's career when he worked for the Reagan administration. News articles have focused on what the papers contain and what they reveal about the nominee. But what about the 2,945 pages that the White House has not yet released? Are they being withheld legitimately under provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the
Source: Washington DC Newsletter of the NATIONAL COALITION FOR HISTORY (NCH)
Aug 26, 2005
The Census History Staff has now launched a new website that makes its publications and services available online. There are high hopes also of being able to provide electronic copies of all available procedural histories as well transcripts of oral histories and a variety of publications and articles relating to the history of the Census Bureau and its efforts to provide quality data about America's people and economy. Beginning in the 1950s the United States Census Bureau
Source: NYT
Aug 26, 2005
MUMBAI, India, Aug. 25 - In May 1963, President John F. Kennedy and his aides discussed the feasibility of using nuclear weapons in the event China attacked India for a second time, according to newly declassified audio recordings that were released Thursday by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. Over the crackle of the decades-old tapes, President Kennedy and his advisers can be heard discussing how to prevent India from becoming, in the popular idiom of the day, anot
Source: BBC
Aug 25, 2005
The medieval remains of a mother and daughter found in North Yorkshire shows signs of an attempted Caesarean operation, scientists have revealed. The 900-year-old grave at Wharram Percy held the remains of a woman aged between 25 and 30 with a baby. A study of the remains by English Heritage showed the woman died during her pregnancy and the foetus was cut free from the womb in a bid to save it.
Nearly 700 skeletons have been found at the 12th centu
Source: NYT
Aug 25, 2005
It may not be obvious to the throngs of tourists who flock daily to its famed museums, but the Smithsonian Institution is falling apart.Ominous drips from strained expansion joints have sprinkled down amid Asian artifacts in the institution's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. The historic Arts and Industries Building is closed to visitors to protect them from metal panels dropping from its beautiful but dilapidated ceiling. At the National Air and Space Museum, a water stain mars t
Source: NYT
Aug 25, 2005
WHEN Americans talk about "the lessons of Vietnam," they usually mean failed policies and programs that shouldn't be repeated. But there were some successes in the Vietnam War, including an initiative to win the allegiance of captured and defecting Vietcong and North Vietnamese fighters by treating them generously and reshaping their attitudes. This idea - that harsh treatment of prisoners can be less effective than showing compassion - now deserves a test in Iraq.
Source: AP
Aug 25, 2005
How did paintings by Tintoretto and other Venetian Renaissance artists get their special glow? Using an electron microscope, Barbara Berrie, senior conservation scientist at the National Gallery of Art, discovered one of their secrets: tiny bits of glass the artists mixed with their pigments. “By looking beyond the limits of their usual practice and transforming materials from other trades to their painting, the great artists of the Renaissance created a palette that gave them an immediate and l
Source: Radio Free Europe
Aug 25, 2005
Celebrations marking the 1,000th anniversary of the capital of Kazan kick off today. Kazan, on the banks of the Volga River, is the capital of the mainly Muslim republic of Tatarstan, some 700 kilometers east of Moscow. The Tatars trace their lineage back to the Mongols who raced across Russia in the 12th and 13th centuries. In the 16th century, Kazan became part of the Russian Empire. But the city has worked hard to preserve its ancient cultural identity, which will be showcased during the fest
Source: The Times (UK)
Aug 25, 2005
Maurice Cowling, historian, was born on September 6, 1926. He died on August 24, 2005, aged 78. Cowling was a Cambridge historian who influenced a generation of Conservative politicians and was a scourge of the liberal intelligentsia. Throughout his career Maurice Cowling was never comfortable with being described as a historian, since, as he explained, he had “drifted into becoming a professional historian despite an intense conviction, acquired early and never lost, that p
Source: Tolerance.org
Aug 25, 2005
The murder of Emmett Till was a watershed moment in America's ugly racial history, instantly galvanizing those in the Civil Rights Movement. Justice, however, has lagged half a century for Till — and so many others. Tolerance.org surveys media coverage of the anniversary.
Source: Romanesko
Aug 25, 2005
David Ulin is assigned to do a complete makeover of book coverage when he starts as Los Angeles Times book editor in October, says features czar John Montorio. "I think that the review will remain urbane and sophisticated, but we want it to be far more accessible and far more attuned to what is really hot in the book world," says Montorio. "We want to be dealing with books that people are really going to want to go out and read."
Source: CNN
Aug 25, 2005
A federal commission voted Thursday to close Walter Reed Army Medical Center -- the crown jewel of U.S. military hospitals -- as part of the Pentagon's sweeping proposal to restructure bases across the country. Located in the heart of the nation's capital, the century-old hospital has treated presidents and foreign leaders as well as veterans and soldiers, including those returning from the Iraq war.
Source: Chosunilbo
Aug 25, 2005
Official Chinese government material has come to light confirming the Korean argument that a "Tomun River" designated as the border between China and Korea is not the Tumen River, which forms the current border, but another stream.
China argues the Tomun River mentioned on the Mt. Paekdu Border Stone Monument erected in 1712 to delineate the border between the Korean Chosun (also spelled as Joseon) kingdom and Qing Dynasty China and the Tumen River are one and the same.
Source: Bloomberg
Aug 25, 2005
Minutes before an executioner sent Lena Baker to her death 60 years ago, she explained again why she had shot a white man, a crime that resulted in her being the only woman ever to die in Georgia's electric chair. ``What I done, I did in self-defense, or I would've been killed myself,'' Baker, a black woman and mother of three, said on March 5, 1945, in her final statement, according to records from the U.S. state. ``Where I was, I could not overcome it.''
Symbolically, Baker has fi
Source: Yahoo News
Aug 25, 2005
By now it's a familiar and hackneyed war story. A jarring event rouses a dormant people. Diplomacy fails. Conflict erupts. The modern, mechanized nation overpowers the atavistic, feudal regime. The victors send soldiers, consultants, and contractors to free the oppressed, rebuild, secure vital resources and territory, and to put their stamp on the society that will emerge. In the midst of this benevolence, a loosely woven network of terror groups stages dogged acts of sabotage, kidnapping, assas
Source: NYT
Aug 24, 2005
During a trip here last July to make a documentary on the 1964 killings of his brother and another black man, Thomas Moore stopped at a gas station outside of this town in southwestern Mississippi for a sandwich.
At the store, Mr. Moore lamented to a local man that one of the prime suspects in the killings had died, and the listener asked which one. "James Ford Seale," Mr. Moore replied. The newspapers had said so. Mr. Seale's own son had confirmed it.
Source: NYT
Aug 24, 2005
FORTY years ago this month, the Beatles began their second major tour of America with a performance at Shea Stadium in Queens. It's an event worth noting: more than 55,000 people attended that night, Aug. 15, 1965. It set a world record at that time for a pop concert, and it was the biggest public moment of the Beatles' remarkable career. It's also worth noting that these days we seem to be reconstructing a shadow history of the band and its achievements. That is
