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: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 5, 2012
Using bones from 80 sailors buried in Royal Naval hospital cemeteries, researchers were able to analyse their makeup and find out what had been on the menu.The bones came from 17th and 18th century sailors, as well as from the Mary Rose, which sunk in 1545, reports the American Journal of Phsyical Anthropology.Experts found salt beef and sea biscuits were a mainstay among those aboard the vessel and that sailors' diets changed little over the next 200 years....
Source: WaPo
Jun 4, 2012
Forty years after Watergate, a central question about the scarring chapter in U.S. history lingers: Did Richard M. Nixon’s misdeeds and downfall strip the nation of its innocence or affirm the resilience of the American system? ¶ In one vision, Watergate turned Americans into cynical people, mistrustful of government, ready to believe the worst of their leaders. Forty years after the botched burglary on Virginia Avenue NW, the squalor of Nixon’s presidency remains visible in our paralyzed, polarized politics, our alienation, our insistent disunity. ¶ Alternatively, Watergate shines as proof that the system works, that law and the Constitution prevail over the excesses of craven politicians. The details of the scandal, which resulted in the only resignation of a president in U.S. history, may fade with time, but Watergate lives on in the idealism of those who hold government to account — through grass-roots movements such as the tea party and Occupy Wall Street, investigative reporting, and public and private watchdog groups. ¶ The principal figures in the Nixon presidency and the two-year drive to reveal its misdeeds are mostly elderly men now, and the scandal that riveted the nation like no other is barely mentioned in most high school American history courses.
Source: Anchorage Daily News
Jun 4, 2012
Seventy years ago today, bombs fell on Dutch Harbor. The casualties and damage on a remote Aleutian islet amounted to little more than a blip in the cataclysm of World War II. To this day, educated Americans are unaware that it happened at all.But the battle permanently changed Alaska in ways that few at the time realized.In an essay in the collection "Alaska at War," historian Stephen Haycox describes Anchorage in 1940 as "a sleepy little village" with a population of about 3,500.The summer of 1940 saw the beginning of construction of a military base on what had hitherto been hay fields and birch forests north of Government Hill....Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/06/04/151036/how-wwiis-battle-of-dutch-harbor.html#storylink=cpy...
Source: CBS News
Jun 4, 2012
Four decades ago, a U.S. soldier wrote home, telling of the horrors he saw in Vietnam. He was killed before he could mail the letters that were later stolen by the North Vietnamese. The letters were finally released by the Vietnamese military as part of a symbolic exchange with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, reports Wyatt Andrews.
Source: Fox News
Jun 4, 2012
HANOI, Vietnam – The Vietnamese government has announced it will open three previously restricted sites for excavation by the U.S. to search for troop remains from the war.The announcement from Vietnam Minister of Defense Phung Quang Thanh comes as U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and his Vietnamese counterpart participated in a first-of-its-kind joint exchange of artifacts from the war in Hanoi.A Department of Defense spokesman said in a statement the department believes Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command (JPAC) research teams will greatly benefit from access to the new sites in their search for the approximately 1,200 U.S. service members still missing in Vietnam....
Source: Yahoo News
Jun 4, 2012
PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — Six months after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan sent four aircraft carriers to the tiny Pacific atoll of Midway to draw out and destroy what remained of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.But this time the U.S. knew about Japan's plans. U.S. cryptologists had cracked Japanese communications codes, giving Fleet Commander Adm. Chester Nimitz notice of where Japan would strike, the day and time of the attack, and what ships the enemy would bring to the fight.The U.S. was badly outnumbered and its pilots less experienced than Japan's. Even so, it sank four Japanese aircraft carriers the first day of the three-day battle and put Japan on the defensive, greatly diminishing its ability to project air power as it had in the attack on Hawaii....
Source: Salon
Jun 4, 2012
TRANG BANG, Vietnam (AP) — In the picture, the girl will always be 9 years old and wailing “Too hot! Too hot!” as she runs down the road away from her burning Vietnamese village.She will always be naked after blobs of sticky napalm melted through her clothes and layers of skin like jellied lava.She will always be a victim without a name.It only took a second for Associated Press photographer Huynh Cong “Nick” Ut to snap the iconic black-and-white image 40 years ago. It communicated the horrors of the Vietnam War in a way words could never describe, helping to end one of the most divisive wars in American history....
Source: Gadling.com
Jun 3, 2012
The ancient city of Cahokia in Illinois was the center of an advanced civilization from about 700 to 1400 A.D. Covering six square miles and home to up to 20,000 people, it was the largest prehistoric city north of Mexico. It ruled over a large area and had trade networks stretching across North America....Cahokia's importance is recognized by it being designated a state historic site and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It makes a good day trip from St. Louis and has an excellent interpretive center. You can also climb up some of the mounds to get a sweeping view of the site.Now archaeologists have discovered one of its suburbs in a derelict neighborhood of East St. Louis. It's not much to look at today. The excavation is taking place between a derelict meatpacking plant and an abandoned strip club. Back in the day, though, it was a prosperous suburb of an important city with more than a thousand dwellings and earthen pyramids just like those of Cahokia....
Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer
Jun 3, 2012
Grab your passport and go to -- Ohio?The Ohio Historical Society started its first-ever Passport to Your Ohio History program on May 24. The free program is designed to continue for about two years."We were looking for a way for people to learn about the sites and learn about Ohio," said Jane Mason, spokeswoman for the Ohio Historical Society. "It's a great way for people to travel around Ohio and see the wonderful sites."...
Source: NYT
Jun 3, 2012
LONDON — Braving a day of bone-chilling, rain-dampened weather, a crowd estimated by the police at more than a million people lined the banks of the Thames on Sunday to acclaim Queen Elizabeth II as she marked 60 years on the throne with a royal river pageant of a kind last seen 350 years ago.The stirring flotilla of a thousand boats, the highlight of a four-day holiday to celebrate the monarch’s diamond jubilee, combined with the familiar miseries of the British climate to produce a vignette that some embraced as a demonstration in minor key of the character of Elizabeth’s reign: unflappable steadiness. The monarch, who is 86, and her husband, Prince Philip, 90, never donned coats through the hours they spent on the open deck of the royal barge as it made its way down the seven-mile course of the pageant, waving at crowds that shouted “God save the queen” and hoisted a forest of plastic Union Jacks. Neither did they sit in the thronelike red velvet chairs set in the prow, apparently reluctant to claim a luxury not available to the onlookers....
Source: NYT
Jun 3, 2012
TOKYO — The police on Sunday arrested one of the two remaining fugitive suspects from the doomsday cult behind the 1995 nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway, Japanese media reported.The reports said the police in the Tokyo suburb of Sagamihara arrested Naoko Kikuchi, 40, a former top member of the Aum Shinrikyo cult. Ms. Kikuchi is accused of manufacturing the sarin gas used in the attack, which killed 13 commuters and sickened at least 5,000 more.Ms. Kikuchi had eluded the police for 17 years, even though her photograph has appeared on wanted posters across the nation. Her arrest came five months after another cult member wanted in connection with the attack, Makoto Hirata, surrendered to the police....
Source: NYT
Jun 3, 2012
“New York is a city of contrasts,” the analysis began. “An amazing, infinite, inspiring, shocking, beautiful, ugly, old, new city of seven million plus.” Seven decades later, it still is. The same adjectives apply, but the city is even bigger: The population has grown to a record 8.3 million.That description of the city came from a market analysis produced by The New York Times and several other newspapers, aimed at advertisers. It was drawn from the 1940 census....
Source: Independent (UK)
Jun 2, 2012
...1 The first words the infant Elizabeth would have heard were "Is it a boy or a girl?", said by her father, the future George VI.2 For constitutional reasons, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Cabinet Secretary were present in an adjoining room.3 The future Queen's nickname was Lizbet or Lil.4 "Even at the age of one, she had what I call 'royal manners'," one of her first nannies, Nanny Wilkins, once revealed.5 Her favourite subjects, according to one governess, were drawing and animal stories....
Source: Irish Central
Jun 2, 2012
Up to three ships from the Ottoman Empire sailed up the River Boyne to Drogheda to deliver supplies during the famine, according to a local historian.Both the Drogheda Argus and the Drogheda Conservative newspapers reported on 'foreign ships' that docked at the town of Drogheda from May 10-14, 1847.According to the Drogheda Independent, two of the ships arrived from the Ottoman Port of Thessalonica, which is now known as Salonika. The third ship arrived from the port of Stettin. The three ships brought wheat and Indian Corn for local merchants in the area....
Source: NYT
Jun 2, 2012
TA-NEHISI COATES, a senior editor for The Atlantic and author of “The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood,” had only a passing interest in the Civil War when he picked up James M. McPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era” three years ago. By its end, he had become “fanatical.”“I went through all the books I could,” Mr. Coates said. “I was driving my wife crazy, my son crazy.” So he took his obsession on the road.For the last three summers he has traveled with his family to Civil War battlefields. This summer he’ll be doing the same. A collection of essays and novels on the war (yes, plural) is in the works.Below Mr. Coates answers questions on the battlefields he’s visited.Q. What was the first battlefield you visited?
Source: AP
Jun 2, 2012
The U.S. Department of Justice says at least some materials sealed as part of the court case against seven men involved in the 1972 Watergate burglary should be released.
The agency responded Friday to a request by a Texas history professor who is seeking access to materials he believes could help answer lingering questions about the burglary that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation.
Luke Nichter of Texas A&M University-Central Texas in Killeen, Texas, wrote the chief judge of the federal court in Washington to ask that potentially hundreds of pages of documents be unsealed. The judge said in a letter made public earlier this year that the professor had "raised a very legitimate question" about whether the material should remain sealed, and he ordered the Department of Justice to respond with any objections.
Source: NYT
Jun 2, 2012
The White House said Friday that President Obama had written a letter to the Polish president expressing “regret” for using the term “Polish death camp” this week while honoring a Polish World War II resistance hero rather than wording that would have made it clear that he meant a death camp operated by Nazi Germany on Polish soil....
Source: NYT
Jun 2, 2012
It seemed self-evident at the time: A museum devoted to documenting the events of Sept. 11, 2001, would have to include photographs of the hijackers who turned four passenger jets into missiles. Then two and a half years ago, plans to use the pictures were made public.New York City’s fire chief protested that such a display would “honor” the terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center. A New York Post editorial called the idea “appalling.” Groups representing rescuers, survivors and victims’ families asked how anyone could even think of showing the faces of the men who killed their relatives, colleagues and friends.The anger took some museum officials by surprise.“You don’t create a museum about the Holocaust and not say that it was the Nazis who did it,” said Joseph Daniels, chief executive of the memorial and museum foundation....
Source: International Business times
Jun 1, 2012
With the premiere of Rupert Sanders' "Snow White and the Huntsman" starring Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron, many are wondering if the folk tale popularized by the Brothers Grimm and Walt Disney -- about the girl with hair as black as ebony and skin as white as snow -- is based on a real person.Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, the authors of the original "Schneewittchen und die sieben Zwerge," or the story "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," were German scholars who collected, researched and wrote stories based on folklore in the early 1800s. The stories, which were spread by word of mouth, were treated as scholarly research, and the Grimm brothers eventually compiled more than 200 of them. One of those stories was "Snow White," and based on accounts from various people -- from peasants to aristocrats -- which drew some criticism based on how accurately the oral tradition was rendered during the transcription process.However, in 1994, a German scholar named Eckhard Sander wrote "Schneewittchen: Marchen oder Wahrheit?" which translates to "Snow White: Is It a Fairy Tale?" in an effort to debunk claims that the protagonist in Snow White never existed and was not based on historical fact....
Source: NYT
Jun 1, 2012
“Halt! Advance and give the countersign!”So began an 1895 article in The New York Times detailing how William Wilkins was prevented from visiting his ancestral graveyard in Fort Totten, then a Queens military base, by a sentry at the gates.The fort, Mr. Wilkins insisted to no avail, had once been his family’s rolling farmland and the cemetery on it was still his. It had been retained, he said, by a special provision set out when his father sold the property, which was eventually bought by the military before the Civil War.More than a century later, Tom Loggia, Mr. Wilkins’s great-grandnephew, is continuing the family quest to seek out and memorialize a cemetery that he steadfastly insists lies unmarked on the land....
