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: CNN.com
Jul 22, 2011
(CNN) -- America's political leaders are paralyzed. The government is reeling from debt. Corrupt bankers foreclose on people's homes as a brutal recession sweeps the land.We're talking, of course, about the great debt standoff of 1786: Shays' Rebellion.Nervous Americans glancing at the upcoming August 2 deadline for raising the debt ceiling are being told that the nation is entering uncharted territory. But historians say they've seen this movie before.Many of the same issues driving this modern-day standoff -- disagreement on how to handle the national debt, ineffective government and a populist citizen's revolt -- drove the 18th-century uprising that's been called America's first civil war.Historians say the lesson that can be drawn from Shays' Rebellion and other transformative events in U.S. history is this: Protracted political gridlock is seldom resolved through compromise. It comes when one political party finally beats the other down.Many Americans, however, have told pollsters that they want the political parties to work together to solve the debt ceiling crisis. Yet political stability doesn't always come through give-and-take, some historians say.
Source: NPR
Jul 22, 2011
Gay history is now a requirement in California public schools because of a new state law that says the contributions of gays and lesbians must be included in social studies instruction. Now teachers are figuring out how to incorporate the new material into their classes.Teachers Take Lessons On New LessonsEven though the first day of school is a long way off, teacher Eleanor Pracht-Smith is getting her lesson plans together. She's from a small district near Sacramento, but she and other educators traveled to San Francisco to learn about how they can address gay and lesbian issues in the classroom."I think it's important to recognize that people from any background can contribute to history, to affirm that they've made accomplishments is nice," Pracht-Smith says. "And I think that helps people who recognize themselves and identify with those groups."The law adds lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans to a long list of groups that should be represented in social studies classes, such as African-Americans or Mexican-Americans. Pracht-Smith says she's a bit conflicted about how she'll put the law into practice.
Source: BBC News
Jul 21, 2011
On Wednesday 20 July 2011 - the anniversary of the attempt on Hitler's life in 1944 - the public was informed that the grave of Rudolf Hess, the "Fuehrer's deputy", had been razed before daybreak.Beyond the fascinating coincidence in the date - there will surely be further speculation on this - the decision by Hess's heirs was surprising.They wanted to commit his mortal remains to the waves and organise a funeral at sea for a man whose mystique and influence on the far-right was strongly linked to the existence of his grave in the Bavarian village of Wunsiedel.He was already one the most interesting figures in post-war Germany, being the only high-ranking Nazi serving a life sentence imposed by the Nuremberg war-crimes court - Albert Speer, for instance, was released in 1966....
Source: BBC
Jul 21, 2011
A 120-million-year-old fossil is the oldest pregnant lizard ever discovered, according to scientists.The fossil, found in China, is a very complete 30cm (12in) lizard with more than a dozen embryos in its body.Researchers from University College London, who studied the fossil, say it was just days from giving birth when it died and was buried during the Cretaceous period.The team reports the findings in the journal Naturwissenschaften.The fossil is especially interesting to scientists because it is a reptile that produced live young rather than laying eggs....
Source: BBC
Jul 21, 2011
Thirty fugitives wanted for war crimes or crimes against humanity are believed to be hiding in Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has said.The country's Border Services Agency website named the suspects, appealing for the public's help to find them.The fugitives are listed as having come from regions including the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the suspects should be tracked down and removed from Canada.The website said the wanted men came from Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan and the former Yugoslavia....
Source: USC US-China Institute
Jul 21, 2011
As a candidate and in press conferences as president, Richard Nixon argued that the United States and the world would benefit from engaging China. He felt this was intrinsicly important because of China's size and inevitable importance. Nixon also saw China as a useful counterbalance to the Soviet Union. From the first days of his presidency he sought to signal China's leaders that he was willing to talk. The Americans sent private signals through Paris, Warsaw, and via the leaders of Romania and Pakistan. The documents summarized and linked to below detail these efforts which ultimately produced Henry Kissinger's secret trip to Beijing July 9-11, 1971. Kissinger, Nixon's National Security Advisor, flew to Beijing from Pakistan. His meetings there produced an agreement that President Nixon would visit China. Nixon went in February 1972. These documents are part of the USC U.S.-China Institute's collection of speeches, reports, memos, and images relating to U.S.-china ties. Click here to see other materials. Most of these documents have been declassified over the past decade (click here for National Archives press release). The annotations are by Clayton Dube....
Source: WaPo
Jul 21, 2011
Dignitaries, history buffs and thousands of reenactors gathered on the hills and fields outside Manassas on Thursday to mark the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Bull Run, the first major battle of the Civil War.Amid oppressive July weather, those assembled paused to remember the day — July 21, 1861 — when historians say the nation realized the war would not be a pageant, and instead could be long and bloody.The National Park Service hosted a morning ceremony outside its Henry Hill visitor center, where the battle climaxed that Sunday, and where University of Richmond President Edward L. Ayers said the battle was a kind of blessing.
Source: CBS
Jul 21, 2011
Say what you will about him, but Richard Nixon is one of the most fascinating figures in American history. Just when we think we know everything there is to know about him, we find out something else -- as it was Thursday, when the Nixon library released a new set of recordings.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jul 21, 2011
An excavation crew has unearthed a skull at the bottom of Pearl Harbor that archaeologists suspect is from a Japanese pilot who died in the historic attack in 1941. Archaeologist Jeff Fong, of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Pacific, said early analysis of the startling find has made him '75 per cent sure' that the skull belongs to a Japanese pilot. The items found with the skull, which was determined not to be from a native Hawaiian, provided some clues - forks, scraps of metal and a Coca-Cola bottle Mr Fong said researchers determined was from the 1940s....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jul 21, 2011
Ragged and filthy, their feet bare, they wear grave, careworn expressions. For these children, life was nothing but hard work, empty bellies and the constant struggle for survival. The pictures, taken by photographer Horace Warner 100 years ago in Spitalfields in London’s East End, were later used by social campaigners to illustrate the plight of the poorest children in London.On these streets and alleys, hordes of urchins eked out a hand-to-mouth existence, fending for themselves while their parents worked 14-hour days in the factories and docks....
Source: Time.com
Jul 21, 2011
Mothballing the shuttles was fine, but it's a little as if America opened an orbital B&B and then junked the jitneys that were needed to get the vacationers back and forth. And with at least 10 more three-person crews queuing up to take their turns aboard in the next few years, those space buses will be sorely missed. The good news is, there's an unlimited number of Russian Soyuz spacecraft to fill the gap. The bad news is, well, there's an unlimited number of Russian Soyuz spacecraft to fill the gap. If the shuttles were business class and the old Apollos were coach, the Soyuz is a little like hiding in the wheel well for a coast-to-coast flight, even if it's a wheel well with an impeccable safety record — at least recently.
Source: AP
Jul 21, 2011
BERLIN (AP) — The bones of Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess were exhumed under cover of darkness, burned and secretly scattered at sea after his grave became a shrine for thousands of neo-Nazis, a cemetery official said Thursday.Workers removed Hess' remains from his family's plot with the permission of his relatives, cremated the bones and dispersed them before dawn on Wednesday, said Andreas Fabel, a cemetery administrator in the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel.Hess was captured in 1941 when he parachuted into Scotland saying he wanted to negotiate peace between Britain and Germany.The attempt was denounced by Hitler, and Hess later told British authorities that the Nazi leader knew nothing of it. Hess, who spent the rest of his life as a prisoner of the World War II allies and since his death in 1987, became a martyr for the far-right. Neo-Nazis have used the anniversary of his death as an occasion to hold large rallies, with Wunsiedel — near the Czech border — often a focal point....
Source: NYT
Jul 21, 2011
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — It’s been 10 years since L. Douglas Wilder, the nation’s first elected black governor, unveiled a plan to build the United States National Slavery Museum on 38 acres here. It was to be the only institution of its kind, housed in a soaring glass-and-travertine building and illuminated at night so that cars passing on I-95 could see the full-scale replica of a slave ship in its atrium.Today the land remains vacant and is drowning in tax bills.The museum owes more than $215,000 in property taxes and fees, dating back to 2008. This month the city announced it is putting the land on the auction block.“It just seems that nothing has been happening, and nobody’s answering any of the mail we send to them, so we’re just doing the same thing to them that we’d do to anybody else,” said G. M. Haney, the city’s treasurer.The museum’s director has departed, its board no longer meets, its offices are abandoned, and the museum’s state license to solicit donations has lapsed. Some people who donated artifacts to the museum years ago have demanded them back....
Source: Shelbyville Times
Jul 20, 2011
The bodies of 11 U.S. soldiers who fought in the Battle of Monterrey in 1846 have been recovered in Mexico, and Bedford County commissioners may join a Lipscomb University history professor in asking that they be brought back to Tennessee for burial at the Mexican War Monument in Gallatin.Commissioner Joe Tillett, who spoke at Tuesday night's meeting of Bedford County Board of Commissioners' rules and legislative committee, read a July 9 opinion column in the Nashville Tennessean by Timothy D. Johnson, a history professor at Lipscomb, about the discovery of skeletal remains during a construction project in Monterrey, Mexico. The remains have been identified by Mexican archaeologists as soldiers from the army of Gen. Zachary Taylor in the Mexican-American War, and almost certainly members of the First Tennessee Volunteer Regiment, according to Johnson. No specific individuals have been identified.Bedford County was one of eight counties which supplied volunteers for the regiment.
Source: AP
Jul 20, 2011
The last of the more than 60,000 Confederate veterans who came home to Alabama after the Civil War died generations ago, yet residents are still paying a tax that supported the neediest among them. Despite fire-and-brimstone opposition to taxes among many in a state that still has "Heart of Dixie" on its license plates, officials never stopped collecting a property tax that once funded the Alabama Confederate Soldiers' Home, which closed 72 years ago. The tax now pays for Confederate Memorial Park, which sits on the same 102-acre tract where elderly veterans used to stroll.The tax once brought in millions for Confederate pensions, but lawmakers sliced up the levy and sent money elsewhere as the men and their wives died. No one has seriously challenged the continued use of the money for a memorial to the "Lost Cause," in part because few realize it exists; one long-serving black legislator who thought the tax had been done away with said he wants to eliminate state funding for the park....
Source: AP
Jul 20, 2011
Serbian authorities on Wednesday arrested the last remaining fugitive sought by the U.N. war crimes court, tracking Goran Hadzic down in a mountainous region in the northern part of the country, an official said.
The former leader of Croatia's rebel Serbs during the country's bloody ethnic war, has been on the run for eight years, managing to evade justice despite international pressure for his arrest.
He is wanted for atrocities stemming from the 1991-1995 conflict in Croatia, when he fought against Croatia's independence from the former Yugoslavia...
Source: CNN
Jul 20, 2011
Three World War II soldiers were finally laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery Wednesday after almost seven decades missing in action.
The men were buried together in a single casket with full military honors. Their remains were only recently identified through the efforts of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC).
Army Pfc. Lawrence N. Harris of Elkins, West Virginia., Cpl. Judge C. Hellums of Paris, Mississippi, and Pvt. Donald D. Owens of Cleveland were fighting with their unit, the 773rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, on October 9, 1944, during the final battle for control of the Parroy Forest in eastern France, according to the Department of Defense.
All three were killed when their M-10 tank destroyer came under enemy fire....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 20, 2011
Wearing a full suit of armour doubled the amount of energy used in battle, according to a new study in which volunteers dressed as 15th century knights were made to run on a treadmill.The exertion of carrying the steel plate armour, which weighed between 30 and 50kg, (66-110lb), would have placed additional weight on each limb and hampered the wearer’s breathing, making them weaker in a fight.This meant that heavily-armoured French soldiers stood little chance when advancing across boggy ground towards more lightly attired British archers at Agincourt in 1415, experts said.The exhaustion caused by several days of marching while clad from head to toe in metal may also have contributed to the French defeat by the English in the Battle of Crécy in 1346....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 20, 2011
Despite initial reports that the fund would continue indefinitely, the organisers claim the charity was always meant to have a finite life.It will close at the end of 2012 after 15 years of operation.A spokesman said that the charity had started to spend its last remaining £13million in capital."By 31 December 2012, we aim to close the Fund's doors and cease operating as an organisation." he added."Until then, it is continuing to work with its partners to ensure that it leaves a lasting legacy of social change.”...
Source: CNN
Jul 20, 2011
On Tuesday July 20, Christie's is auctioning never before published photos of the Beatles by photographer Mike Mitchell. The black and white collection is expected to fetch an estimated $100,000. This silhouette of "The Fab Four" is estimated to sell for $2,000 - $3,000....
