Breaking News

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.

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  1/27/20
  

  How Minneapolis made Prince

  by Rashad Shabazz

  The history of Minneapolis and why, simply put, Prince would not sound like Prince without Minneapolis.

• 

• This Art Was Looted 123 Years Ago. Will It Ever Be Returned?

  The Benin Bronzes, some of Africa’s greatest treasures, were looted in 1897. After a chance encounter, two men made it their mission to return them.

• 
• SOURCE: NY Times
  1/25/20
  

  75 Years After Auschwitz Liberation, Worry That ‘Never Again’ Is Not Assured

  Amid a surge of anti-Semitism and a rise in dehumanizing political rhetoric, there is fear that the horrific lessons of the death camp are being lost.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Times (AP)
  1/25/20
  

  Marker will honor civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer

  Research for the project was led by a Mississippi Valley State University student and history professor C. Sade Turnipseed.

• 
• SOURCE: Time
  1/21/20
  

  The Titanic Wreck Will Now Be Protected Under a 'Momentous Agreement' With the U.S.

  The world’s most famous shipwreck, the RMS Titanic, will be more rigorously protected under an international agreement, the U.K.’s Maritime Minister Nusrat Ghani confirmed ahead of a Tuesday visit to Belfast, where the ship was built.

• 
• SOURCE: Washignton Post
  1/21/20
  

  Arrested for having sex with men, this gay civil rights leader could finally be pardoned in California

  A decade before Bayard Rustin became a chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, the civil rights activist was booked into a Los Angeles County jail on suspicion of “lewd vagrancy.”

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/21/20
  

  Ancient aboriginal aquaculture system older than Stonehenge uncovered by Australia wildfires

  “It shows us they had a high level of technical skill, understanding of physics and of the natural environment.”

• 
• SOURCE: Smithsonian Mag
  1/15/20
  

  How the Government Came to Decide the Color of Your Food

  by Ai Hisano

  A business historian explains America’s commitment to regulating the appearance of everything from margarine to canned peas.

• 
• SOURCE: Smithsonian Mag
  1/17/20
  

  In 1851, a Maryland Farmer Tried to Kidnap Free Blacks in Pennsylvania. He Wasn’t Expecting the Neighborhood to Fight Back

  by James Delle

  The archaeological excavation of an empty field yielded clues and reminders of an incredible uprising long buried from history.  

• 
• SOURCE: AP
  1/22/20
  

  Trump’s Lawyers Say a Crime Is Required for Impeachment, But Experts Say That’s Not What Founding Fathers Intended

  Featuring historians Rachel Shelden, Jeffrey Engel, and David Stewart. 

• 
• SOURCE: History.com
  1/21/20
  

  How 22-Year-Old George Washington Inadvertently Sparked a World War

  The first U.S. president’s celebrated military career actually started out quite poorly, in the French and Indian War.

• 
• SOURCE: BBC History Extra
  1/21/20
  

  Tension in the Middle East and populist presidents: what the world was like 100 years ago

  by David Charlwood

  Violent uprisings in the Middle East and a populist US president vowing to put “America First”. Historian David Charlwood looks back 100 years to the global situation of 1920 and finds remarkable parallels with the present.

• 
• SOURCE: BBC History Extra
  1/21/20
  

  A brief history of presidential impeachment

  by Adam I P Smith

  Which presidents in US history have been impeached? How does impeachment work? And what might impeachment proceedings mean for President Donald Trump? 

• 
• SOURCE: Nieman Reports
  1/21/20
  

  What Happens to News When Journalists and Historians Join Forces

  How the Philadelpia Inquirer teamed up with Villanova University’s Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest and the Lenfest Center for Cultural Partnerships to research three issues--infrastructure, immigration, and the opioid crisis--that could benefit from a historical perspective.

• 
• SOURCE: LawFare
  1/21/20
  

  Why Haven't the Afghanistan Papers Gotten More Attention?

  by David V. Gioe

  The Afghanistan Papers and the Perils of Historical Analogy

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  1/20/20
  

  Native people did not use fire to shape New England’s landscape

  by Wyatt Oswald, David R. Foster, and Elizabeth Chilton

  Our new research, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, tests this human-centric view of the past using interdisciplinary, retrospective science. The data we collected suggest, in New England, this assumption is erroneous.

• 
• SOURCE: PBS
  Accessed 1/21/20
  

  Meet the Forgotten Chemist and His “Poison Squad,” Whose Fight Against Deadly Chemicals in Food Led to the Establishment of the FDA

  “The Poison Squad reminds us that our current concerns about food safety have a long history."

• 
• SOURCE: Time
  1/17/20
  

  Was Martin Luther King Jr. a Republican or a Democrat? The Answer Is Complicated

  by Olivia B. Waxman

  The civil-rights leader’s personal political party affiliation remains a mystery.

• 
• SOURCE: Time
  1/17/20
  

  How One Man's Story Offers a New Way to Understand Slave Insurrection

  by Vincent Brown

  Wager, also known by his African name, Apongo, was a leader of the largest slave rebellion in the 18th century British Empire. But long before taking his part in the great Jamaican insurrection of 1760– 1761, commonly called Tacky’s Revolt, he had been on a remarkable odyssey.

• 
• SOURCE: Washigton Post
  1/17/20
  

  ‘Last call’: When Prohibition went into effect 100 years ago

  A photo history of America’s ban on alcohol