The initial research for my book Lynching in the West: 1850-1935 grew out of an interdisciplinary approach in which I sought to pair historical case records with the analysis of photographic and historic images. In addition to tracking down historic photographs, drawings, and prints, I began looking for any kind of official documentation that I could find: an announcement in a newspaper, published leaflets, or first-person narratives which could be confirmed in multiple sources.

In California, there is only one historical marker. It is located in Placerville, or "Hangtown," as it has long been known. The sign marks a spot that is just yards from where one of California's most infamous hang trees stood. The marker is in front of Hangman's Tree Bar, and inside, next to the jukebox, a small papier-mâché tree branch spouts from the wall and is said to mark the site of the original tree. As recently as 2005, a mannequin was tethered to the building with a hangman's noose and dangled above the bar's entrance. According to the bartender, this Western-clad creation must be relynched each year due to the bleaching effects of the sun. ...

The historical record clearly indicates that while telephone poles, bridges, corral gates, and, in at least one case, a wagon could be used to hang a person, the method of choice for lynch mobs and vigilantes usually involved throwing a piece of rope over a low-hanging branch of one of California's many native oak species....

A Salzburg publishing house has reissued Leopold
Mozart's legendary treatise on violin playing - 237 years after it was first in print, the Austrian press agency reported on Thursday. Polzer, an art publishing house, published 3,000 linen-bound copies of a revised version of the comprehensive treatise written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's father around 1756.

A team of musicians and historians carefully adapted Leopold Mozart's 334-page work for the 21st century.

One reason for the republication was that the previous second edition, published in 1769/70, could by now be obtained only with great difficulty and at great cost.

Outdated language and writing style proved to be further obstacles for modern reception, Kasparek said. The new edition was based on a
copy from Salzburg's Mozarteum foundation.

Salzburg art patron Donald Kahn acquired 2,000 copies and plans to give them to music schools in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The shop price will be 29.50 euros, the publishing house said.

DAYTON, Ohio -— Under draft legislation being proposed for consideration by Congress, Hawthorn Hill —- the longtime home of aviation pioneer Orville Wright —- and the Wright brothers' airplane factory —- now part of Delphi Corp.'s Home Avenue auto parts plant —- would become part of the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park.

The Dayton-based Aviation Heritage Foundation, created at the direction of Congress, collectively promotes nine regional sites that Congress recognized in 2004 as the National Aviation Heritage Area. Those independently operated sites are a diverse mix including the national aviation park, the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, the Neil Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wapakoneta and the Wright B Flyer Museum at the Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport in Miamisburg.

U.S. Rep. Michael M. Honda introduced a bipartisan resolution to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, calling for Japan to formally acknowledge and accept responsibility for sexually enslaving women during World War II.

A similar resolution, drafted by Rep. Lane Evans, passed the committee last September. But it failed to go to the House's plenary voting session due to Japan's strong lobbying.

More than 200,000 ``comfort women'' suffered gang rape, forced abortions and other humiliations under Japan's colonial and wartime occupation of Asia from the 1930s through the duration of World War II, a statement posted on Honda's Web site said.

``These women's hope is a modest one: That the government of Japan acknowledges, apologizes and accepts full historical responsibility for this crime,'' Honda said.

The Japanese-American lawmaker said the purpose of this resolution is not to bash or humiliate Japan.

``This legislation, rather, seeks to achieve justice for the few remaining women who survived these atrocities, and to shed light on a grave human rights violation that has remained unknown for so many years,'' he said.

Daniel Kohns, Honda's spokesman, said a hearing will be held in the next couple of weeks.

The resolution is cosponsored by Reps. Edward R. Royce, Christopher H. Smith, Diane E. Watson, David Wu, Phil Hare and Delegate Madaleine Bordallo. It does not have the force of law but can place the Japanese government on the defensive.

Honda received the baton from Evans, who recently retired due to Parkinson's disease, to restart the legislative action.

The new resolution has a stronger tone than the previous version, pressing for Japan's formal apology as well as acknowledgment and responsibility for the sexual slavery and admitting that there was ``coercion.''

It also calls for an apology by the Japanese prime minister himself in his official capacity.

Last October, Prime Minister Shinjo Abe briefly told the Japanese parliament that he accepted a 1993 statement, under which Yohei Kono, then chief cabinet secretary, officially acknowledged and apologized for the enslavement of comfort women.

Japan established the Asian Women Fund in 1995 to help the victims of enslavement. But the fund is private and not a government fund.

Tokyo argues that the fund was established with cooperation from the government and the Japanese people, and that the government contributed funds for the organization's operating costs as well as its medical welfare support projects, according to a wire news report.

Historians say at least 200,000 young women, mostly Koreans but also from Taiwan, China, the Philippines and Indonesia, were forced to serve as sex slaves in Japanese army brothels.

The head of the Czech Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, announced on Wednesday that it was setting up a joint project with the Interior Ministry under which the country's Catholic priests will be screened for evidence of collaboration with the former regime. Historian Petr Blazek, present at the ministry's StB archive during a visit by the cardinal, explains that such collaboration took various forms.

"Many priests collaborated through different pro-regime organisations. They openly worked with the regime and it was clear to believers that they were not independent. But later there were priests who collaborated with the secret police in many different ways. They were agents, they provided flats...it depended on the agency they were involved with - whether it was intelligence or counter-intelligence."

Cardinal Vlk has called for measured and objective judgement of members of the clergy who collaborated, describing the methods of the StB as "very tough". But was the pressure put on them really so great?
"In some cases their methods were very, very tough. They applied pressure, sometimes using compromising materials or putting pressure on the relatives of priests. In some cases the priests came to regard collaborating as a normal part of their lives. I'd like to say also that many of the people in the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church used by the StB were lay people involved in the church."
Cardinal Vlk's new project is called Otevrena minulost - Open Past.

Lesley Herrmann says there are a couple of ways to convince teens that school at the new Saturday Academy of American History at Karr High School in Algiers is a good idea.

"It looks very good on your resume," said Herrmann, executive director of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. "Also, it's a perk. The courses are very interesting and entertaining," covering material beyond the regular classroom.

Plus, there are no tests, grades or homework.

The Lehrman Institute is partnering with the Algiers Charter School Association to offer the free course for grades eight through 12. The series started Saturday and runs through March, covering World War II, the Civil War, the American civil rights movement and geography and technology.

There are too many freshly-cut flowers lying next to pictures of teenage boys in Kosovo.

On a hillside surrounded by snow-capped mountains, I am looking at the graves of those who died fighting for the Kosovo Liberation Army. A portrait of a young man in uniform is etched into the shiny marble head stone of each one, an Albanian flag flutters above every grave. The last person who lies here was killed only six years ago, the oldest grave is just 11 years old...

It was to stop the killing of Albanians who make up nearly 90% of Kosovo's population that Nato fought its last European war. Now the US and Britain believe that speed is of the essence in making Kosovo independent...

A federal judge abruptly adjourned a hearing yesterday on the settlement of a dispute over unpaid life insurance policies of Holocaust victims after a Miami lawyer and a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp raised objections.

Judge George B. Daniels of Federal District Court in Manhattan gave no explanation for ending the session that he had convened to determine the fairness of a settlement in which an Italian insurance company agreed to provide several million dollars to Holocaust victims. The company, Assicurazioni Generali, has repeatedly denied allegations that it systematically refused to pay billions of dollars in claims on insurance policies of Holocaust victims.

The General Assembly would express "profound regret" for Virginia's role in slavery and for "historic wrongs visited upon native peoples" in the latest version of a proposed apology that cleared a House panel yesterday...

The committee accepted a substitute...which calls for the assembly to express "its profound regret for the commonwealth's role in sanctioning the immoral institution of human slavery, in the historic wrongs visited upon native peoples, and in all other forms of discrimination and injustice that have been rooted in racial and cultural bias and misunderstanding."

[Del. A. Donald] McEachin's measure originally called for the General Assembly "to atone for the involuntary servitude of Africans and call for reconciliation among all Virginians."

Yesterday he offered to change the word "atone," which he said could carry the implication of reparations - "and that's not what his resolution is meant to do" - to "contrition," which means "a sincere remorse for wrongdoing."

BEIJING -- China has accused Taiwan of trying to promote independence by rewriting its history textbooks.

The revised books for secondary school students will cease to refer to the mainland, or “our country” or “this country” and substitute the word China, emphasising the view that the island is not a part of China.

Yang Yi, the spokesman for China’s policymaking Taiwan Affairs Office, accused Taipei of playing tricks and insisted that Taiwan remained an inseparable part of China.

“We’ve noticed the developments. The political motive behind it is to transform the island’s education into an ideological one for ‘Taiwan independence’,” he said.

PARIS -- France has submitted 14 citadels and fortifications built by Marshal Vauban, the 17th-century military engineer, for a place on Unesco’s list of World Heritage sites [to mark the tricentenary of his death]...

The 14 sites include the French port city of Saint-Malo and its fortifications, left; a royal fort on the Brittany island of Belle Île, renovated by Vauban in 1689; the citadel in the eastern town of Besançon; and a mountain fort in southeastern Briançon.

They were selected as some of the best preserved of about 150 fortified sites built by Vauban across France, a formidable legacy of walled towns, bridges and coastal observation towers.

QATIF, Saudi Arabia -- Fawzia al-Hani dropped her black veil over her face and wept softly on Sunday, enveloping herself in the sadness of the last days of Imam Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad and Shiite Islam's most tragic and revered martyr.

The women in the packed community center commemorating Ashura, the anniversary of Hussein's death in A.D. 680, watched on a projection screen as a turbaned cleric described how Hussein set out with a small band of family and followers to confront a large army, then was filled with anguish when his favorite son was slaughtered before he himself was killed.

Beside the cleric, men huddled on the floor with their heads bowed, dabbing at their eyes with tissues.

To many of the region's historically persecuted Shiites, the death of Hussein in what is now Karbala, Iraq, the event that triggered the schism between Sunnis and Shiites, remains central to their lives. Shiite belief that Hussein and his descendants were robbed of their rightful succession as rulers of the Islamic world heightens their sense of persecution and victimization...