Roundup: Talking About History

Tsuneishi Keiichi: Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army’s Biological Warfare Program

Japan's Unit 731 remains central to the fiercely contested China-Japan controversy over war crimes and war memory, and to the international debate on science and ethics. With a staff of more than 10,000, including many of Japan’s top medical scientists, 731 and its affiliated units conducted human experiments, including vivisection, on Chinese and other victims in Manchukuo and throughout China between 1933 and 1945. The experiments tested, among other things, the lethality of biological weapons

Melanie Kirkpatrick: The surprising origins of "We Gather Together," a Thanksgiving standard

Its mention of God makes it verboten in schools today. But not too many years ago this was the season when teachers would lead their students in the great ecumenical Thanksgiving hymn, "We Gather Together to Ask the Lord's Blessing." It's a singable melody, and the stirring lyrics speak directly of the Pilgrims' experience in overcoming religious persecution. Or do they? With the exception of Native Americans, we're all the descendants of those who came to the New World fr

Neal Ascherson: Modern Britain’s obsession with a constipating “national heritage”

Two hundred years after the battle of Trafalgar, when Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated the combined fleets of France and Spain, Britain is enjoying a binge of patriotism and hero-worship. Cathedral organs rumble Hearts of Oak, sea-scouts tramp giggling to war memorials, the National Maritime Museum is running a superb “Nelson:Napoleon” exhibition, and on BBC radio the usual voices debate whether Emma Hamilton was an intellectual or a tramp. And at the centre of it all is an old wooden ship.

James Sharpe : Why the Gunpowder Plot Is Still Relevant

[James Sharpe is professor of history at the University of York. His latest book is Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot.] ... Some thirty years ago I was stopped in the street by a young girl who asked me for a penny for the Guy, the “Guy” being a fairly basic effigy she had propped against a nearby wall. I replied, jokingly, that I wouldn’t give her anything as I had been baptised a Catholic. “What’s that got to do with it?”, she asked. The old rhyme exhorts us to “Remember, remember the F

John Tierney: That First Thanksgiving

Depending on when and where you went to grade school, you've probably heard one of these versions of the first Thanksgiving: 1. After a kindly Indian named Squanto taught the Pilgrims to grow corn, the Pilgrims invited the Indians to a meal to celebrate their friendship and mutual desire to live in harmony. 2. The Pilgrims held a feast to thank God, the real hero of Thanksgiving, who had earlier arranged for Squanto to be kidnapped, brought to Europe, taught Christianit

John Terry: Vice Shaped Part Of Early Portland (OR) History

Portland traditionally fancies itself a city unencumbered by corruption, a municipal mirror of Boston, its famously blue-nosed near-namesake. (Remember the founding fathers' decisive 1845 coin toss in which Portland triumphed over Beantown.) But early history shows such was never the case, and profits from dirty dealings worked their way into the pockets of the city's most socially righteous. "Where do the leading businessmen, entrepreneurs, and real e

Sam Allis: Kennedy Library Shows President In Triumph Over Faults

On a recent soft and smoky afternoon, a carbon copy of the one 42 years ago this Tuesday when I learned JFK had been killed, I visited the museum to his legacy. Like New Yorkers who have never been to the Statue of Liberty, plenty of Bostonians have never darkened the doorstep of the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Dorchester overlooking Boston Harbor. I couldn't remember the last time I'd wandered through the place. Presidential museums are strange things. They o

Chris Landers: Maryland Statesman John Hanson Helped Create Thanksgiving Holiday

As area residents tuck into their traditional Maryland crab cakes and sauerkraut this Thanksgiving Day, they might want to take a moment away from all the palaver about pilgrims and Plymouth Rock to reflect on the Maryland statesman who really created the national holiday celebrated Thursday - John Hanson of Charles County. Or so say Hanson supporters. Actually, there is considerable disagreement among historians on who established the holiday. Hanson served as "Pr

Nick Marino: Sam Cooke, "The Man Who Invented Soul"

CLARKSDALE, MISS.: NOV. 1 - Sam Cooke entered the world in 1933, the fifth of eight children, the son of a preacher and the grandson of a sharecropper. He lived here, in a home on this Mississippi Delta street corner just across town from the lazy Sunflower River. Clarksdale tour guide Robert Birdsong says the singer's house --- reportedly a one-family shotgun --- has been destroyed, replaced by a salmon-colored joint with a slab porch and a satellite dish. Birdsong will take you th

Andrew Osborn: Russians Consider Burying Lenin

On the fringe of a sprawling sombre cemetery in St Petersburg, an unsmiling metal-grey statue of Maria Ulyanova, mother of Vladimir Lenin, peers into the distance as if waiting for the return of her famous son. The boy she gave birth to in 1870 may have laid the foundations of the world's largest superpower and been the first politician in history to put Marxism into practice, but in death he has turned out to be less potent. Eighty-one years after his fatal stroke in 1

Cheryl Cornacchia: Canadian Historians Puzzle Over Veterans' War Souvenirs

On April 9, 1917, a soldier from Montreal surveyed the bloody battlefield that was Vimy Ridge and did what many other troops did at that moment. Vincent Wallace, a 29-year-old private with the 2nd Signal Company, looked around for something by which he could remember Canada's victory at the battle zone in France. Now, almost 90 years later, that young soldier's First World War prize - a German Mauser rifle - has surfaced in Montreal and is raising questions.

Emily Schwab: Earliest Settlers Enjoyed Long Feast, If Not "Traditional" Fare

The holiday table has not always been this varied. That is, it didn't boast the array of popular dishes such as green bean casserole, Jello-O molds, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and candied sweets (no marshmallows, either). What started as a harvest feast in 1621 when English settlers and members of the native Wampanoag tribe of Patuxet, now called Plymouth, sat down together to celebrate has become one of the country's favorite celebrations. That feast, says Kathleen Curtin, food his

Cathy Hulbert: Franklin Wanted Turkey As Our National Symbol

Benjamin Franklin was known as a man of vision, but what he saw in the wild turkey was more than others could see. Franklin thought so highly of the turkey that he preferred it over the bald eagle when people were trying to come up with a symbol for America. The eagle, which he called a "scavenger," was not a good choice, he said. ... Here's the story: After the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, three men were appointed to come up w

Ronald A. Wolk: Who's buried in Grant's tomb? Our education system makes it difficult to care

Polls have shown that a majority of Americans are poorly informed about politics, history, geography, and science. This past summer, Today Show weatherman Al Roker did a “man on the street” survey in which he asked fewer than a dozen randomly chosen people questions only slightly more difficult than “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” The “poll” was totally unscientific, but not totally without meaning. It revealed what scores of scientific surveys have shown in the past—that a majority of A

Kelly Toughill: War Of 1812 Loot Still Being Fought Over

Relics from the War of 1812 have sparked another cross-border row, this one over the fate of booty plundered from the White House when the British sacked Washington, D.C. A Canadian filmmaker has launched a crusade to stop U.S. treasure hunters from scavenging the wreck of HMS Fantome, which many believe was returning to Halifax with loot from the White House and Capitol Building when she sank in a storm on Nov. 24, 1814. "It is not beyond imagination to see silver

David Greenberg: Scholars grapple with Bill Clinton's legacy

Since 1982, when Hofstra University hosted a conference on the achievements of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the school has regularly corralled scores of scholars, journalists, activists, and ex-government officials to evaluate the reigns of successive presidents. Last week it was Bill Clinton's turn. Three hundred participants and hundreds more spectators trekked out to Hempstead, Long Island, for a three-day confab titled"

Slate: How do presidential libraries decide which records to release?

In a memo from 1985 that was released on Monday, Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito declared that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion." That memo was part of a haul of almost 200 pages of records from the Ronald Reagan and George Bush presidential libraries. How did the archivists at the presidential libraries decide which documents to release? They asked the presidents (and their appointed representatives). First, researchers submitted written reques

Michael Oren: The Middle East and the Making of the United States, 1776 to 1815

Just over twenty years ago, when I was a graduate student in Middle East Studies, I heard a lecture on a group of Civil War veterans, Northerners and Confederates, who had served as advisors to the Egyptian army in the late 1860s and 1870s. Not only did they modernize Egypt's defenses, the professor said, but they also built schoolhouses to teach literacy to Egyptian soldiers and their children. I was stunned. Like most Americans, I assumed that our country's involvement in the Middle East began

Alyssa A. Lappen: The Middle East Studies Association in 2005 ... More of the Same

The Middle East is changing faster than anyone could have imagined, Iraqis have voted for a constitution, popular protests have help push Syria out of Lebanon, and elections in Egypt have exposed just how fragile the Mubarak regime is. But academic specialists on that region remain stuck in the past. Their obsolete and petty obsessions will be on full display when the Middle East Studies Association holds its annual meeting from November 19 to 22 at the Wardman Park Marriott in Wash

Edward Mark: The Astonishing Indifference of Historians to Archival Issues

[Edward Mark is a Historian for the Department of the Air Force.] I should like to offer a few comments inspired by Maarja Krusten's post on the lamentable state of federal record-keeping. I doubt nothing of what Russell Riley writes in the _Washington Post_ about the lapsed state of record-keeping in the White House. It accords too well with what I have observed elsewhere. Neither do I doubt that political expediency has played a role there and elsewhere in the Executiv