Roundup: Talking About History

Hiram Hover: What's So Bad About Being Called a Redskin?

The Washington Post carries a report today about the research of Smithsonian Institution linguist Ives Goddard, who offers a revisionist history of the origins and initial meaning of the term “redskin.” Goddard wants to argue that the term originated with native Americans—not European settlers—and that even when it later entered the English vernacular, it did so as a term of respect, and

Sam Tanenhaus: Bill Buckley's Effect on NY Politics

[Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, is writing a biography of William F. Buckley Jr.] orty years after it was decided, the mayoral race of 1965 remains one of the most memorable elections in New York history. It was also one of the strangest, thanks in large part to the candidacy of William F. Buckley Jr. It was odd enough that Buckley, author, magazine editor, columnist, debater and gadfly - with no experience in practical politics - should have sought thi

Gerald D. McKnight: Interview About the Warren Commission

Mr. McKnight is professor emeritus of history at Hood College in Frederick, MD and the author of the new book, Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why (University Press of Kansas) How did

Sydney's Forts To Be Renovated

The tunnel is long, dark and cut through solid sandstone, a testament to Victorian engineering. It opens out into a series of sunken, zig-zag trenches that in turn lead to a set of enormous circular gun emplacements. A century ago this historic military fort, which commands spectacular views of Sydney's harbour, rang to the clatter of pith-helmeted colonial troops in hobnailed boots. Now the soldiers have been replaced by a modern army of carpenters, masons and electricians who are

Paul Kelbie: Amateur British Historian Claims To Locate Home of Odysseus

After a two-year odyssey of his own, an amateur British historian claims to have located the mythical land of Ithaca " the island homeland of Homer's legendary Greek hero Odysseus. For centuries, scholars the world over have argued over the whereabouts of the lost kingdom, ruled over by one of the Greek heroes of the Trojan war. Now thanks to 21st-century computer technology, space photography and the obsession of a management consultant from Surrey, the riddle may

John Hooper: Hiter Closer To Bomb Than Previously Thought

A book published in Italy today is set to reignite a smouldering controversy over how close the Nazis came to manufacturing a nuclear device in the closing stages of the second world war. The 88 year-old author, Luigi Romersa, is the last known witness to what he and some historians believe was the experimental detonation of a rudimentary weapon on an island in the Baltic in 1944. Hitler's nuclear programme has become a subject of intense dispute in recent months, parti

Richard Alleyne: Historians Uncover Spicy Secret of Britain's First Man Of Curry

It is almost unthinkable to imagine Mr Darcy, Jane Austen's dashing hero, rounding off a night out with his friends at a curry house. But according to a recent discovery, he could well have done. Historians have found that Britain's first Indian restaurant was opened in 1809, in the midst of the Napoleonic wars and during the period in which Austen set Pride and Prejudice. The Hindoostane Coffee House was established by Sake Dean Mahomed, an Indian-born entrepreneur, as

James M. Banner: What's Wrong with the Teaching American History Grants

[James M. Banner, Jr., a historian in Washington, is a moving force behind efforts to establish a National History Center in the nation’s capital and co-director of the History News Service.] ... What most forcibly caught my attention [reviewing applications this year for the Teaching American History grants] ... was the absence of any evidence that the institutions and school systems applying for federal funds had given any thought to institutionalizing and continuing the programs

Carl Nolte: San Francisco Plans Museum, Exhibits To Focus On People

These fall days mark the beginning of a major effort by the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society to transform the venerable Old Mint at Fifth and Mission streets into a museum to celebrate San Francisco. Groundbreaking for the first phase of a seismic upgrading of the building is Oct. 7, but dreams and a grand vision for the future already swirl around the gray granite walls. The society sees a museum that shows the essential story of the city itself, something n

Scott Mervis: Reflections On Pittsburgh's First Rolling Stones Concert

By the time the Beatles landed in Pittsburgh in September 1964, the Fab Four had already charted an amazing 15 hits that year, starting in January with "I Want to Hold Your Hand." It's no wonder you couldn't hear them singing over the screams of young girls at the sold-out Civic Arena. The Rolling Stones' first local appearance was a different story altogether. In fact, we could have fought off this British Invasion with a couple of guys from the Elks Club. An

Kevin Cullen: Maintaining Belief In Peace Aided N. Ireland's Transformation

It was poignant and fitting that the Catholic priest, the Rev. Alec Reid, was one of the two clergymen who came forward yesterday to verify that the Irish Republican Army had gotten rid of its hidden arsenal. Reid knows first-hand the terrible power of those weapons, and the transforming power of dialogue and reconciliation. In March 1988, he knelt over the bodies of two British soldiers who had been executed by the IRA after stumbling into an IRA funeral cortege in Bel

Brendan O'Keefe: Australians History Conference Focuses On Panics And Spin

Governments and the media were as complicit today in whipping up widespread public fears as they were in 18th-century England when so-called moral panics surfaced, according to an academic running a conference on the phenomenon. University of Newcastle historian David Lemmings, one of three organisers of the two-day symposium Moral Panics: The Media and the Law, which opens today, said governments legitimated their authority with measures that set up anxiety about threats to moral a

James Lighthizer: Gambling With History (Re: Gettysburg)

[James Lighthizer is the president of the Civil War Preservation Trust.] The mere mention of Gettysburg conjures up images of beautiful, rolling Pennsylvania farmland and stone monuments commemorating the soldiers who fought there 142 years ago. Nearly two million tourists visit Gettysburg each year to pay tribute to the place where, as Abraham Lincoln said, this nation was given "a new birth of freedom." Sadly, there are investors who simply do not understand

A six-part Holocaust documentary features shocking new interviews with death camp guards

'PEOPLE don't know, they just don't know," says Laurence Rees, writer and producer of Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution. "And if they do know about the Holocaust, the folk memory is wrong, surrounded by caricatures." Rees speaks as a biographer of the most evil place in the world. His acclaimed six-part documentary, first screened on the BBC earlier this year, comes to the ABC this week. In the spring of 1940, Auschwitz was no more than a neat r

A Lincoln for our time

Illinois is a state in which Abraham Lincoln is revered and the state government is not. So it was not terribly surprising that when the state undertook the establishment of a new Lincoln presidential library and museum in Springfield, the project generated complaints that it failed to do justice to the Great Emancipator. ... The facility was marred by cost overruns, construction flaws, political meddling and a bogus 2002 grand opening staged before the buildings were actually open

Angel Burria-Quintana: Britain's Festival of History Draws Attention

I am queuing outside a portable toilet behind a Viking and a Roman legionary. The air is thick with the fatty smell of spit-roasts from a nearby Norman encampment. Over the sound system, an excited narrator gives a real-time, blow-by-blow account of the action unfolding on a grassy arena, where a division of British light infantry is facing a French line at the battle of Salamanca - originally fought in 1812. Acrid gunpowder smoke wafts over a crowd of wet onlookers. A woman in a heavy velvet dr

Denis Gray: A Look At Cambodia's Former King

Just as the twilight dims the gilded spires and burnished eaves of the fairytale palace where his remains will rest, Norodom Sihanouk - king, clown, prisoner, political escape artist - is fading from a stage he dominated for half a century of periodic triumph amid unrelenting tragedy. Indochina, as one of the hottest Cold War battlefields, put his small, exotic, impoverished country on the world map. But so did this larger-than-life character - lovable and detested, greatly gifted a

Barbara McMahon: Italy Debates Replacing Public Masterpieces With Replicas

Are Italy's artistic and architectural treasures too precious to remain outside in streets and piazzas, at the mercy of vandals? It may sound extreme to suggest that cities such as Florence and Rome could be stripped bare in the future, their historic statues and monuments moved indoors and copies put in their place, but calls are growing for a debate on whether many of the most vulnerable works of art should be removed from public locations for their own safety. Concern is mounting

Sarah Womack: Lost Survey Lifts Covers On Post-War Britain

Revelations about sex in Britain a few years after the war, including the disclosure that one in five women had an extra-marital affair, have been discovered in a university archive. Long before Britain could be thought to encourage a permissive society, one in five men confessed to a homosexual experience and one in four said he had sex with prostitutes. Most women complained that their husbands were terrible in bed. These were the findings of the 1949 Mass Observation

Hiroko Ihara: Remembering The Battleship Yamato

Sixty years after the battleship Yamato was sunk in the East China Sea during World War II, the popularity of a new museum dedicated to the vessel has far exceeded expectations, attracting nearly 700,000 visitors since its opening in April. A magnificent 26.3-meter-long model of the Yamato holds pride of place in the Yamato Museum in Kure, although there is much more to see. Among the 120,000 items in the museum are a Zero fighter, a submarine, a Kaiten suicide torpedo and various t