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: Telegraph (UK)
October 30, 2009
Using his video blog on the Kremlin website to wade into a debate that still divides Russia more than half a century after Stalin's death, Mr Medvedev said it was wrong to be an apologist for someone who had destroyed their own people and sent millions of innocents to die in the gulag or be shot.
"Even now you can hear people say that what happened to the many victims was justified by certain higher government aims," said a sombre-faced Mr Medvedev.
"[Bu
Source: Salon/Lost in Berlin
October 29, 2009
THE TERM “SEXUAL REVOLUTION” has become such a cliché in recent decades that it is hard to imagine that it ever had a tangible meaning. And yet, the transformation of global sexual mores that picked up steam in the 1960s really did transform society in ways we are still trying to understand. But how did it get started? Despite the theoretical writings of Sigmund Freud and the prophets of free love, this social and cultural earthquake frequently had humble beginnings. In Central Europe, for examp
Source: The Local (Sweden)
October 29, 2009
Swedish archaeologists are marveling over a collection of 9,000 year old artifacts recently uncovered at an excavation site central Sweden.
Parts of a bow, a paddle, and the wooden shaft of an axe are among the discoveries recently unearthed from the Stone Age settlement Kanaljorden outside of Motala, according to local media reports.
“Totally unbelievable,” project leader Fredrik Hallgren with the Stiftelsen Kulturmiljövård Mälardalen (‘Cultural Preservation Society of Mälar
Source: Live Science
October 29, 2009
Big orange veggies are pretty strange as far as holiday symbols go, but there are actual historical reasons that we carve pumpkins every Halloween.
Like Halloween itself, the display and carving of pumpkins – from the lanterns placed inside to the scary faces we pick – has pagan origins that morphed with the passage of time as well as the crossing of an ocean.
The modern traditions of Halloween have roots in a Celtic holiday called Samhain, which was celebrated througho
Source: BBC
October 29, 2009
Few wounds heal more slowly than those inflicted by a civil war. Dan Collyns reports from Peru where people are still struggling for reconciliation nearly a decade after the killing ended.
It was too late for the vet to save Tino and Zorrita. The Labradors died from poison which had been left on the doorstep of their owner's home in a middle-class Lima suburb.
Then came the telephone calls. "What we did to your dogs. We are going to do to you," said the deep-v
Source: Time
October 30, 2009
Nelson Mandela was still in jail when the first street was named after him. By the time he retired as President of South Africa, hundreds of streets, squares and schools bore his name, as did many more pop songs, books and movies. Not hard to understand. After all, Mandela, who endured 27 years of incarceration under apartheid only to emerge with forgiveness for his racist jailers and become an icon to the world, is an inspiring figure. But what about unauthorized books that bear Mandela's name?
Source: The Daily Beast
October 29, 2009
More Bush-era torture documents could be forthcoming, if the Obama administration delivers on its promise to review more than 200 internal Bush documents, including a top-secret Defense memo outlining torture methods that authorities allegedly misplaced. The documents in question are part of a longstanding ACLU Freedom of Information Act request pertaining to the death, treatment, and rendition of detainees. The Bush administration had originally dismissed the now-scrutinized documents as irrele
Source: WSJ
October 30, 2009
Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader known for his steamrolling straight-talk, strutted into a modern art show at one of Moscow's famous exhibition halls in 1962 and explained, without mincing words, that the avant-garde art on display looked like dog droppings. "Why do you disfigure the faces of the Soviet people?" the excitable Khrushchev cried, rebuking the artists for their abstractions. He hurled a particularly offensive epithet at sculptor Ernst Neizvestny, who responded -- in a
Source: LA Times
October 30, 2009
Reporting from Tokyo and Seoul - Several politicians in South Korea and Japan have begun exploring the possibility of a joint history textbook between their nations and China. But given the lingering differences over issues ranging from past wars to current territorial claims, the proposal faces numerous hurdles.
Members of South Korea's ruling Grand National Party met informally in Seoul this month with counterparts from the majority Democratic Party of Japan. One of the main topi
Source: NYT
October 29, 2009
The Obama administration gave the green light this afternoon for construction to begin on the National Mall for a long-delayed memorial to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
At a ceremony on the future site of the memorial across the Tidal Basin from the Jefferson Memorial, Ken Salazar, the Interior secretary, signed the construction permits, along with Harry E. Johnson, the memorial project’s chief executive.
“It is time to honor Martin Luther King Jr. right here
Source: WSJ
October 30, 2009
YORK, Pa. -- Forty years after race riots erupted on its streets, this city in the southeastern corner of Pennsylvania is about to elect its first African-American mayor.
Both the Democrat and Republican candidates are African-American, with Democrat Kim Bracey, York's former director of community development and a relative newcomer to politics, the favorite to win in a city where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by nearly 2 to 1.
Republican Wendell Banks failed
Source: Newsweek
October 29, 2009
Thanks to recent discoveries that they were canny hunters, clever toolmakers, and probably endowed with the gift of language, Neanderthals have overcome some of the nastier calumnies hurled at them, especially that they were the "dumb brutes of the North," as evolutionary ecologist Clive Finlayson describes their popular image. But they have never managed to shake the charge that their extinction 30,000 years ago, when our subspecies of Homo sapiens replaced them in their European home
Source: CNSNews.com
October 29, 2009
President Barack Obama brought back Bush-era military trials for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay on Wednesday by signing new rules into law that will give detainees stronger legal rights in court.
Obama approved the new rules -- most of which he proposed in May -- as part of a $680 billion defense policy bill that cut some pricey and overlapping military weapons programs.
Source: BBC History Magazine
October 20, 2009
According to our latest survey, the majority of people believe that after ten years have passed events have definitely crossed into history. But what about those who study the past for a living? We spoke to a group of historians about their views on the border between current affairs and history. Following are samples of their responses:
Professor Arne Westad, London School of Economics:"There is no automatic cut-off point for when history stops and current affairs begin."
Source: BBC History Magazine
October 30, 2009
We asked a panel of BBC magazine readers when they thought the past became history – and the results are in.
The very recent past should be considered history. That’s the result of a BBC History Magazine survey, which found that the majority of respondents believe the cut-off between current affairs and history occurred no more than ten years ago. Close to a third insisted that even a second before the present counts as history.
We commissioned this poll to coincide wit
Source: Medieval News
October 28, 2009
One of the most important battles in British history is marked in the wrong place, according to new research.
Bosworth, fought in 1485 and ending in the death of Richard III, was believed to have taken place on Ambion Hill, near Sutton Cheney in Leicestershire. But following a three-year project, the Battlefields Trust said the discovery of ammunition two miles to the south west proved the location was wrong.
The battle ended decades of civil war which is now known as
Source: USA Today
October 28, 2009
Awaiting takeoff, seatback grinding your knees, seatmate snoring, babies wailing and you wonder — who's to blame?
Well, Count von Zeppelin, it turns out.
And now we're celebrating a century of his 1909 bright idea: passenger airline travel.
"Really, it was sort of a desperation measure," says historian Ron Davies of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. "He couldn't sell enough of his zeppelins to the military, s
Source: boston.com
October 29, 2009
PROVIDENCE - Rhode Island residents will vote next year whether to shorten the state’s longest-in-the-nation formal name because of its association with slavery, state lawmakers decided yesterday.
Officially, Rhode Island is called “The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,’’ which some say conjures painful images of slavery in a state whose captains once grew wealthy off the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Critics of the move to shorten the state’s formal moniker argue the
Source: boston.com
October 29, 2009
Terry Greene of Cambridge had just dropped her son at school when she heard on the radio that a second tower at the World Trade Center had been hit by an airliner. At that moment, on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Greene knew that the tragedy in New York was no accident.
A short time later, Greene heard that United Flight 93 had crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pa. “My first reaction was, ‘Good, it didn’t hit another target,’ ’’ Greene recalled.
But Greene’s world soo
Source: BBC
October 29, 2009
This month Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi passed two milestones.
The first was 14 years - that is the amount of time she has now spent in detention during the past two decades.
The second was to meet Western diplomats and begin talks with Burmese military leaders - talks which some think could see her released.
"Given the impasse of the last 20 years, what has happened in the last three months gives us the hope there will be some movemen
