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: Civil War News
April 1, 2009
Reenactors and Sons of Confederate Veterans members have done the Rebel Yell for years at Civil War battle reenactments and related events. “There’s only one problem: they’ve been doing it wrong,” according to Museum of the Confederacy Executive Director S. Waite Rawls III.
Rawls seeks to remedy the situation with “The Rebel Yell Lives!” the museum’s recently produced audio CD. He says it reveals the true sound of the famous Southern battle cry.
Many written accounts at
Source: AP
April 9, 2009
President Barack Obama is seeking $83.4 billion for U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, pressing for a war supplemental spending bill like the ones he sometimes opposed when he was senator and George W. Bush was president.
Obama's request, including money to increase U.S. troops in Afghanistan, would push the costs of the two wars to almost $1 trillion since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to the Congressional Research Service. The additional money wou
Source: NYT
April 9, 2009
Johancy Torres had never heard of the Holocaust before last fall, but she will soon be tracing the footsteps of Jews at the Dachau concentration camp during a trip for fifth- and sixth-grade students at Public School 86 in the Bronx.
“I think I may cry when I see the ovens,” said Johancy, 11, adding that she planned to take a copy of “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl” when she leaves later this month.
The Holocaust lessons are part of an unusual effort by P.S. 86’s
Source: Guardian (UK)
April 8, 2009
Libraries and archives from around the world have come together in a project to share their collections of rare books, maps, films, manuscripts and recordings online for free.
Almost four years in the making, the World Digital Library will launch on 21 April, functioning in seven languages – Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish – and including content in additional languages. A prototype of what will be on offer includes a voice recording of the 101-year
Source: WaPo
April 8, 2009
Although New Market Heights was not one of the grand battles of the Civil War, it was a place of death and valor for the soldiers who fought there. [Christian A.] Fleetwood's medal was one of 14 Medals of Honor earned by black troops in the battle that day.
The scene of their heroism has been listed by the Civil War Preservation Trust as one of the 10 most-endangered battlefields in the country.
The site [near Richmond] has one roadside marker describing the battle. Lit
Source: AFP
April 9, 2009
South Korea Thursday protested to Japan's government over its approval of another history textbook seen by Seoul as whitewashing Tokyo's brutal wartime past.
"The government strongly protests that the Japanese government Thursday approved the history textbook which justifies and beautifies past wrongdoings based on false historical perception," the foreign ministry said in a statement.
"The government calls for a fundamental correction to this."
Source: BBC
April 8, 2009
Lebanon has a long and varied history, but schools steer clear of teaching about the country's recent past, as the BBC's Natalia Antelava found out when she visited a school in the capital, Beirut.
###
Kristina and Ali sit side by side in their history class and together they learn about the Phoenicians and the Romans, the Greeks and the Ottomans.
But when it comes to Lebanon's more recent, turbulent past - their school teaches them nothing. Modern history
Source: Time Magazine
April 9, 2009
[#1] Kidnapping Julius Caesar: 75 B.C.
The small inlets in Cilicia, now part of southern Turkey, were the lairs of pirates who terrorized the eastern Mediterranean in the two centuries before Christ. The abduction of their most famous victim, however, proved to be a miscalculation. A band of Cilician pirates kidnapped a 25-year old Roman nobleman on the way to Rhodes. He charmed them, telling his captors to double their ransom demand and joking about how he would punish them. When t
Source: Latin America Herald Tribune
April 7, 2009
Mexican archaeologists began this month the recovery of a great Mayan city buried under tons of earth and jungle in the archaeological area of Ichkabal on the Yucatan peninsula, the National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said.
Previous archaeological digs in Ichkabal indicated the existence at this site of a vast Mayan settlement comprising many buildings, of which the biggest is some 200 meters (656 feet) wide at the base and 46 meters (151 feet) high, the institute
Source: McClatchy
April 8, 2009
We're not finished yet. Even today, scientists say that human beings are continuing to evolve as our genes respond to rapid changes in the world around us.
In fact, the pressures of modern life may be speeding up the pace of human evolution, some anthropologists think.
Their view contradicts the widespread 20th-century assumption that modern medical practice, antibiotics, better diet and other advances would protect people from the perils and stresses that drive evoluti
Source: China View
April 8, 2009
A robot specially designed for underground exploration is opening up a lost world of historic treasures for Chinese archaeologists.
Scientists are planning its second excursion next week when it will go into an ancient tomb in Xi'an, China's ancient capital in the northwestern Shaanxi Province.
The robot completed a successful trial probe in July last year, when it revealed hidden fresco paintings in a narrow shaft inside a 1,300-year old tomb in Xi'an.
The
Source: BBC
April 7, 2009
Supporters have gathered in Stirling to mark the 75th anniversary of the Scottish National Party.
Veteran politician Winnie Ewing was joined by Parliamentary Business Minister Bruce Crawford to cut a special birthday cake for the event.
The party was formed following a merger between the National Party of Scotland and the Scottish Party.
First Minister Alex Salmond, who is in China, has sent an email to the party's 15,000 members to mark the occasion.
Source: Spiegel
April 9, 2009
For years, it has been widely accepted that artworks looted by the Nazis should be returned to their rightful owners. But now a prominent British expert has called for a stop to restitution -- and triggered protests in the art world.
The art connoisseur Sir Norman Rosenthal may be a British institution, but the equanimity often attributed to his compatriots is not one of his distinguishing features.
Rosenthal, the son of Jewish refugees from Germany and Slovakia, called
Source: BBC
April 9, 2009
Evidence of an ancient religious settlement has been discovered by archaeologists working at a visitor attraction in Argyll.
The finds were revealed at the end of a seven year refurbishment project at Crarae Garden near Inverarary.
The National Trust for Scotland, which owns the garden, said a ditch and stone bank dating back to the 7th - 9th century had been uncovered.
Source: Times (UK)
April 9, 2009
It was the start of one of the earliest and most brutal episodes of ethnic cleansing in Europe, so Spain is, understandably perhaps, a little reluctant to mark the occasion.
Four hundred years ago today King Philip III signed an order to expel 300,000 Moriscos - or part-Muslims - who had converted from Islam to Christianity.
Over the next five years hundreds of the exiles died as they were forced from their homes in Spain to North Africa at the height of the Spanish I
Source: AP
April 10, 2009
Four hundred years after Henry Hudson sailed his ship Half Moon up a river that would one day bear his name, historians are marking his role in the evolution of a tiny Dutch trading post into a world capital called New York.
The activity includes exhibits by the Museum of the City of New York and the New-York Historical Society, a recreation of the Half Moon's voyage of discovery up the Hudson, and scores of events here and in the Netherlands.
In addition, the New-York
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 9, 2009
Two couples have been fined by a French court after making an adult film at the Vimy Ridge memorial to the First World War.
The men were found guilty of insulting the memory of fallen soldiers, while the women, who stripped off at the memorial, were convicted of exhibitionism.
The memorial pays tribute to hundreds of Canadian soldiers who fell at the 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge, one of the bloodiest battles in the Somme.
Source: BBC
April 7, 2009
Papers unearthed by the BBC reveal that British and American commanders ensured that the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944 was seen as a "whites only" victory.
Many who fought Nazi Germany during World War II did so to defeat the vicious racism that left millions of Jews dead.
Yet the BBC's Document programme has seen evidence that black colonial soldiers - who made up around two-thirds of Free French forces - were deliberately removed from the unit that
Source: BBC
April 9, 2009
The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) abducted civilians in Kosovo who were then mistreated and in some cases killed, a BBC investigation has found.
Sources told the BBC that Kosovo Serbs, ethnic Albanians and gypsies were among an estimated 2,000 who went missing.
This took place both during and after the war in Kosovo, which ended in June 1999.
Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, the former KLA political director, has rejected the allegations.
Source: AP
April 9, 2009
Tens of thousands of supporters of an anti-U.S. Shiite cleric demanded an end to the U.S. military presence Thursday and burned effigy of ex-President George W. Bush in a rally marking the sixth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad to American forces.
Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had urged all Iraqis to turn out for the protest at Firdous Square _ where Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled on April 9, 2003. Protesters set fire to Bush's effigy as it hung from the pillar where Saddam's statue
