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: WaPo
July 24, 2008
Juanita Patience Moss was shocked to learn that her great-grandfather would not be included among the 200,000 black soldiers honored at the African American Civil War Memorial.
The memorial, at 10th and U streets NW, would name only the soldiers and seamen who served with the U. S. Colored Troops.
So, 10 years ago, when Moss attended a discussion hosted by the African American Civil War Memorial Freedom Foundation, she asked several historians whether any records of bla
Source: Reuters
July 24, 2008
Almost 100 top computer scientists called on Thursday for action to be taken to save Bletchley Park, the code-breaking centre that played a crucial role decrypting German messages during World War Two.
The scientists say Bletchley, a country house 25 miles north of London, is falling into disrepair and will decay further unless it received much needed investment. They want it properly funded and turned into a National Museum of Computing.
"As a nation, we cannot al
Source: BBC
July 22, 2008
An 81-year-old former conscript has been awarded a history degree after
studying events he lived first-hand.
Robert Benjamin has graduated from the University of Manchester alongside
classmates up to 60 years younger.
Mr Benjamin was a former Bevin Boy - a group of young men chosen to work
in coal mines during World War II.
He was even interviewed by a fellow student for a dissertation on the
conscripts, who were named after politician Ernest Bevin.
The Bevin Boys
Source: AP
July 23, 2008
Germany is to introduce a test on German customs and history for
would-be citizens in September after Chancellor Angela Merkel's Cabinet
approved the plan on Wednesday.
The Interior Ministry has presented a catalog of 310 multiple-choice
questions for citizenship applicants. Would-be citizens will be presented
with 33 of the questions, and will be required to answer 17 correctly.
They range from"how many states does Germany have?" through"what is the
name of the current chance
Source: BBC
July 23, 2008
A Lincolnshire charity has had what could be a 2,000-year-old dog skeleton
donated to one of its stores.
A note with the bones said they were Roman, excavated from a 1st Century
AD pit at the Lawn in Lincoln in 1986.
Caroline Grosse, from St Barnabas Hospice in Lincoln, said:"I was a bit
shocked as bones are not something you expect to find (donated in a box)."
Nicknamed Caesar, the dog bones will be handed over to The Collection
museum in Lincoln, she said.
Source: WaPo
July 24, 2008
So a bunch of academics decides to revisit one of the defining books of modern American politics, a 1960 tome on the electorate. They spend years comparing interviews with voting-age Americans from 2000 and 2004 to what Americans said during elections in the 1950s. The academics' question: How much has the American voter changed over the past 50 years?
Their conclusion -- that the voter is pretty much the same dismally ill-informed creature he was back then -- continues a decades-lo
Source: NYT
July 24, 2008
SHERIDAN, Wyo. — In early 1939, as talk of war in Europe clouded the horizon and hard economic times gripped the nation, a group of business and political leaders in this northern Wyoming city hatched an audacious, if not quite ridiculous, plan to break off huge chunks of Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana and form a new state.
Editors at the Depression-era Federal Writers’ Project, which happened at the time to be combing the country for local color (and for writers as well, for a s
Source: Columbus Dispatch
July 21, 2008
The theory is as wild as it is controversial: that a comet, which left no crater, exploded over Canada almost 13,000 years ago, wiped out the woolly mammoth and other land giants and nearly decimated the first known human culture in North America.
"I thought that was a bunch of nonsense," said Kenneth Tankersley, a University of Cincinnati anthropologist.
But by the end of June, Tankersley was a convert.
Now he says that he not only believes the scienti
Source: BBC
July 23, 2008
The service of tens of thousands of women who worked the land to provide food and timber during World War II is due to be formally recognised.
Surviving members of the Women's Land Army and Women's Timber Corps will be presented with badges of honour.
Fifty of the women - who were dubbed Land Girls and Lumber Jills - will go to 10 Downing Street for a ceremony attended by Gordon Brown.
More than 30,000 badge applications have been received to date.
Source: BBC
July 21, 2008
The village of Madar is perhaps an unlikely setting for a major scientific discovery that has been hailed as a 'new frontier' for the Middle East.
Tucked away in the heart of rural Yemen, Madar now finds itself in the limelight after a series of dinosaur prints were discovered in the village - the first such discovery on the Arabian Peninsula.
The dinosaur tracks have been lying exposed, above ground, for centuries, but scientists only recently stumbled across them foll
Source: BBC
July 23, 2008
It was 25 years ago this week that a minor insurgency in Sri Lanka began to turn into a full-scale civil war.
An attack by Tamil Tiger rebels in the north sparked rioting across the country targeting members of the Tamil minority. The events came to be known as Black July.
More than 70,000 people have died in the conflict. Now the army says victory is finally in sight.
In recent weeks the pace of the advance has quickened, but the Tigers deny they are facin
Source: CNN
July 23, 2008
With a flick of the wrist, James Johnson uses an elongated cotton swab along the inside of his 102-year old mother's cheek.
He's taken the first step in his search for answers to an existential question that plagues a majority of black Americans: Where did my ancestors come from?
For the Johnsons -- cousins of the Rand family, who are featured in "CNN Presents: Black in America" -- the answer arrives in the form of a certificate from African Ancestry Inc., a M
Source: AP
July 22, 2008
Charles T. Payne had his first close brush with history at the
end of World War II, when his infantry division liberated Ohrdruf, a
subcamp of the Nazis' Buchenwald concentration camp.
Now 83, Payne is experiencing a second brush as the great-uncle of
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Payne spoke to The Associated Press Tuesday as Obama, on the other side of
the world, prepared to visit the Yad Vashem national Holocaust memorial in
Jerusalem.
In May, Obama
Source: Salon
July 23, 2008
The last several years have brought a parade of dark revelations about the George W. Bush administration, from the manipulation of intelligence to torture to extrajudicial spying inside the United States. But there are growing indications that these known abuses of power may only be the tip of the iceberg. Now, in the twilight of the Bush presidency, a movement is stirring in Washington for a sweeping new inquiry into White House malfeasance that would be modeled after the famous Church Committe
Source: Reuters
July 22, 2008
The 1960s may be history, but in American politics that tumultuous decade of social upheaval never gets old.
The presidential race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain already has dredged up some of the decade's most lasting symbols -- from the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War to violent radical groups and Woodstock.
The cultural clashes fostered by the social strife of the '60s have played a role in virtually every U.S. presidential race si
Source: http://www.typicallyspanish.com
July 23, 2008
Work is continuing at the San Rafael Cemetery in Málaga to recover and
catalogue the remains of the people shot by fascist troops and placed in a
series of mass graves at the site.
It’s thought that 4,500 people met their deaths there between the years
1936 and 1951, and so far 2,200 bodies have been recovered and documented
from what is the largest mass grave site in Spain.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 23, 2008
But the sculpture was created around 1,800 years before 'The King' ever crooned his first song.
The Roman ornament, called an acroterion, is carved in marble on the corner of a sarcophagus dating from the second century AD.
It is among a collection of ancient art owned by the Melbourne-based dealer Graham Geddes, which is estimated to sell for more than £1m.
Mr Geddes' collection, which includes more than 50 classical Greek vases and 30 pieces of marble scu
Source: NYT
July 22, 2008
The observance lasted but a few minutes. For that brief ritual, the visitors had traveled nearly 7,000 miles — from Shimoda, Japan, to Brooklyn, U.S.A. It might seem a long way to go to lay flowers on the grave of someone who has been dead these last 130 years. Not if you’re from Shimoda, though. Not if the grave is that of a New Yorker named Townsend Harris.
Many of you may now be wondering, Townsend Who?...
But in Shimoda, on the Izu Peninsula about 85 miles southwest
Source: NYT
July 22, 2008
A New Jersey paralegal with a longstanding interest in government corruption filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department and the F.B.I. on Monday, seeking the release of the full case file on a murderous Brooklyn Mafia informant — papers she believes may shed light on the possible involvement of a dead New Orleans crime boss in the killing of President John F. Kennedy.
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington by the paralegal, Angela Clemente, asks the Federal B
Source: History Today
July 22, 2008
A ten-year project to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution is to be launched this week. A major new study of Russia’s involvement in the First World War and 1917 Revolution will be announced at a symposium at the University of Aberdeen from July 22nd-24th. Experts from across the world will agree to publish at least six new books by 2017, covering the military struggle, international relations, the home front and culture. Dr Tony Heywood, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the
