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: Reuters
July 7, 2008
Nazi hunters arrived in Chile on Monday on the trail of Aribert Heim, nicknamed Dr. Death for killing hundreds of inmates at an Austrian concentration camp during World War Two, who they believe may be lurking in picturesque Patagonia.
Heim, who kept the skull of a man he decapitated as a paperweight, is the most wanted Nazi war criminal still thought to be alive. He would be 94 and his family says he died in 1993.
"We are not here thinking that his capture is immi
Source: AP
July 6, 2008
Fort Monroe, a Union oasis where fugitive slaves flocked during the Civil War, will return to Virginia’s control in 2011 when the Army pulls out, and historians are trying to protect the future of the so-called Freedom Fortress.
Many slave descendants trace the arrival of slavery in the United States in 1619 to Old Point Comfort, the hatchet-shaped peninsula where Fort Monroe sits, and where slavery would be ushered into its final stages nearly 250 years later.
“When y
Source: NYT
July 5, 2008
One of early America’s most important documents — written in an angry frame of mind — is on display at the New York Public Library.
A draft of the Declaration of Independence, written in Thomas Jefferson’s own hand, suggests that the man who became the third president of the United States was unhappy with Congress in the days after July 4, 1776, when the Declaration was ratified.
On June 11, 1776, Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration, was one of five men ask
Source: IHT
July 7, 2008
The Gettysburg Cyclorama is to reopen Sept. 26 after a five-year restoration, and for the first time in more than a century, viewers standing in the middle of the wraparound canvas will see it as its artist originally intended.The cyclorama, which a 19th-century poster promoted as a "sublime spectacle" presenting "glorious Gettysburg in all the awful splendor of real war," had become less than that over the decades. The U.S. National Park Service and its
Source: AP
July 7, 2008
In the early days of the Korean War, American officers observed, photographed and confidentially reported on wholesale executions by their South Korean ally, a secretive slaughter believed to have killed 100,000 or more leftists and supposed sympathizers, usually without charge or trial, in a few weeks in mid-1950.
Now, a half-century later, the South Korean government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission is investigating what happened in that summer of terror, a political bloodbat
Source: BBC
July 7, 2008
The UN has added the Mauritian mountain of Le Morne, which long served as a shelter for fugitive slaves, to its world heritage list.Fleeing slaves used settlements in the mountain's caves and on its summit in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
At the time, Mauritius was an important stopover in the eastern slave trade.
Source: NYT
July 5, 2008
Citing their free speech rights, three tour guides in Philadelphia filed a lawsuit this week challenging an ordinance that will require them to pass a history test and get a license. Mayor Michael Nutter signed the measure into law in April amid concern that some guides were perpetuating gross inaccuracies, including the false claims that Benjamin Franklin had 69 illegitimate children and that Betsy Ross, a three-time widow, killed her husbands. But the three guides, Ann Boulais, Michael Tait an
Source: BBC
July 6, 2008
Archaeologists have unearthed an ancient tomb in northern Peru that could throw light on the pre-Columbian Moche Indian culture.
The tomb in Ucupe, 670km (416 miles) from the capital Lima, contained well-preserved human remains along with jewellery and ceramics.
The finds suggested the tomb related to nobility, experts said. The Moche Indians thrived from 100-800 AD and were famed for their ceramics, architecture and irrigation.
Source: LAT
July 5, 2008
Making good on a promise to a friend to summarize his views on Christianity, Thomas Jefferson set to work with scissors, snipping out every miracle and inconsistency he could find in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Then, relying on a cut-and-paste technique, he reassembled the excerpts into what he believed was a more coherent narrative and pasted them onto blank paper -- alongside translations in French, Greek and Latin.
In a letter sent from
Source: NYT
July 6, 2008
IN April 1959, Fidel Castro, fresh from his victory roll through the streets of Havana, came to the United States on a charm offensive.
The youthful Mr. Castro — he was only 32 — hired a public relations firm, held news conferences, answered questions, ate hot dogs. He repeatedly disavowed Communism. But he was refused a meeting with President Dwight Eisenhower, and after leaving the United States he returned to Cuba and joined forces with the Soviet Union and Nikita Khrushchev.
Source: Tim Weiner in the NYT
July 6, 2008
In the early 1950s, American troops were being killed and captured by the thousands in Korea. Panic spread that China’s Communists had learned how to penetrate and control the minds of American prisoners of war.
The technique was called “brainwashing.” And suddenly it’s worth recalling what brainwashing was about. Because now we know, from an article in The New York Times last week, that in a new time of anxiety America’s own interrogators drew lessons from China’s treatment of Amer
Source: NYT
July 5, 2008
Jesse Helms, the former North Carolina senator with the courtly manner and mossy drawl who turned his hard-edged conservatism against civil rights, gay rights, foreign aid and modern art, died early Friday. He was 86.
Source: Press Release
July 2, 2008
Members of the list may be interested to hear that a remarkable cache of documents spanning the 1660s through the mid-20th century has been recently uncovered in an old Eastern Shore manor house. Poplar Grove, granted to the Emory family by Lord Baltimore in 1669, and still in the possession of descendants, is a veritable treasure trove of 400 years of American history. The well-connected Emorys played important roles in national and state politics, and served in every major military conflict
Source: NYT
July 5, 2008
The National Park Service is starting to consider reopening the Statue of Liberty’s crown, which has been closed since the 9/11 attacks, according to documents released Friday by Representative Anthony D. Weiner.
Mr. Weiner, a Queens Democrat who represents parts of Queens and Brooklyn, provided reporters with copies of a request for bids that the National Park Service sent out in June for a study to determine if the crown can be safely reopened.
Liberty Island was clos
Source: CNN
July 4, 2008
How would the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin feel about the way the United States has turned out 232 years after declaring its independence?
Not pleased, a majority of Americans recently polled said.
According to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, 69 percent of adult Americans who responded to a poll June 26-29 said the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed by the way the nation has turned out overall.
Twent
Source: NYT
July 6, 2008
— A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.
If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrectio
Source: Fox News.com
July 4, 2008
SCRANTON, Pa. — Few of the 3,000 historic postcards in Jack Hiddlestone's collection are as veiled in mystery as the one with Abraham Lincoln on the front.
The postcard, from 1909, depicts an ornate stone pillar decked out with bronze eagles and lions and topped by an enormous bronze bust of the nation's 16th president. Along the bottom of the card are the words "Lincoln Monument, Nay Aug Park."
Here's the mystery: Sometime in the early decades
Source: BBC
July 4, 2008
The ancient city of Pompeii has fallen into such disrepair that the Italian government has declared a "state of emergency" in a bid to save the ruins.
Ministers intend to appoint a special commissioner to oversee the site, and have earmarked extra funding for it.
According to analysts, the ruins have suffered from lack of investment, mismanagement, litter and looting.
Source: BBC
July 4, 2008
The final mystery of 9/11 will soon be solved, according to US experts investigating the collapse of the third tower at the World Trade Center.
The 47-storey third tower, known as Tower Seven, collapsed seven hours after the twin towers.
Investigators are expected to say ordinary fires on several different floors caused the collapse.
Conspiracy theorists have argued that the third tower was brought down in a controlled demolition.
Unlike the twin towers, T
Source: History Today
July 3, 2008
Astronomers from Texas State University have suggested an alternative date for Julius Caesar’s first landing in Britain. Donald W. Olson and Russell Doescher dispute the accepted dates for the Roman landing of August 26-27, 55BC, because the English Channel was flowing in the wrong direction. Tests carried out in August 2007 provided a unique opportunity for comparison with 55BC tidal conditions. It prompted the astronomers to suggest a revised date of August 22-23 for the invasion at Deal on th
