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: Chicago Tribune
February 9, 2007
By announcing his presidential intentions on Saturday at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama is wrapping himself in the mystique of Abraham Lincoln.
The crimson-domed Old State Capitol, just east of the present Illinois capitol, is where Lincoln served his fourth and final term as a state representative in 1840-41. And it's where, in 1858, in a debate with Stephen Douglas during their campaign battle for the U.S. Senate, Lincoln gave his "House Divided
Source: Lee White in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History
February 9, 2007
The "Teaching American History" grants program at the Department of Education would be substantially cut under the Bush proposal. In FY ‘06 the program received $120 million and the administration would slash that by over $70 million to $50 million in fiscal year 2008. The administration’s rationale is “the number of quality applications for assistance under this program in recent years does not justify the current level of funding.” Senator Robert C. Byrd, the original sponsor of the
Source: AP
February 9, 2007
An Army archaeologist who recently identified a Virginia Beach site as a previously unknown early Colonial settlement called Henry Towne is to meet Monday with a group of dubious archaeologists and historians.The Williamsburg-area group thinks the documentary evidence on which the identification is partly based actually refers to a Richmond-area settlement known as Henricus. They also have questions about the date of a group of artifacts originally recovered at the Virginia
Source: AP
February 9, 2007
EDISON, N.J. -- One of the inventions that put this central New Jersey town on the map could go the way of the typewriter and the horse and buggy if some lawmakers have their way.
The incandescent light bulb, perfected for mass use by Thomas A. Edison in the late 19th century, is being supplanted by fluorescent lighting that is more efficient and longer lasting.
Last month, California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine announced he would propose a bill to ban the use of incandesc
Source: BBC News
February 9, 2007
The very stones of Jerusalem are political weapons in the age-old struggle for possession of the Holy Land.
And nowhere is more sensitive than the great platform built by King Herod, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to the Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary.
To understand the current row over excavation and repair work just outside one of the gates onto the compound, it is important to know that here history, religion and politics meet. Nothing in Jerusalem can be und
Source: AP
February 9, 2007
Shanghai has started restoration work on one of its two remaining synagogues as part of China's effort to revive Jewish heritage in a city that provided refuge to tens of thousands of Jews during World War II.
In another sign of the new interest, a rabbi ministering to the city's Jewish community said Thursday he believes officials will eventually turn over the other synagogue for regular worship services.
The restoration of the Ohel Moishe synagogue, now a Jewish histo
Source: AP
February 8, 2007
The capital city's ties to the Gold Rush are everywhere, from the historical old town where fortune-seekers arrived on the Sacramento River to Sutter's Fort, where costumed actors recreate the Wild West for schoolchildren.
It was at that fort, just two miles west of the state Capitol, that Swiss explorer Johann Sutter set it all in motion when he built his adobe trading post in 1839 on land that was then Mexican territory.
What remains of the fort is now a state histori
Source: BBC News
February 9, 2007
There are warnings of a shortage of history teachers in England -- weeks after the subject was made central to plans to promote social cohesion.
History teacher training places have been cut by 40% since 2004, according to data obtained by Liberal Democrat education spokeswoman Sarah Teather...Ms Teather said many schools were struggling to fill history posts and that a third of teachers were over 50.
The figures emerged shortly after Education Secretary Alan Johnson sa
Source: Guardian
February 9, 2007
The US is to help fund efforts in Vietnam to clean up soil contaminated by the defoliant Agent Orange in a move hailed today as the first step in healing a long-running rift between the two former enemies.Washington's ambassador to Vietnam said that the US would contribute $400,000 (£210,000) to a $1m study to find ways to removed the highly toxic chemical, dioxin, from earth at the war-era air force base at Danang.
It is one of three hotspots at air bases ident
Source: German Press Agency
February 9, 2007
Michelangelo lived in a small room inside Rome's
Basilica of St Peter's during the last 17 years of his life, according to a report Friday in daily La Repubblica. The report cites a recently discovered receipt dating back to March 1557, in which an engraver was paid "10 scudi" for making a key
for a chest "in the room in St Peter's where Master Michelangelo retires to." Historians had always suspected that the great Renaissance artist spent
Source: Reuters
February 8, 2007
JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has spurned a call by his defense minister to consider halting excavations near Jerusalem's most sacred Islamic shrine that have angered Muslims, an official said on Thursday.
The dig, outside a compound housing the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque, has exposed the depth of Arab suspicions over Israeli activities in Arab East Jerusalem and the simmering tensions between Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz.
Arab stat
Source: Independent
February 9, 2007
The First World War poet Rupert Brooke would have been horrified. His poem, "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester", written in 1912, was a loving homage to his Cambridgeshire home, which he thought epitomised idyllic, rural England.
But now the area eulogised by Brooke for its "peace and Holy quiet" has been hit by a crime wave, with the Old Vicarage itself -- home of disgraced author and Conservative peer Jeffrey Archer -- the scene of the latest outbreak.
Source: International Herald Tribune
February 9, 2007
ISTANBUL -- A group of civic organizations submitted suggestions Thursday for rewording a section of the Turkish penal code under which noted intellectuals and writers have been charged with the crime of insulting the Turkish identity and state.
But some groups broke with the main umbrella organization and said the law need to be revoked, not amended...
Many in Turkey consider the law, known as Article 301, to be at the root of the murder of the Armenian-Turkish journal
Source: Press Association
February 9, 2007
Prime Minister Tony Blair has revealed that he does not keep a diary - but wishes he had.
The news will raise questions over the memoirs Mr Blair is expected to write after he leaves 10 Downing Street later this year.
Publishers are believed to be queuing up to get their hands on what will be one of the biggest political books of the decade, potentially earning millions of pounds for Mr Blair.
But they now know that he will not have the benefit of a detaile
Source: AP
February 8, 2007
MOSCOW -- Vladimir Putin has been likened to czars and Communist Party chiefs, but a top aide came up with an unusual comparison Thursday for the Russian president: Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Speaking at a conference marking 125 years since Roosevelt's birth, Vladislav Surkov, the deputy chief of staff seen as the Kremlin's main ideologue, drew a parallel between one of America's most famous Democrats and a Russian leader who has been accused by Washington of backtracking on democracy..
Source: Reuters
February 8, 2007
WASHINGTON (-- Three women who were forced into sexual servitude by Japanese soldiers in World War Two will testify before a U.S. congressional committee next week, the author of a resolution calling on Tokyo to apologize for the practice said on Thursday.
Rep. Mike Honda, a California Democrat who introduced the nonbinding measure on February 1, told reporters he was confident the resolution would pass by the end of March...
Honda's resolution calls on the government o
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
January 26, 2007
[Last] week in Amsterdam, Sotheby's [began] selling 76,000 pieces of Chinese Export porcelain recovered from a circa 1725 shipwreck off the coast of present-day Vietnam. Because it was bound for the western market, the cargo reveals the era's fads and fashions in Europe, and precise details about the arduous journey made by goods in demand...
"In the 18th century, if it took two years to get something, it was still worthwhile doing," says Marcus Linell, Sotheby's Export-po
Source: BBC
February 8, 2007
Thousands of men conscripted into the pits as miners during World War II are to be recognised for their contribution to the war effort.
Up to 50,000 young men became Bevin Boys, named after wartime minister Ernest Bevin, who devised the scheme to maintain the mining industry's output.
The Bevin Boys Association has long campaigned for its members' efforts to be recognition as war service.
Veterans Minister Derek Twigg agreed to badges being struck for the survivors.
Source: MSNBC
February 8, 2007
Charles Darwin could have saved himself from some of his first critics if he had remembered to include his preface in the first edition of his influential book on evolution and natural selection, "The Origin of Species."
A new study shows that Darwin was composing the introductory chapter to his book as early as 1856, even though that preface remained unpublished for six years until Origin's second edition. The findings suggest Darwin also wrote the chapter on his own acco
Source: Catholic News Service
February 8, 2007
Polish nuns withstood pressure from communist secret police better than male clergy, according to research by the country's women religious orders.Nuns who researched Interior Ministry files found that no more than 30 people associated with women religious had been recruited by secret police during the 1980s, when collaborators were most active, said Mother Jolanta Olech, a member of the Ursuline Sisters of the Sacred Heart of the Agonized Jesus and president of Poland's Con
