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: Salon
November 2, 2006
William Styron, the Pulitzer Prize-winning
author of"The Confessions of Nat Turner" and other novels whose
explorations of the darkest corners of the human mind and experience were
charged by his own near-suicidal demons, died Wednesday. He was 81.
Styron's daughter, Alexandra, said the author died of pneumonia at a
hospital in Martha's Vineyard, Mass. Styron, who had homes in Martha's
Vineyard and Connecticut, had been in failing health for a long time."This is terrible," said Kur
Source: Reuters
November 2, 2006
The fictional memoirs of a Nazi SS officer written in
French by an American are in line to win the top French literary prize but
critics are split over whether the novel is a new War and Peace or a piece
of tasteless historical voyeurism."Les Bienveillantes" ("The Kindly Ones") by Jonathan Littell has been
hailed as"the phenomenon of the literary season", selling over 200,000
copies and attracting the kind of reviews that most writers can only dream
of.
Littell, 39, has been comp
Source: Peoples Daily Online
November 2, 2006
Chinese archaeologists said underground passages in the ruins of an
ancient Chinese capital near Xi'an might have been dug during complex
power struggles in the Han Dynasty 2,200 years ago."The underground passages are the first ever discovered in the ruins of an
ancient Chinese capital," said Liu Qingzhu, a researcher with the Chinese
Institute of Archaeology in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).
"The tunnels were mostly discovered under the palaces where the royal
women
Source: Times Online (UK)
November 1, 2006
FIRST Bombay became Mumbai. Then Madras switched to Chennai and Calcutta to Kolkata. Now Bangalore, India’s call-centre capital, is changing its name to Bengaluru, in the latest move to shed the linguistic legacies of colonial rule.
The change is stirring unusual controversy among business leaders, who argue that Bangalore is a respected international brand and that tampering with it is a waste of time and money.
An additional dispute has erupted over whether its pre-
Source: BBC
October 30, 2006
In 1956, a Polish man living in the English midlands published an extraordinary book that became one of the classic tales of escape and endurance.
In The Long Walk, Slavomir Rawicz described how, during the Second World War, he and a group of prisoners broke out of a gulag in the Soviet Union in 1941. They walked thousands of miles south from Siberia, through Mongolia, Tibet, across the Himalayas, to the safety of British India.
The only question is: is it true? From
Source: Independent (UK)
November 1, 2006
The descendants of Benito Mussolini, Italy's dictator for 20 disastrous years, were locked in tense meetings yesterday as a new argument broke over the fate of Il Duce's remains.
The family were said to be bitterly divided over whether the body should remain in the family tomb in the Adriatic Sea town of Predappio, or moved to a grander location in Rome.
The row came less than two months after an unrelated argument pitted members of the clan against each other over whe
Source: Guardian
November 1, 2006
John Reid yesterday invoked the memory of Barnes Wallis, the inventor of the Dambusters' raid "bouncing bomb", and Alan Turing, the Enigma codebreaker, in appealing to British industry to encourage technical innovation in the "war against terror".
The home secretary, speaking at the launch of new anti-terror search technology, described "the struggle against Islamist terrorism" as a constant fight to stay one step ahead and compared it to the technolog
Source: BBC
July 24, 2006
The Times pronounced not only on Anthony Eden's life when he died in 1977 but on the life of Britain when it wrote of him: "He was the last prime minister to believe Britain was a great power and the first to confront a crisis which proved she was not."
The conventional verdict on the Suez operation is given by historian Corelli Barnett, who wrote about Suez in his book, The Collapse of British Power.
"It was the last thrash of empire," he to
Source: AP
October 31, 2006
The earliest confirmed autopsy in North America was conducted more than 400 years ago by French colonists desperate to determine what was killing them as they endured a rugged winter on St. Croix Island, scientists concluded.
A team of forensic anthropologists from the United States and Canada confirmed that the skull of a man buried on the island over the winter of 1604-05 showed evidence of having undergone an autopsy, scientists said.
Source: BBC
October 30, 2006
Archaeologists have identified fossils belonging to some of the earliest modern humans to settle in Europe.
The research team has dated six bones found in the Pestera Muierii cave, Romania, to 30,000 years ago.
The finds also raise questions about the possible place of Neanderthals in modern human ancestry.
Source: NYT
November 1, 2006
The New-York Historical Society wants to begin a $20 million renovation of its landmark building at 170 Central Park West that would also allow a developer to build a 23-story glass apartment tower behind the society’s museum and library, altering the skyline.
The society has approached the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which must approve changes to the exterior of the society’s austere neoclassical palazzo between 76th and 77th Streets, across from the American Museum of Natur
Source: Pasadena Star News
October 31, 2006
While thousands of trick-or-treaters celebrated Halloween by collecting candy or attending parties, 70 years ago some Caltech students and local residents marked it by bringing rocket propulsion to Pasadena.
The seven men test fired a rocket in the Arroyo Seco at a site not far from the present-day Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
That first test more closely resembled a Keystone Kops episode than today's sophisticated launches, but it paved the way for space exploration.
Source: NPR
November 1, 2006
For more than a century, Lt. Stephen Atkins Swails has lain in an unmarked grave in Charleston, S.C., his life story largely forgotten. But recently, local historians held a long overdue ceremony honoring the life of the extraordinary African-American soldier and statesman.
Swails was a member of the famous 54th Massachusetts Regiment, one of the country's first black fighting units, famous for storming Fort Wagner in South Carolina. The unit's story was told in the Hollywood film G
Source: Stone Pages
October 29, 2006
Archaeologists have unearthed an 8,000 year old skeleton of a child in the village of Ohoden, northwestern Bulgaria. Archaeologist Georgi Ganetsovski, the leader of the excavation, said the finding had been made at the southern end of a pre-historical funeral facility in a pre-historical village, which was found just two metres below the current ground level and was completely preserved in its original form.
Source: Reuters
November 1, 2006
A Moroccan won first prize on Wednesday in Iran's
International Holocaust Cartoons Contest, which had sparked outrage in
Israel, the West and among Jewish groups.
Iran's best-selling newspaper, Hamshahri, launched a competition in
February to find the best cartoon about the Holocaust, in which 6 million
Jews were killed by the Nazis.
The contest was a retaliation for last year's publication of caricatures
of the Prophet Mohammad in Danish and other European newspapers that
ange
Source: BBC
November 1, 2006
The French are normally assiduous about remembering military anniversaries - even the nasty ones like Dien Bien Phu, Mers el-Kebir or Trafalgar. But there is something about the Suez crisis that has inspired collective amnesia. It's not that the French are embarrassed by what happened. It is just that they have forgotten. While in Britain, the 50 years since the airborne invasion of the canal zone are being marked with reams of hefty analysis and a three-part BBC
Source: Cliopatria
October 31, 2006
The history blogosphere has grown from about 145 to over 500 blogs in the last 18 months. We've just opened nominations for The Cliopatria Awards, 2006, the second year in which they've been given.
Nominations for six Awards are open throughout November and can be made in Comments at the links available here: http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/31289.html.
Source: Inside Higher Ed
October 31, 2006
The fall rush to buy textbooks is over, but a campaign led by the State Public Interest Research Groups to rally against the practices of the college textbook publishing industry is not.
In a report released today that is largely a summary of previous findings, PIRG accuses publishers of undermining the used book market and unnecessarily inflating prices. Studies show that the cost of textbooks is rising faster than the rate of inflation, and the price issue has gained traction with
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
October 31, 2006
Fifty years ago, with a rare mix of altruism, guilt, and admiration, colleges and universities throughout the Western world opened their doors to thousands of student refugees from the failed Hungarian revolution. Most of the students arrived with few belongings — let alone transcripts or other records — and those who ended up in English-speaking countries often needed intensive English instruction before beginning classes.
The warm reception from Western higher education that greet
Source: NYT
October 31, 2006
Halloween is big business here now. According to The Observer of London, Britons spend an estimated $228 million a year on Halloween-related items, a tenfold increase from five years ago. Sainsbury’s, one of Britain’s largest supermarket chains, has sold 450,000 pumpkins and 40,000 sets of glow-in-the-dark fangs this year, not to mention items like fake cobwebs and cookies that look like severed fingers. “It’s a very important time for our customers,” said Melanie Etches, a spokeswoman.
