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: American Council of Trustees and Alumni
July 24, 2006
Arizona’s legislature recently earned national attention by requiring the American flag in all public classrooms. But according to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, Arizona’s leaders left a much bigger problem unsolved: None of the state’s major public universities requires the study of American history.
“The Arizona legislature’s desire to protect our national heritage is commendable,” ACTA president Anne D. Neal said. “But symbols of America are only valuable when stude
Source: AP
July 29, 2006
A list of incumbent senators who have lost their primaries since 1950:
Year Senator Party State
2002 Robert C. Smith R N.H.
1996 Sheila Frahm R Kan.
1992 Alan Dixon D Ill.
1980 Mike Gravel D Alaska
1980 Jacob Javits R N.Y.
1980 Donald Stewart D Ala.
1980 Richard Stone D Fla.
1978 Clifford Case R N.J.
1976 James Buckley C N.Y.
1974 J.W. Fulbright D Ark.
1974 Howard Metzenbaum D Ohio
1972 David Gambrell D Ga
Source: NY Sun
August 3, 2006
The Brooklyn Public Library has agreed to stock a book that refers to London as a hotbed of terrorism, as an acquisitions librarian who initially rejected a patron's suggestion to buy the book, calling it "potentially incendiary," reversed his decision.
The librarian, Wayne Roylance, changed his mind days after the patron, disappointed with the decision, emailed him prominent critics' appraisals of the book, "Londonistan" by Melanie Phillips, a library spokeswoma
Source: Scotsman.com
August 1, 2006
IN ANCIENT times, when Scotland was virtually covered in dense forest, there was only one way to get around. Traveling by boat helped early Scots to find food and trade goods with their neighbours.
Now, with the excavation of a 3,000-year-old log boat, archaeologists are hoping to learn more about how prehistoric Scots used the vast network of rivers and lochs. . .
While the remains of 30 log boats survive today – the oldest was a stern portion of a log boat, carbon da
Source: Guardian
July 27, 2006
THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) - Another subway in Greece, another look into the past.
Tunneling work to build a metro system for the country's second-largest city started Thursday, as Culture Ministry officials signed an agreement to protect antiquities they expect to be discovered during construction.
The agreement follows a massive horde of antiquities uncovered while building a new subway system in Athens, which opened in 2000, with extensions added before the 2004 Olymp
Source: Independent (UK)
August 3, 2006
Tomorrow, 920 years after it was compiled by an anonymous scribe, William the Conqueror's epic audit of life in medieval times will become available on the internet.He has become known as Scribe A and was, by the standards of the 11th century, an educated man who could read and write Latin. Deduced from his writings, Scribe A was English, but probably worked for the Bishop of Durham, one William of St Calais, a member of what was the French elite ruling England.
Source: Independent (UK)
August 3, 2006
For decades, anthropologists have combed the mountainous landscape of south-west France and the Spanish Pyrenees in an attempt to piece together the history of the Basque diaspora. Now, researchers are completing the puzzle with the help of a treasure trove of arborglyphs; thousands of 19th- and 20th-century tree carvings elaborately etched on to the trunks of aspen trees in the United States.
Some are rallying political cries for Basque solidarity, others depict the sexua
Source: NYT
August 2, 2006
John Stubbs, an American historic preservationist, had flicked on his flashlight and was slowly ascending a darkened staircase inside the Forbidden City when he stopped at a dusty paneled wall etched with elegant lines of calligraphy. “I didn’t even see this until yesterday, or two days ago!” exclaimed Mr. Stubbs, almost ecstatic, as he stood in the dank, musty air. The calligraphy was a poem by the 18th-century Qing dynasty emperor Qianlong, who built the room as part
Source: NYT
August 2, 2006
The United States should create a “deployable reserve” of contracting experts for emergency reconstruction efforts like the one in Iraq and should change federal law to remove the legal straitjackets that have helped slow the effort there, the first official history of the Iraq rebuilding effort has concluded.The 140-page history, based on dozens of inspections and audits of construction sites, interviews with participants and input from a panel of government, academic
Source: NYT
August 2, 2006
No more than four people at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg regularly visited the repository from which 221 objects have apparently been stolen, the museum’s director said on Tuesday. The director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, who described the missing items as Russian objects made from silver and enamel, did not accuse specific employees of the theft, which was announced abruptly on Monday in a statement on the museum’s Russian-language Web site.
But
Source: NYT
August 2, 2006
President Bush offered White House reporters plush armchair seating in the West Wing briefing room, with suede or velvet upholstery, and double the space.
Then he took it all back.
''Forget it,'' the president said Wednesday, as he and reporters bid goodbye to the briefing room and work spaces that the White House press corps has occupied in some form since the Nixon administration. ''You get to work like the rest of us,'' Bush said.
What reporters hope th
Source: NYT
August 2, 2006
When they first met as United States president and Israeli prime minister, George W. Bush made clear to Ariel Sharon he would not follow in the footsteps of his father.
The first President Bush had been tough on Israel, especially the Israeli settlements in occupied lands that Mr. Sharon had helped develop. But over tea in the Oval Office that day in March 2001 — six months before the Sept. 11 attacks tightened their bond — the new president signaled a strong predisposition to suppo
Source: Bryan-College Station Eagle
August 2, 2006
On the 40th anniversary of one of its darkest days, the University of Texas took possession of a box of documents related to the infamous massacre at the school's landmark tower. The university's Center for American History accepted the documents Tuesday from a bookstore chain pertaining to what was then the nation's worst mass shooting.On Aug. 1, 1966, Charles Whitman went to the 28th floor observation deck and began shooting at people below. He killed 16 people and wounded
Source: The Age (Australia)
August 2, 2006
The key to unlocking the Lebanese crisis may come down to a small plot of land, a badly drawn map, a softly spoken historian and some long-forgotten papers in an archive in Paris.For almost 40 years, a stumbling point between Syria, Lebanon and Israel has been the ownership of a sparsely populated enclave called the Shebaa Farms, which sits on the border of the three states and was seized by Israel from Syria in the 1967 war.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Ri
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
August 2, 2006
President Bush may have issued only one veto, but he has added more than 750 "signing statements" to new laws on issues such as detainee torture, the USA Patriot Act and whistle-blower protections. Last week, a task force from the American Bar Association came out against presidents using such statements to show their intention "to disregard or decline to enforce all or part of a law." The ABA also detailed how Bush is far from the first president to add his own interpretatio
Source: KVOA 4 (Tucson)
August 2, 2006
A national group is asking Arizona's public universities to require at least one United States history course of every student before graduation.American History currently isn't a required course at any of the state's major public universities.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has written letters to Gov. Janet Napolitano and 20 state lawmakers, asking them to pressure college regents and administrators to make the change.
"The flag d
Source: NYT
August 2, 2006
Most visitors are probably too busy watching the polished guards make their endless march in front of the Tomb of the Unknowns to see the cracks working their way across the monument. But each year those cracks creep farther and deeper.
The tomb, a must-see stop for the four million annual visitors to Arlington National Cemetery, is not in danger of crumbling anytime soon. But the cemetery is deciding whether to patch the fissures or replace the marble altogether.
“We k
Source: NYT
August 1, 2006
Historians of science are taking a new and lively interest in alchemy, the often mystical investigation into the hidden mysteries of nature that reached its heyday in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries and has been an embarrassment to modern scientists ever since.There was no place in the annals of empirical science, beginning mainly in the 18th century, for the occult practices of obsessed dreamers who sought most famously and impossibly to transform base met
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
August 1, 2006
If scholarly publishing had an endangered-species list, the art monograph would be at the top. At least that's the perception of many art historians as they struggle to publish their work.
"Between dwindling sales and the soaring costs of acquiring illustrations and the permission to publish them, this segment of the publishing industry has become so severely compromised that the art monograph is now seriously endangered and could very well outpace the silvery minnow in its rus
Source: AP
July 28, 2006
EAST HADDAM, Conn. - Archaeologists have begun digging up the 200-year-old graves of a slave family in hopes of separating fact from fiction in the legend of "the black Paul Bunyan."The dig has the blessing of more than a dozen descendants of Venture Smith who believe science can finally lend credence to the tales they have heard all their lives about the fabulous feats of strength that helped the lumberjack slave win his freedom.
Standing
