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: The Guardian
July 14, 2006
Like Wittgenstein, Sukru Haluk Akalin thinks the limits of your language are the limits of your world. Head of the Turkish Language Institute, Turkey's state-run language watchdog, Akalin has announced bold plans to ban sexist expressions from a dictionary of proverbs soon due for publication. "Women are society's most valuable individuals," he says. "By excluding expressions that demean them, we are showing young people the way."
Unsurprisingly in a country wher
Source: The Courier Mail
July 14, 2006
The United Nations has agreed to rename Auschwitz concentration camp to stress that Nazi Germans, not Poles, were responsible for the world's most notorious death camp.
Poland's Culture Ministry said on Wednesday that ''Auschwitz Concentration Camp'' would be renamed ''the Former Nazi German Concentration Camp of Auschwitz''.Poland asked the UN in April to rename Auschwitz, where 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, were executed or worked to death during Worl
Source: Wa Po
July 12, 2006
Pungo, Va., may have to come up with some other historical tidbit as its claim to fame. The Witch of Pungo -- who supposedly accursed Tidewater farms in the 17th and 18th centuries -- has been cleared of all charges, namely that she was ever a witch.
On Monday, 300 years after Grace Sherwood was convicted at a trial that saw her thrown into the Lynnhaven River with her thumbs tied to her feet, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine pardoned her. The rules of the trial were simple: If you floated, yo
Source: NYT
July 12, 2006
The National Park Service plans to move the Hamilton Grange National Memorial from Convent Avenue and 141st Street, where it is so boxed in by neighboring buildings that two of its porches had to be cut off, to St. Nicholas Park, about 300 feet to the southeast.
There, it can be reassembled in a form that Hamilton would have recognized, with porches — and trees — all around.
Designed by John McComb Jr., an architect of City Hall, the Grange was the seat of a 32-acre Ma
Source: Times Online (UK)
July 12, 2006
A LOST masterpiece by Rubens that inspired many of his greatest hunting scenes has been sold to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
The Calydonian Boar Hunt, painted in 1611 or 1612 and for years mistakenly attributed to a follower of Rubens, surfaced at the Paris auctioneers Jean-Marc Delvaux. Instead of its estimate of €10,000 (£7,000) it sold to an unknown buyer for more than €300,000 — at which point other bidders started to realise its true provenance.
That figure p
Source: Haaretz
July 9, 2006
Israeli officials have decided to refuse all contact with Poland's new education minister because he leads a right-wing party they consider anti-Semitic, a policy that could hinder cooperation in the area of Holocaust education, officials said Sunday.Jerusalem is stopping short of a formal boycott of relations with Roman Giertych, but has decided instead to shun any dealings with him, said Tali Samesh, a senior official in the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.
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Source: Times (UK)
July 9, 2006
He is one of the nation’s most famous heroes, a swashbuckling outlaw who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. However, Rob Roy MacGregor — widely regarded as Scotland’s Robin Hood — has been labelled a common criminal by the national tourism agency. VisitScotland has angered historians and descendants of the freedom-fighter by describing him as a “notorious outlaw”.
Inviting foreign tourists to visit the West Highlands and Islands, Stirling and the Trossach
Source: The Telegraph (UK)
July 8, 2006
The Pope has provoked controversy with plans to beatify 168 Catholic martyrs of the Spanish civil war.Historians believe that about 10,000 priests, brothers, nuns and laity were killed during the civil war from 1936-39, as Leftists fighting to defend Spain's secular republic tried to wipe out what they saw as Catholic resistance.
Beatification, a step towards sainthood, will help preserve the memory of those victims. But as Spain wrestles with conflicting versio
Source: The Independent (UK)
July 12, 2006
President Jacques Chirac will attempt today to close a controversy which has divided France for more than a century - the case of the jewish army officer, Alfred Dreyfus, falsely accused of spying for the Germans in 1894. In a "national ceremony" described by the Elysée Palace as " a great moment in history", M. Chirac will make a speech to mark the centenary of the final acquittal of Captain Dreyfus on 12 July 1906.
The speech will take plac
Source: WaPo
July 11, 2006
The ceremonial burning of the diary of Holocaust victim Anne Frank by far-right extremists in eastern Germany was condemned by the German government on Friday amid calls to intensify efforts to stamp out neo-Nazi activity."This act was beneath contempt and could scarcely have been more primitive," the German Interior Ministry said in a statement to Reuters.
The ministry was reacting to an incident in which three men in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhal
Source: CBC
July 13, 2006
A mint-condition First Folio edition of William Shakespeare's collected plays fetched nearly $6 million at a British auction on Thursday.A mint-condition First Folio edition of William Shakespeare's collected plays fetched nearly $6 million at a British auction on Thursday.
"This is the Holy Grail in terms of printed books," Peter Selley, the English literature specialist for the auction house Sotheby's, told CBC News.
"Certainly in t
Source: HNN summary of an article in Pressbox
July 13, 2006
Pressbox.co.uk reports that "A group which stubbornly refuses to identify itself is launching the world's first survey of the attitudes of academic historians to Holocaust revisionism." Holocaust deniers appear to be behind the survey. A spokesperson told Pressbox: 'We read daily in our newspapers and online news sources about Holocaust revisionists being arrested, put on trial or imprisoned for their views, and we get told a lot how very awful these people are and so on, but no one s
Source: Scripps Howard News Service
July 10, 2006
A new exhibit at the National Museum of Health and Medicine commemorates [the struggle to save Garfiel'd life] 125 years ago. Open through Sept. 19, the anniversary of Garfield's death, the show features contemporary images and descriptions of the effort to save the president's life. The museum is a component of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
The display's centerpiece: the 12th thoracic and first and second lumbar vertebrae of the 20
Source: The Daily Telegraph
July 13, 2006
The bones of Farinelli, the castrato whose voice thrilled the courts of 18th century Europe, were dug up yesterday in an attempt by scientists to discover more about the man, and thousands of others castrated to help their singing.
Researchers including David Howard, of the University of York, and Nicholas Clapton, of the Royal Academy of Music, want to know what anatomical effects castration had on the legion of young boys who underwent the process in order to become opera stars.
Source: Summary in the Chronicle of Higher Ed of an article in Political Psychology
July 12, 2006
President Bush is definitely intelligent, but his IQ is "below average" when compared to that of his 41 predecessors, according to a new study by Dean Keith Simonton, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Davis.
Using statistical methods to translate several personality traits associated with intelligence, Mr. Simonton has compiled IQ estimates for every American president. General acuity is a crucial measure of a leader's performance, he says, but
Source: NYT
July 13, 2006
This is how the 2005 edition of “A History of the United States,” a high school history textbook by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel J. Boorstin and Brooks Mather Kelley, relates the cataclysmic attacks of 9/11 for a new generation of young adults:
“In New York City, the impact of the fully fueled jets caused the twin towers to burst into flames. The fires led to the catastrophic collapse of both 110-story buildings as well as other buildings in the area. The numbers of p
Source: Common Dreams
July 12, 2006
The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union today released new documents that indicate the government is broadly interpreting and using a controversial Patriot Act power known as the "ideological exclusion" provision to block people from entering the country. The ACLU is concerned that the provision is increasingly being used to target foreign scholars and others whose politics the government disfavors. Among those who are being blocked from entry is Dr.
Source: The Daily Telegraph
July 10, 2006
THE Ministry of Defence has refused to release documents which may resolve the 53-year-old mystery of a massacre involving British-led troops, it is claimed today.
Dr David Anderson, the Oxford historian whose researches uncovered new evidence linking two British officers to the murder of 22 Kenyans in the spring of 1953, says the incident was "the tip of the iceberg'' in a bloody campaign that Britain should be ashamed of.The Chuka massacre is the subject
Source: CNN
July 9, 2006
Liverpool officials said Saturday they would modify a proposal to rename streets linked to the slave trade when they realized the road made famous by the 1967 Beatles song was one of them.
The unassuming suburban street was named after James Penny, a wealthy 18th century slave ship owner. Liverpool, the Beatles' northern English hometown, was once a major hub for the slave trade.
"I don't think anyone would seriously consider renaming Penny Lane," said city co
Source: Ledger Enquirer
July 10, 2006
Former Birmingham City Councilman John Katopodis has proposed changing the name of Caldwell Park, which honors a key figure in the founding of Birmingham who also was an officer in the Confederate Army and a slave owner.
Katopodis wants the park named after former City Councilwoman Nina Miglionico, a social progressive who was elected to the council after the old commission form of city government was changed during the racial turmoil in 1963. She served for more than two decades.
