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: Time
July 10, 2006
The last remaining trove of Albert Einstein's personal family letters is being opened to the public this week. They had been closely held by his stepdaughter Margot Einstein, who decreed that they remain sealed for 20 years after her death. Some of the letters are being published by Princeton University Press in the 10th volume produced by the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech, and they are a revelation. "Einstein's private correspondence refutes the simplistic view of him as an isolated,
Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram
July 10, 2006
While the Kimbell's sudden return in June of its sole Turner painting makes it the first Texas museum to restitute -- without immediately buying back -- a prized part of its permanent collection once plundered by the Nazis, it is far from the only national institution to be confronted with this complex dilemma.Art repositories from Seattle to Boston have been entangled in a movement to ferret out Holocaust-era stolen art and restore it to its victimized owners.
Source: Richmond Times Dispatch
July 10, 2006
In the English city where Pocahontas died nearly 400 years ago, Virginia Indians will show this week that their culture is still very much alive. The Indian group is scheduled to fly to England on Wednesday for a week of cultural demonstrations, scholarly discussions and ceremonies centered in the Kent County town of Gravesend. The event is linked to next year's commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World.Grave
Source: The Australian
July 10, 2006
Two historians who lost a plagiarism case against the British publishers of Dan Brown's bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, plan to appeal against the verdict, court officials said today.The officials said the appeal could take place later this year, but no specific date has been set.
The Bookseller reported the appeal was due to be heard early next year.
Random House, which won the copyright case earlier this year at the High Court in London, expressed
Source: Elliot Jaspin, Cox News Service
July 9, 2006
It is America's family secret.
Beginning in 1864 and continuing for approximately 60 years, whites across the United States conducted a series of racial expulsions, driving thousands of blacks from their homes to make communities lily-white.In at least a dozen of the most extreme cases, blacks were purged from entire counties that remain almost exclusively white, according to the most recent census data.
The expulsions often were violent
Source: The Los Angeles Times
July 10, 2006
The Smithsonian Institution, our national museum and also a scientific research complex, is at a crisis point. Many of its 20 venues, such as the National Museum of Natural History and the National Air and Space Museum, need tens of millions of dollars in work. Desperate for funds, the Smithsonian has made arguably improper arrangements with big business, and it has accepted funding from corporations with an all-too-obvious interest in what goes on view in the institution's museums. But the real
Source: cronaca.com
July 7, 2006
Yellow-green glass carved into a beetle-shaped ornament and found on a necklace worn by the ancient King Tutankhamen was created by a meteorite fireball, according to new research. . . The geologists determined the scarab was made out of natural desert glass for the king, who reigned from 1333 to 1323 B.C.
Such glass is only found in the Great Sand Sea of the eastern Sahara desert. With a silica content of 98 percent, it is the purest known glass in the world.
Source: Orkneyjar
June 29, 2006
Men working on a peat bank in Orphir have unearthed an “outstanding” example of a late Bronze Age socketed axe – believed to be only the second found in Orkney to date.
The find is particularly exciting, given the comparative scarcity of Bronze Age artefacts in the county.
Michael Watt discovered the 3,000-year-old axe head while spreading peats at the Highland Park's Hobbister peat bank. The distillery uses the peats, which are mechanically extracted each spring and ma
Source: ansa.it
July 7, 2006
Roman Italy's third-biggest city (ANSA) - Aquileia, July 3 - Italian archaeologists are working hard to unearth more of the largest Roman city ever uncovered, a colony that served as a bulwark against barbarian invasions before being destroyed by Attila the Hun .
Aquileia in today's far north east, once the third-biggest city in Roman Italy, had been largely wiped off the map by foreign attacks and centuries of stone looting. But some of its ancient splendour remained in traces of i
Source: NYT
July 6, 2006
The war over some $6 million worth of paintings, flags and trophies inside the Seventh Regiment Armory on the Upper East Side has not been going on for as long as the Hundred Years War, which actually lasted 116 years. It only seems as if it has.But at 10 years and counting, this fight has outlasted the Mexican Revolution, the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980's, both World Wars, the Boer War, the Spanish-American War, even the Civil War. And, as a television corresponde
Source: http://froginawell.net/japan/carnival
July 8, 2006
The Fifth Asian History Blog Carnival has been posted at World History Blog, hosted by Miland Brown. AHC is a roundup of blogging about Asian history over the last two months: future editions will be monthly.
If you have blog posts to nominate, go here. If you would like to volunteer to host a
Source: NYT
July 8, 2006
New Yorkers, it has been said, like to complain.
Finally, there's proof.
It comes from the bowels of the municipal archives on Chambers Street, where thousands of complaints to the mayor have been unearthed from more than 30,000 boxes of official correspondence going back to the 1700's.
The parade of squeaky wheels includes a merchant requesting money to make up for income lost in a smallpox scare, a father angry that his 12-year-old son was allowed into a
Source: The Financial Times
July 8, 2006
Fishkin, a political scientist at Stanford University in California and the University of Texas, is a man seized with a big idea, which he believes is large enough to be of global importance. He thinks that this idea - which goes by the name of deliberative democracy - addresses one of the large public anxieties of our times: the rapidly eroding popular support for the main variants of democratic politics, evidenced by a decline in voting, in party membership, activism and loyalty, in interest i
Source: NYT
July 7, 2006
One hundred years ago this month, Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish army officer who had spent five years on Devil's Island for high treason and an additional seven years trying to clear his name, was absolved by France's Supreme Court. A few days later he was reinstated in the army, promoted to squadron chief, or major, and given the Légion d'Honneur.
The Dreyfus Affair, which deeply divided France and called forth a vicious wave of anti-Semitism, was finally over. Or was it?
Source: Secrecy News, the newsletter written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists
July 7, 2006
The Department of Energy has released a redacted version of its October 2005 Historical Records Declassification Guide, a document used by classification reviewers to determine which information may be publicly released under the declassification provisions of executive order 12958.There are 15 categories of DOE national security information that are exempt from automatic declassification, the Guide explains, including information on naval nuclear propulsion, chemical
Source: The Art Newspaper
June 26, 2006
The US State Department is funding a programme to provide specialised training for Iraqi museum professionals from Baghdad and Kirkuk at six American institutions. The initiative is the first US-sponsored museum exchange since 1991 when the United Nations imposed trade sanctions against Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait. The embargo remained in place until the US-led offensive in 2003. According to Edward Able, president of the American Association of Museums
Source: NBC San Diego
July 5, 2006
In November 1969, Pete Conrad, Richard Gordon and Alan Bean became the second crew to explore the moon and return safely to earth. Two weeks ago, a discovery at the bottom of an old box showed, for the first time, the final and exciting moments of the mission. It came inside a 16-millimeter film reel.A film of the successful landing had unknowingly been stored away by the mission's helicopter pilot. He had no idea that he had in his possession the only copy of th
Source: HNN Intern Abigail Sauter reporting on an article in findlaw.com
July 5, 2006
John W. Dean of Watergate fame recently accused two senators of altering the Congressional Record to deceive the Supreme Court in the key Guantanamo case, Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld.
Dean charges that Senators Jon Kyl of Arizona and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina inserted into the Congressional Record an exchange on the Senate floor that never occurred. The exchange reversed a key promise the senators made to their colleagues. On the floor of the Senate stated plainly that the Supreme Court
Source: The Washington Post
December 31, 2069
The trend was clear and consistent. Since the end of World War II and stretching to the start of the current millennium, the percentage of American women entering the labor force rose steadily, at a rate so fast that it offset the steady decline in participation by men.
The influx of fresh workers buoyed economic growth. As companies expanded and demand rose, there were plenty of hands to get the job done.
But women's rush to employment stopped in 2000 and started to de
Source: SECRECY NEWS, from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
July 7, 2006
"It's not a crime to publish classified information," explained Washington Post reporter Dana Priest in an electric moment on last Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, even though "[commentator William] Bennett keeps telling people that it is."
Mr. Bennett, who was sitting right next to Ms. Priest, had declared last April that reporters like Ms. Priest who publish classified information "against the wishes of the President" should be "arrested."
