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: NYT
June 25, 2006
For 18 years, Dr. Aubin Heyndrickx has tended the sealed jars containing strands of hair and scraps of clothing he gathered from a dead woman's body.
Collected in Halabja, one of many Kurdish towns in northern Iraq that were attacked with chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein's army in 1988, the jars have been stored in a blue plastic drum in his lab ever since, waiting.
Now, as prosecutors prepare to try Mr. Hussein in Baghdad on charges of genocide against the Kurds, Mr.
Source: NYT
June 25, 2006
Over the past few years, hundreds of hand-painted theater curtains that once hung on small stages in Vermont's opera houses and in its town and Grange halls have been found and are being revived thanks to a statewide preservation effort, the Vermont Painted Theater Curtain Project.
The project began in 1998, when the Vermont Museum and Gallery Alliance tried to inventory the state's theater curtains, asking all 251 of the state's town and city clerks for help.
Source: NYT
June 25, 2006
A few days into the campaign for United States Senate in New Jersey, the Republican candidate, Thomas H. Kean Jr., called a news conference in Newark to declare that the integrity of his opponent, Robert Menendez, was a nail he would hammer.
For starters, he scoffed at a claim of early civic virtue by Mr. Menendez, the current senator and the Democratic nominee.
In particular, Mr. Kean said that Mr. Menendez had distorted his own role in the political corruption of Unio
Source: NYT
June 24, 2006
Japan's Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit on Friday that opposed the prime minister's visits to a controversial Tokyo war shrine, handing an apparent victory to the conservative backers of his visits.
The decision was the first by the highest court on the annual visits by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto complex honoring Japan's war dead, including convicted war criminals.
The visits have brought bitter criticism from China and South Kor
Source: NYT
June 25, 2006
How do the almost aristocratic atmosphere of the National Archives's rotunda and the democratic sensations of "The Public Vaults"--a new exhibition area featuring computer screens-- find common ground?
One way can be seen in an unusual new exhibition organized by Stacey Bredhoff, "Eyewitness: American Originals From the National Archives." Its 25 "documents" provide a human record of history: first-person accounts — in audio, video and ink — of events
Source: Reuters
June 24, 2006
Sermons, books, notes and speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will be spared the auction block next week because the civil rights icon's alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta, has bought them.
Sotheby's auction house had estimated the value of the collection at up to $30 million ahead of the auction that had been set for Friday, some five months after the death of King's widow, Coretta Scott King.
King's heirs had tried to sell it to the U.S. Library of Congress i
Source: APSA
June 23, 2006
Latino immigrants to the U.S. are more diverse, successful and assimilating more rapidly than is widely assumed in public debate, scholars observe in recent research published by the American Political Science Association (APSA). While immigration, assimilation, national identity and relevant public policy questions are rightly being discussed today, the research finds that much of the concerns regarding Latino immigration are rooted in inaccurate assumptions, oversimplifications and poor data.
Source: Cox
June 18, 2006
It's been a collection of scandals and problems without handy monikers. But the Bush administration has had enough of them to begin nudging the needle on the presidential scandal-o-meter.
Historians are measuring them against the brand-name scandals — Watergate, Iran-Contra, Whitewater, Monica - that have plagued previous presidents.
"There is something that is different about the current administration and more worrisome about this," said presidential histori
Source: NY Sun
June 23, 2006
Two prominent historians and a former archivist at the King Center in Atlanta charge that the auctioning on June 30 of Martin Luther King Jr.'s papers by Sotheby's to a private collector could violate agreements that Coretta Scott King made with federal agencies in the 1970s and 1980s, when, in exchange for grant money, she pledged to make King's papers widely available to scholars.
"Mrs. King had fully committed legally to making all of this material publicly available. Period
Source: NYT
June 23, 2006
A map dealer who specialized in finding elusive treasures for rich collectors admitted in federal court on Thursday to having stolen 97 antique maps worth more than $3 million from more than a half-dozen universities and libraries over the last seven and a half years.One of the hardest-hit institutions was the New York Public Library, which lost 32 maps, but rare book collections in Boston, Chicago and London were also victims, according to federal prosecutors.
Source: BBC
June 23, 2006
Sorry is often said to be the hardest word but Andrew Hawkins felt compelled to apologise to a crowd of thousands of Africans.
His regret was not for his own actions but offered on behalf of his ancestor, who traded in African slaves 444 years ago.
Sir John Hawkins was a 16th Century English shipbuilder, merchant, pirate and slave trader.
He first captured natives of Sierra Leone in 1562 and sold them in the Caribbean. His cousin was Sir Francis Drake, w
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
June 23, 2006
The intellectual background of the physicians who first led the infamous study, in which treatment was withheld from black men infected with syphilis, helps explain how the research project came about, two professors write. The authors -- Paul A. Lombardo, an associate professor at the University of Virginia's Center for Biomedical Ethics, and Gregory M. Dorr, an assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa -- say "the intellectual backgroun
Source: PR Newswire
June 14, 2006
American Express today announced a
$10 million, five-year commitment to historic preservation and the launch
of the American Express(R) Partners in Preservation program, expanding the
Company's focus on securing the use of cultural assets for the future. The
American Express Partners in Preservation program builds upon the Company's
decade-long relationship with the World Monuments Fund (WMF) and
establishes a partnership with the National Trust for Historic
Preservation. The program is d
Source: National Coalition for History
June 23, 2006
In recent months there have been several new IRB horror stories relating to oral history. For example, at one major research university a doctoral dissertation that had been approved by the Dean of the Graduate School, was withdrawn just weeks prior to the student’s anticipated graduation. In what appears to have been a communication problem between the student’s graduate advisor, the graduate school, and the university IRB, the doctoral candidate was ordered to take back his dissertation, strik
Source: National Coalition for History
June 23, 2006
In a surprise move on the floor of the House of Representatives, on 14 June 2006, the lower chamber cut the proposed budget for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) by $8 million. A higher level budget had been approved by the House Appropriations Committee and its Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary, and the District of Columbia. If the Senate agrees with the House the net result would signal (to quote a “dismayed” Archivist
Source: National Coalition for History
June 23, 2006
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) plans on instituting a hiring freeze and other steps – including an early retirement buy-out program for qualified employees – in order to minimized an anticipated budget shortfall for this and next year.
While Congressionally-mandated pay raises, higher facility rents, and increases in energy costs in facilities nationwide account for some of the projected funding shortfall, the fact is that personnel costs make up the largest
Source: SouthofBoston.com
June 23, 2006
The National Park Service wants Congress to remove the word "internment" from the name of a national park commemorating a World War II prison camp for Japanese-Americans.
In a management plan for the Minidoka Internment National Monument finalized this week, the Park Service says the term legally means imprisonment of civilian enemy aliens during wartime and does not accurately reflect the government's forced relocation of thousands of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent.
Source: Louis Freeh in the WSJ
June 23, 2006
Ten years ago this Sunday, acting under direct orders from senior Iranian government leaders, the Saudi Hezbollah detonated a 25,000-pound TNT bomb that killed 19 U.S. airmen in their dormitory at Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The blast wave destroyed Building 131 and grievously wounded hundreds of additional Air Force personnel. It also killed an unknown number of Saudi civilians in a nearby park.The aftermath of the Khobar bombing is just one example
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
June 23, 2006
In recent months, interest in September 11-conspiracy theories has surged. Since January, traffic to the major conspiracy Web sites has increased steadily. The number of blogs that mention "9/11" and "conspiracy" each day has climbed from a handful to over a hundred.
Recently, 500 conspiracy theorists descended on the Embassy Suites in Chicago for a conference called "9/11: Revealing the Truth — Reclaiming Our Future." It was the most substantial gather
Source: NPR
June 23, 2006
When Pittsburgh-based PNC purchased Washington, D.C.'s, Riggs Bank last year, it acquired more than it was after. That's because Riggs Bank was "the bank of presidents," and its assets included an extensive historical archive.Left behind in the Riggs archive are a treasure trove of old ledgers, signature books and personal checks written by some of the 23 presidents who banked there, as well as a number of other men and women who shaped American history.
