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 8, 2006
BUDAPEST — It was opening night at the Operetta Theater here in beautiful Budapest, and the evening was resplendent with a sense of the radiant past.
The show was "Rudolf," a musical based on the famous story of Crown Prince Rudolf of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his double suicide at the Mayerling hunting estate in 1889 in the company of the Baroness Maria Vetsera, literally a femme fatale.Not everybody feels nostalgic about the
Source: Nartional Coalition for History
June 8, 2006
$500,000 is what the Smithsonian will receive first year, but the guaranteed annual minimum increases each year so that at the end of the 30 year contract period $99 million is guaranteed.
Source: cronaca.com
June 8, 2006
The world's largest Charles Darwin book collection has been bought by the Natural History Museum for nearly £1m. The Kohler Darwin Collection includes almost everything the naturalist published from 1829 onwards.
Antiquarians Chris and Michele Kohler amassed about 3,500 items, filling four rooms in their house, over 20 years.
Source: Ananova
June 8, 2006
The reusable condom dates back to 1640 and is completely intact, as is its original users' manual, written in Latin. The manual suggests that users immerse the condom in warm milk prior to its use to avoid diseases.
Source: cronaca.com
June 6, 2006
The "Antikythera Mechanism" was discovered damaged and fragmented on the wreck of a cargo ship off the tiny Greek island of Antikythera in 1900. Now, a joint British-Greek research team has found a hidden ancient Greek inscription on the device, which it thinks could unlock the mystery. The team believes the Antikythera Mechanism may be the world's oldest computer, used by the Greeks to predict the motion of the planets.Related Link
Source: Cultural Heritage News Agency
June 8, 2006
Tehran, 8 June 2006 (CHN) -- Discovery of some Mithraism symbols such as cypress, a goat and an inscription in Sassanid-Pahlavi language and Mithraism architectural style in Kangelou Fortress all have strengthened the theory that this historical monument was used as a worship place during the ancient times.
“In Avesta, Zoroastrian’s holly book, Mithra means promise and faith. Mehr (literary meaning love or sun) was one of the creators of Ahura Mazda, God in Zoroastrianism. He was t
Source: Free Lance-Star
June 3, 2006
The Central Virginia Battlefields Trust has made a major financial commitment in the effort to purchase a Spotsylvania County farm that played a key role in the Battle of Fredericksburg.
The local preservation group that has saved hundreds of acres of important Civil War land here over the past decade has pledged $1 million toward the $12 million purchase price, said Mike Stevens, CVBT president.
In March, the Washington-based Civil War Preservation Trust announced that
Source: Houston Chronicle
June 8, 2006
A Berlin-based history society Thursday unveiled an information sign at the site of Hitler's underground bunker, marking for the first time exactly where the Nazi leader took his life at the end of World War II.
Until now, Berlin had resisted giving an indication as to the location of the bunker for fear that it could become a symbolic gathering point for neo-Nazi groups.Just 200 yards away from Germany's memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the Berl
Source: Delaware News Journal
June 7, 2006
A national education think tank has given Delaware a "D" in world history, but despite the low grade, the First State fared no worse than most others.Most states aren't doing nearly enough to give students a grounding in world history, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute said in a report released Tuesday that grades states on their world history standards. The standards outline what students are expected to know in the subject.
Delaware's
Source: WCBS (New York)
June 8, 2006
For years, Sotheby's auction house has tried to sell the papers, manuscripts and personal library of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. But previous negotiations with various institutions came to naught, including a private sale in 2003 that was called off. Now, on June 30, Sotheby's will auction the King collection, hoping that an institution will step forward and pay from $15 million to $30 million for the lot of more than 10,000 items.``It does set a challenge for American i
Source: AP
June 8, 2006
BERLIN - The newly elected leader of Germany’s main Jewish organization called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a “second Hitler” who should be barred from attending the World Cup in Germany, according to comments published Thursday.
Ahmadinejad should not be allowed to set foot on German soil, Charlotte Knobloch said in remarks published in Bild newspaper. The Holocaust survivor was elected the first woman president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews on Wednesday.
Source: Deutsche Welle
June 7, 2006
Newly released CIA documents show that the US kept mum about Adolf Eichmann's whereabouts to protect a high-ranking German official with a dubious past.The United States learned the location and alias of fugitive Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann two years before Israel captured him but kept the information secret as part of its efforts to combat communism in post-war West Germany, according to a historian who reviewed 27,000 pages of newly declassified documents.
Source: NYT
June 7, 2006
A court in Toulouse ordered the state and the national railroad company SNCF to pay $80,000 to a Jewish family whose members were delivered to the World War II transit camp at Drancy, outside Paris, that sent Jews off to Nazi concentration camps. It was the first time that the state and the railway had been found liable for their role in the wartime deportation of thousands of French Jews. The suit was brought by two brothers in 2001. They were arrested by the Gestapo and transported to Drancy i
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
June 7, 2006
The Senate Judiciary Committee quizzed Federal Bureau of Investigation officials about their interest in the papers of the late muckraking journalist Jack Anderson, which are now held at George Washington University, at a hearing on Tuesday. The session had its share of fireworks, with senators butting heads with a Department of Justice official.
But, to borrow from the parlance of journalism, the lede was buried. An intriguing nugget of information could be found in the written te
Source: CNN
June 7, 2006
Odd-shaped mounds of dirt in Australia turn out to be fossils of the oldest life on Earth, created by billions of microbes more than 3 billion years ago, scientists say in a new report.
And these mounds are exactly the type of life astrobiologists are looking for on Mars and elsewhere.
A study published Thursday in the journal Nature gives the strongest evidence yet that the mounds dotting a large swath of western Australia are Earth's oldest fossils. The theory is that
Source: Yahoo
June 6, 2006
Egyptologists are holding their breath over the mystery surrounding the first tomb discovered in Luxor's Valley of the Kings since that of the boy king Tutankhamun in 1922. News of the surprise discovery in February by an American team from the University of Memphis has had repercussions far beyond this famous necropolis from the time of the pharaohs.
Could the small tomb, designated KV63, hold a royal mummy, perhaps that of Tutankhamun's widow or ev
Source: BBC
June 6, 2006
Scientists have recovered DNA from a Neanderthal that lived 100,000 years ago - the oldest human-type DNA so far.
It was extracted from the tooth of a Neanderthal child found in the Scladina cave in the Meuse Basin, Belgium.
The study, reported in Current Biology, suggests our distant cousins were more genetically diverse than once thought.
Their diversity had declined, perhaps because of climate change or disease, by the time early humans arrived in Eur
Source: NYT
June 7, 2006
NEWTON, Iowa, June 2 — In the cool, echoey halls of the history museum in this company town, the display cases are full of washing machines.
Here sits the Maytag Pastime, the 1907 wooden model. Over there, a later model that also served as an ice cream maker, a meat grinder and a butter churn. From 1982, the 25-millionth washer that Maytag made, still gleaming and pristine, and on and on.
In many ways, said Leland Smith, who guided a visitor through the exhibit halls,
Source: Washington Times
June 7, 2006
Hawaii Sen. Daniel K. Akaka thinks Hawaiians should be allowed to govern themselves as Native Americans and Alaskans do, and after seven years of pushing a bill to start the process, the Senate is expected to take it up this week.
Mr. Akaka says the bill is a way to give "indigenous" Hawaiians a sense of pride and a chance for sovereignty for the first time since 1893, when Queen Liliuokalani was deposed and lands were illegally seized by U.S. Marines and a cadre of sugar-p
Source: Montgomery Advertiser
June 7, 2006
Alabama may not have been the site of any major Civil War battles, but its place in history is secured as the birthplace of the Confederacy.
The spot where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as the first and only president of the Confederate States of America is one of many important locations in a new brochure that will be unveiled today by the Alabama Bureau of Tourism and Travel.
Other attractions in the brochure include the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Fort
