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 Ottawa Citizen
June 2, 2006
What more could you possibly want to see, or learn, about the sinking of the RMS Titanic, you may be thinking to yourself?
Well, possibly this: Little less than a year ago, Deep Sea Detectives hosts John Chatterton and Richie Kohler dove four kilometres beneath the North Atlantic's surface in Russian submersibles. Their mission, captured on film in tonight's two-hour A&E special, Titanic's Final Moments: Missing Pieces, was to search outside the known debris field and possibly d
Source: NYT
June 1, 2006
France is a republic, but it still takes the story of its royals very seriously, especially if the story happens to be retold by an American.
So the release last week of "Marie Antoinette," Sofia Coppola's $40 million film, has revived a centuries-old fascination with the ancien régime's last queen.
No matter that some critics savaged the Coppola film. Even the highbrow world of French culture recognizes the power and profitability of the woman who is still po
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
June 1, 2006
Amy Richlin admits that the difficulties in translating Poenulus — a comedy likely written between 224 B.C. and 184 B.C. by the Roman playwright Plautus — begin with the work's title.
"Poenulus" (which, according to Ms. Richlin, literally means "The Little Punic Guy") is a reference more likely to leave modern audiences scratching their heads than rolling in the aisles. But in her introduction to a new translation of the comedy, Ms. Richlin, a professor of classi
Source: BBC
June 1, 2006
London City Airport was closed for several hours after an unexploded World War II bomb was found nearby. Police were alerted when a device was found on a building site at Seagull Lane, Canning Town, in east London.
The area was cordoned off and Docklands Light Railway (DLR) and Silverlink train services in the area were also suspended for a time.
Source: Inside Higher Ed
June 1, 2006
A review by two Ohio University officials has found “rampant and flagrant plagiarism” by graduate students in the institution’s mechanical engineering department — and concluded that three faculty members either “failed to monitor” their advisees’ writing or “basically supported academic fraudulence” by ignoring the dishonesty. The report by the two-person review team called for the dismissal of two professors, and university officials said they would bring in a national expert on plagiarism to
Source: NYT
June 1, 2006
KASONGAN, Indonesia, May 31 — Behind a painted sign on a sidewalk reading, "This is not an exhibition, it's a disaster," hundreds of traditional ceramic sculptures lie shattered beneath a collapsed roof.More than half the houses, shops and galleries lining this small street here were destroyed in the earthquake on Saturday and are littered with the broken remains of their owners' livelihoods. The hundreds of artists who live in Kasongan, a village in Bantul, the di
Source: Bruce Craig in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History
June 1, 2006
Florida Governor Jeb Bush has signed into law a new comprehensive K-12th grade education bill – the Florida Education Omnibus Bill (H.B. 7087e3). Buried in the 160-page bill are new provisions designed to “meet the highest standards for professionalism and historic accuracy.” Some Florida history teachers, though, question the philosophical underpinnings of the law.The most controversial passage states: “American history shall be viewed as factual, not constructed, sha
Source: aljazeera.net
May 30, 2006
Three years after the Baghdad Museum was looted, thousands of archaeological artefacts have still not been accounted for, the museum remains closed and all excavation and research in Iraq has ground to a halt.Dr Lamia Al-Gailani-Werr, an Iraqi archaeologist and member of the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and former adviser to the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council, says the destruction of Iraq's heritage is leaving a bitter legacy for future generati
Source: bankingonbaghdad.com
June 1, 2006
65 years ago on this day, Iraqi Arabs carried out a Nazi-inspired two-day pogrom, the Farhud, which would anticipate the end of some 2,600 years of Jewish life in Iraq.
Source: cronaca.com
June 1, 2006
BERLIN (AP) - The globe Adolf Hitler gazed upon while contemplating world domination is in remarkably good condition but for one blemish - the bullet hole directly through Berlin, inflicted by a Soviet soldier after the Nazi dictator's defeat in 1945.
The oversized orb is just one highlight of the more than 8,000 artifacts in the German Historical Museum's new permanent display on the country's 2,000-year history, which seeks to help Germans rediscover their identity.
With World
Source: AP
June 1, 2006
A collection of charred scraps kept in a Greek museum's storerooms are all that remains of what archaeologists say is Europe's oldest surviving book _ which may hold a key to understanding early monotheistic beliefs.
More than four decades after the Derveni papyrus was found in a 2,400- year-old nobleman's grave in northern Greece, researchers said Thursday they are close to uncovering new text _ through high-tech digital analysis _ from the blackened fragments left after the manus
Source: Forward
June 1, 2006
In Canada, the Ontario branch of the country's biggest labor union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, voted unanimously May 27 at its annual convention to urge an economic boycott of Israel. The resolution passed by CUPE Ontario — whose 210,000 members account for nearly half of Canada's entire national membership — called for divestment, which translates into withdrawing the union's pension fund investments in Israel. In Canada, the Ontario union's actions
Source: Press Release--Quinnipiac
June 1, 2006
Strong Democratic sentiment pushes President George W. Bush to the top of the list when American voters pick the worst U.S. President in the last 61 years. Bush is named by 34 percent of voters, followed by Richard Nixon at 17 percent and Bill Clinton at 16 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. Leading the list for best President since 1945 is Ronald Reagan with 28 percent, and Clinton with 25 percent.
President Bush is ranked worst by 56
Source: Wa Po
June 1, 2006
Scientists said yesterday that stone artifacts found with remains of ancient, tiny "Hobbit"-like people on a remote Indonesian island are similar to much older island artifacts, offering new support for the theory that the fossils represent a unique species of archaic human.
The Australian-Indonesian research team said in the journal Nature that its analysis "negates claims" by critics that only modern humans could have made such tools, and that the Hobbits, with
Source: London Daily Telegraph
June 1, 2006
Some 230 years after its flat pastures were wrested from the waters, the de Feijters' farm -- their home for 33 years -- is to be reflooded to reverse the disappearance of Zeeland's mudflats and salt marshes.
For the family -- raised in a province that owes its very existence to dike systems dating from the Middle Ages -- the plan is "un-Dutch."
Breaching dikes is behavior associated with invading armies, Mr. de Feijter said.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 1, 2006
One of the world's earliest printed documents, Christopher Columbus's account of his first voyage to discover the New World, will come up for sale in London this month with a price tag of £500,000.
The Columbus Letter, or Epistola Christofori Colom, is the explorer's remarkably humane description of his first encounters with the natives of Hispaniola and other Caribbean islands early in 1493.He wrote it on his return voyage to Spain for his sponsors,
Source: NYT
June 1, 2006
It had been 84 years since a tomb was unearthed here in the scorching desert burial ground for pharaohs, and the hope, of course, was for mummies. What else could be inside the seven coffins, at the bottom of a shaft that until February had been sealed off from all but termites for over three millenniums?Very nice pillows, for starters.
"No idea, I'm sorry," Elsie van Rooij, an expert on ancient textiles, said, when asked why it was that some bur
Source: Baltimore Sun
June 1, 2006
A state-appointed commission is urging North Carolina to provide reparations for the 1898 racial violence that sparked an exodus of more than 2,000 black residents from Wilmington. The 500-page report that was produced after six years of study also said the violence, which killed as many as 60 people, was not a spontaneous riot but rather the nation's only recorded coup d'etat.
"There is no amount of money that can repair what happened years ago and
Source: CNN
June 1, 2006
Zebulon Pike wasn't the first person to see the towering peak that would bear his name. He never reached the 14,110-foot summit. And after a miserable time in the Rocky Mountains, he was captured by the Spanish and carted off to Mexico.
All of these details are simply part of the lore surrounding Pikes Peak, discovered 200 years ago by the Army captain's expedition."Pikes Peak is an American icon," said Carol Keenness, public programs coord
Source: LAT
June 1, 2006
Underwater archeologists have identified the partial remains of the youngest known pirate to ply U.S. waters, a 9-year-old boy who eagerly joined Capt. Black Sam Bellamy's crew on the infamous Whydah.
Teenage pirates were quite common during the early 18th century, but "this is the youngest one I have ever come across," historian Ken Kinkor of the Expedition Whydah Sea-Lab & Learning Center in Provincetown, Mass., said Wednesday in announcing the discovery.
