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: BBC
May 10, 2006
Archaeologists have unearthed a large Roman cemetery in a Gloucestershire gravel quarry.
More than 100 people are believed to have been buried at the site, near Fairford, which dates back 1,600 years.
It is thought the dead were interred according to their age, as children's bodies have been found in one area with adults in another section.
Source: Times of India
May 10, 2006
PATNA: Hundreds of antiquities kept in the store room of the Patna Museum are missing. These antiquities had been found in various excavations conducted at Katra (Muzaffarpur), Taradih (Bodh Gaya) and Balirajgarh (Darbhanga) during the 1980s and 1990s.
Surprisingly, all these antiquities are not catalogued in any of the records of the state archaeology department. These antiquities were kept in two separate dilapidated rooms located on the backyard of the Patna Museum building for
Source: Wa Po
May 11, 2006
New evidence from Canada and Alaska suggests that climate change, rather than human hunting, may have played the key role in a great die-off of mammoths, horses and other large North American mammals that began more than 10,000 years ago.
"It was a special time of greater warmth and moisture," said paleoecologist R. Dale Guthrie of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. "The arid steppe receded, the short grass became more lush, and then the forest came in. The mammot
Source: BBC
May 10, 2006
A French envoy has said her country did profit from slavery as it officially commemorates the victims of the trade for the first time.
"It profited from the commerce in human beings... ripped from the African homeland," Junior Co-operation Minister Brigitte Girardin said in Senegal.
She was visiting a notorious slave island off the coast of Senegal.
In Paris, President Jacques Chirac said facing up to the colonial past was a "key to national coh
Source: American Historical Association
May 10, 2006
Responding to a recent letter from Lawrence Small, Secretary of the Smithsonian, AHA President Linda Kerber questioned the Institution's obfuscation about the contractual arrangement between the Smithsonian and Showtime, praised recent congressional intervention on the issue, and supported the recent actions of its affiliate, the Society of American Historians, in suspending Smithsonian Press as a publisher-member.In a letter unanimously endorsed by the Associati
Source: Bloomberg News
May 9, 2006
Three years into major combat in Vietnam, 28,500 U.S. service members had perished, millions of families were anxious about the military draft and antiwar protests had spread to dozens of college campuses.
Today, at the same juncture in the Iraq war, about 2,400 American soldiers have died, the U.S. military consists entirely of volunteers and public dissent is sporadic.
There's one other difference: The war in Iraq is more unpopular than was the Vietnam conflict at t
Source: Terry George in the Wa Po
May 10, 2006
Paul Rusesabagina, the real-life hero of the movie "Hotel Rwanda," is being denounced by some in his country as a traitor and a criminal. Perhaps he helped bring some of this abuse on himself, but none of it is deserved. As director and producer of the film, I'd like to explain.To make a film of a true story you must compress timelines, create composite characters and dramatize emotions. When it came to making "Hotel Rwanda" -- the story of ho
Source: BBC
May 8, 2006
One of Britain's most historic ships could be dismantled because too much money is needed to restore it. The 140-year-old clipper, The Carrick, has been rotting away on the quayside at the Scottish Maritime Museum in Irvine, Ayrshire, for 15 years.
Along with the Cutty Sark, it is one of the last clippers in the world but at least £10m is needed to repair it.
Source: NYT
May 9, 2006
The board overseeing the Smithsonian Institution is expected in the next few days to release its response to a Congressional inquiry into its agreement with Showtime Networks to create an on-demand cable station whose programming would feature Smithsonian programs and collections, said Lawrence M. Small, the institution's top executive. Mr. Small declined to characterize the response the institution's 17-member board agreed on, but he repeated assertions that the agreement "doesn't limit th
Source: Inside Higher Ed
May 9, 2006
From the moment in February that David Horowitz’s new book appeared, scholars have been poking at it, identifying errors and what they consider to be distortions (even as Horowitz was praised by many conservative talk show hosts, who have helped him boost sales).
Today, a coalition of academic and civil liberties groups is releasing a more detailed analysis of the Horowitz book,The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. In “Facts Count,” the debunking document bein
Source: Yahoo
May 8, 2006
A carved monolith unearthed in Mexico may show that the Olmec civilization, one of the oldest in the Americas, was more widespread than thought or that another culture thrived alongside it 3,000 years ago.
Findings at the newly excavated Tamtoc archeological site in the north-central state of San Luis Potosi may prompt scholars to rethink a view of Mesoamerican history which holds that its earliest peoples were based in the south of Mexico.
Source: Yahoo
May 9, 2006
ATHENS, Greece - A Greek fisherman has handed over to authorities a large section of an ancient bronze statue brought up in his nets in the Aegean Sea, officials said on Monday.
The male torso was located last week near the eastern Aegean island of Kalymnos, the Culture Ministry said in an announcement.
The one-meter (3-foot) high find belonged to a statue of a horseback soldier, and would have been part of the cargo of an ancient ship that sank in the area. It was tak
Source: Robert Schneider in the AHA Perspectives (May 2006)
May 1, 2006
We at the American Historical Review have decided on a change of policy on reviewing films; our intention is to replace individual film reviews with extended review essays on films of historical interest. What is the source of this change? What kinds of review essays are we seeking?
The American Historical Review has been reviewing films of historical interest on a regular basis since 1988. An AHR Forum in the December issue of that year, introduced by Robert A. Rosenstone, examined
Source: Robert Townsend in AHA Perspectives (May 2006)
May 1, 2006
Salaries for historians in academia gained a little ground this past year—at least at private institutions—after lagging ever further behind average salaries for the academy over the past few years. The average salary for historians at four-year institutions rose from $61,006 in the 2004–05 academic year to $63,119, according to a new report from the College and University Personnel Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR).
The report provides information on the nine-month salaries
Source: breitbart.com
May 9, 2006
According to Skull and Bones legend, members _ including President Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush _ dug up Geronimo's grave when a group of Army volunteers from Yale were stationed at the fort during World War I. Geronimo died in 1909.
"The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club... is now safe inside the (Tomb) together with his well worn femurs, bit & saddle horn," according to the letter, written by Winter Mead.
Source: NYT
May 7, 2006
SINCE well before the last century began, Bolivia has fought repeatedly with its neighbors over the riches on and under its soil.
So far, it has lost every time.
Once more than three times the size of Texas, half of the land Bolivia once held is now gone, along with a long Pacific coastline and, some have said, the country's dignity.Even lowly Paraguay, also landlocked and impoverished, took its share — in a three-year war that ended in 1935,
Source: Knight Ridder
May 6, 2006
President Bush, Congress and anyone else upset over the Spanish translation of the national anthem might be interested to know that the U.S. government gave its blessing to a different version 87 years ago.
That translation of "The Star-Spangled Banner," prepared by the Bureau of Education in 1919, has been available on the Library of Congress Web site for two years without so much as a sniff of disapproval.
Besides Spanish, the library has vintage translation
Source: AP
May 8, 2006
BEIJING, China - Work on a shooting range for the 2008 Beijing Olympics has been suspended after the discovery of imperial-era tombs on the site, newspapers and an antiquities official said Monday.
The tombs, found in mid-April, are believed to date back five to six centuries to the Ming dynasty, and may be those of eunuchs serving at the imperial court, the Beijing Morning Post said.
Beijing has been the site of imperial and other capitals for more than 1,000 years, an
Source: BBC
May 7, 2006
Mystery surrounds a map which experts believe may provide new information about plans to defend England from invasion in World War II.
Auctioneers want help to verify claims made for the document, thought to have been used by Winston Churchill.
The one inch to one mile Ordnance Survey map centres on Westerham, Kent near Churchill's home at Chartwell.
A label on the back says it was "reputedly used in 1940 in connection with the defence of SE England"
Source: BBC
May 5, 2006
Lord Buckingham – as the inmate in a British prison styles himself – is likely to be a former US spy called Charlie
THE mystery surrounding the identity of a man who stole a name from a baby’s headstone and styled himself the Earl of Buckingham is about to be solved.
The Times has learnt that the bogus earl, who is in Elmley Prison, Kent, is believed to be an American citizen and former member of a US Navy intelligence unit who disappeared from his home in Flori
