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: AP
April 25, 2006
Jane Jacobs, an author and community activist of singular influence whose classic "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" transformed ideas about urban planning, died Tuesday, her publisher said. Jacobs, a longtime resident of Toronto, was 89.
Jacobs died in her sleep Tuesday morning at a Toronto hospital, which she entered a few days ago, according to Random House publicist Sally Marvin. Jacobs' son, James, was with her at the time. The author, who would have turne
Source: Rick Shenkman reporting for HNN
April 22, 2006
The Organization of American Historians is making sharp cutbacks to close a budget deficit that is running in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
At the annual business meeting of the OAH executive director Lee Formwalt announced that the OAH is suspending support for Talking History (as reported by HNN two weeks ago), reducing the OAH Magazine of History to a quarterly schedule, and cutting back on staff. The deputy director'
Source: Rick Shenkman reporting for HNN
April 22, 2006
The University of South Alabama is sponsoring a conference about Katrina in March 2007 that will feature historians, poets and activists. Nineteen people have been invited to deliver papers.
The papers will be published in a special edition of the Journal of American History in December of 2007.
The Journal published a similar special edition about 9/11.
The OAH did not include any panels on Katrina at its annual convention, which ended today.
Source: Christian Science Monitor
April 25, 2006
As Chinese leaders fret over rising peasant protests, political instability, and a decay of traditional values, the Communist Party is experimenting with multiple new messages - designed to capture the hearts and minds of ordinary people.
"It is a very intelligent strategy," says a Western historian here. "If people are nostalgic for Mao [Zedong] and old moral values, they've got Lei Feng [a model soldier lauded for selfless service]. For those who say China has lost
Source: NYT
April 24, 2006
In the late 1960's, an anguished President Lyndon B. Johnson sought advice from a respected elder statesman on the Vietnam quagmire. In part because of the private counsel of former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, a onetime hawk turned skeptic on the war, Johnson shifted course in 1968, halting the bombing of North Vietnam and announcing that he would not run for re-election.The analogy is far from perfect, but Republicans and Democrats are seeing parallels between th
Source: NYT
April 24, 2006
Since this city was not built in a day, it is perhaps unsurprising that a plan to house Caesar Augustus's Ara Pacis, or altar of peace, in a new museum has taken 10 years to be realized. Romans, after all, feel possessive about their city. And, in this case, the idea of inviting Richard Meier to design a dazzling white modernist building for Rome's historic center was the stuff of heated debate — and multiple delays.Rome's mayor, Walter Veltroni, went ahead with its sc
Source: NBC Nightly News
April 24, 2006
Tonight we close with a television exclusive. You're about to see, for the first time, a piece of American history that's been missing since that January day in 1961 that became famous for the words, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
The poet Robert Frost played a big role in that sparkling Inauguration Day, but until now, the history of that day.. has been incomplete.“I only wish that I’d bee
Source: Las Vegas Sun
April 24, 2006
The fading, whitewashed brick walls of the old Bryant Grocery & Meat Market store are crawling with vines, and the roof caved in long ago. But some civic leaders consider it a significant piece of Mississippi civil rights history, and they want to see it preserved before it is too late. The store in the Mississippi Delta is where black teenager Emmett Till is said to have wolf-whistled at white shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant in August 1955. The 14-year-old was kidnapped, tort
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
April 24, 2006
Big changes are happening on the Gallipoli peninsula as it prepares for the dawn service today to mark the 91st anniversary of the Anzac landing in 1915. But the changes are not so much about Australia and New Zealand as about Turkey, and they reflect struggles over modern Turkish politics and identity.In an investment plan worth about $100 million announced to Australian journalists on Monday, the Turkish Government is planning high-tech simulation centres at Gallipoli to c
Source: Inside Higher Ed
April 24, 2006
Bring show-and-tell to the college classroom? Incorporate field trips into the syllabus? The mere mention would give many professors a good chuckle. But Sallie Shanahan, a history major who expects to graduate from the University of Maryland University College next spring, says these methods – tailored to a college audience – would work.A former pre-school and kindergarten teacher, Shanahan regularly brought in artifacts when teaching history to her tots. As a st
Source: National Geographic News
April 20, 2006
A lawyer charged with raising money to pay off the bankruptcy debts of an art and antiquities dealer offered a glimpse Wednesday of several small, brown bits of papyrus that may be part of the ancient Gospel of Judas. Potential historical and religious significance aside, R. Scott Haley's court-appointed task is to pay Ohio collector Bruce Ferrini's creditors. Whether the fragments that ended up in a bank vault in downtown Akron are genuine remains in question.
Source: ScienceMag.org
April 21, 2006
Little is known about the Lapita peoples, the first settlers of the Western Pacific, other than their ubiquitous calling card: red pottery fragments with intricate designs. But in what's being hailed as one of the most dramatic finds in years, researchers at the meeting offered a glimpse of the first-known early Lapita cemetery. "This is the closest we're going to get to the first Polynesians," says archaeologist Matthew Spriggs of Australia National University (ANU) in Canberra, a mem
Source: Yahoo News
April 24, 2006
VOLOS, Greece (Reuters) - Shipbuilders in this small Greek port are struggling with handmade tools and methods used millennia ago to recreate the Argo, the legendary vessel of Jason and the Argonauts.
The absence of modern resources such as electricity and machine tools makes it an exhausting task, but authenticity is an essential part of this experiment in ancient shipbuilding.
"It's extremely laborious work," said builder Stelios Kalafatidis. "We don't
Source: Yahoo
April 24, 2006
An international athletics meeting at the birthplace of the Olympic Games in the ancient stadium of Olympia has been scrapped after scientists vetoed the plan for fear it could damage the historic site. The event scheduled for mid-May and conceived by the Greek Olympic Committee (HOC), had been backed by the International Olympic Committee and the International Association of Athletics Federations as a means to promote athletics worldwide.
"Th
Source: State Journal-Register
April 24, 2006
Tucked away in the Illinois State Museum are spiritual artifacts indigenous to Kenya, waiting to be returned to their original owners in the East African country.
Thirty-eight vigango - hand-carved memorial posts, each of which had been erected after a member of a secret society of male elders died - are stored in the museum. The collection soon is to be reduced by one, because one kikango (the singular of "vigango") has been claimed by a Kenyan curator on behalf of a fami
Source: Hutchinson News
April 24, 2006
LAWRENCE - Nearly 150 years after the Battle of Black Jack, the entire story about what happened in southern Douglas County between pro- and anti-slavery forces may still be untold.
That could change next month after a prominent battlefield archaeologist leads a team of sleuths armed with sophisticated metal detectors and connected to global positioning satellites scours fields, woods and ravines three miles east of Baldwin. Called an archaeological
Source: NYT
April 24, 2006
Citing his experience in the Reagan administration as chief arms negotiator in Geneva from 1985 to 1989, Max Kampelman writes in an NYT op ed: "President Bush should consult with our allies, appear before the United Nations General Assembly and call for a resolution embracing the objective of eliminating all weapons of mass destruction."
Source: NYT
April 24, 2006
Over four decades as one of Washington's most famous investigative journalists, Jack Anderson and his staff amassed thousands of documents that a lot of top officials wanted to keep secret. Mostly, they concerned embarrassing missteps or were leaks by whistle-blowers who saw things going wrong and wanted to tell somebody. But now, only a few months after Mr. Anderson's death, the Federal Bureau of Investigation wants to paw through 188 boxes of Mr. Anderson's old files to look for documents they
Source: NYT
April 24, 2006
The Long Island landscaper peeked out the door. It was another visitor arriving with a notebook, a press pass and the H-word on his lips, another journalist asking about his great-uncle Adolf.
The visitor asked the landscaper about his father, who was born William Patrick Hitler, son of Alois Hitler Jr., who was Adolf Hitler's half-brother (they shared the same father). Alois called his son Willy. The Führer called Willy "my loathsome nephew."
Source: AP
April 24, 2006
A new replica of one of the three ships that carried Jamestown's founders will set sail May 22 for a tour of six East Coast ports to begin commemorating the 400th anniversary of America's first permanent English settlement.
The Godspeed is to depart from its home berth at the Jamestown Settlement outdoor living history museum and head to Alexandria, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Newport, R.I. Each port will have a free "Landing Party Festival" featuring li
