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: Washington Times
May 5, 2006
Driving past the grassy battlefields of Gettysburg, Pa., on a moonlit night, Robert J. Monahan Jr. heard the faint drumbeat of 1,000 boots, the boom of cannonballs and bullets whizzing past his ears.
He wasn't delirious. He just had a dream. Now, several years later and $7 million poorer, the Gucci-loafered, pinstripe-suit-wearing real estate developer and Washington resident has realized his goal: a stunningly visual, hauntingly realistic 30-minute high-tech film called "
Source: NYT
April 22, 2006
Alice Greenwald knows full well what she could be in for as she maps out a memorial museum at ground zero.
She watched last year as an outspoken group of relatives of 9/11 victims drove two cultural organizations from the site. She is well versed in the security concerns that led architects to redesign the Freedom Tower as a virtual fortress, worries that some family members share about Ms. Greenwald's future museum and the World Trade Center Memorial itself.
Source: NYT Editorial
April 22, 2006
In 1983 thieves hacked off the head of an ancient statue of Dionysus that had rested in Mussolini's old villa in Rome and carted the piece away. It turned up in a Japanese museum, and later in a Christie's auction catalog. Yesterday, in New York, the Italian government got it back.A consular official swept away an Italian flag to reveal the head, about the size of a large grapefruit, to reporters. Raymond W. Kelly, New York City's police commissioner, and Antonio
Source: NYT
April 21, 2006
Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's monarch for 54 years, celebrated her 80th birthday today, feted variously in headlines such as "Elizabeth the Great" and "Our Great Mum" on an occasion that raised questions, too, about her succession.With a huge royal standard measuring 19 feet by 38 feet, wafting over the Round Tower at her Windsor Castle residence west of London, the queen's program for the day included a walk among her subjects in the town below and
Source: Rick Shenkman reporting for HNN
April 22, 2006
To save money, the strapped Organization of American Historians plans to begin exclusively posting recent scholarship online. Formerly, new scholarship was published in the pages of the Journal of American History. The change takes place starting in June.
The news was announced by Journal editor Edward T. Linenthal at the organization's annual business meeting today.
Linenthal says the move will save the OAH $20,000 a year.
He said this was the only major
Source: Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed
April 21, 2006
Scholars who gathered Thursday to discuss the idea of reparations to African Americans are under no illusion that such payments are about to happen. Even those who were most sympathetic to the idea acknowledged that there was no political will in the United States to make such payments.But the reason members of the Organization of American Historians held an open forum on reparations as part of the group’s annual meeting is that many scholars consider this an iss
Source: Groong/Armenian News Network
April 18, 2006
A memorial in southeast France honoring those killed in what Armenians call a genocide by Ottoman Turks was vandalized just a week before it was to be unveiled, Armenian organizations said.The memorial in Lyon was scrawled with graffiti reading, "There was no genocide," according to the Committee for the Defense of the Armenian Cause, and the Council of Armenian Organizations in France.
The groups expressed indignation at the incident, whic
Source: Bucharest Daily Herald
April 21, 2006
In Romania, a presidential committee led by historian Vladimir Tismaneanu has been designated to develop a "scientific analysis of the abuses and crimes of the communist rule in Romania, from its beginning to the 1989 revolution." Last week, the president said he was willing to condemn communist crimes or the entire communist rule, but only based on a scientific analysis by a committee of historians and experts.Yesterday, the president said the report the committee
Source: MSNBC
April 21, 2006
Public television’s attempt to illuminate a dark period of European history is demonstrating that in the world of documentaries, few topics are black and white.“The Armenian Genocide” began airing this week on dozens of PBS stations, including nine in the nation’s top TV markets. Through tattered photos, letters and celebrity voiceovers, the documentary created by New York-based filmmaker Andrew Goldberg depicts a Turkish campaign of expulsion, rape, and murder that led to t
Source: New Zealand Herald
April 21, 2006
Theories abound as to the true identity of William Shakespeare, but a new book makes the most scandalous suggestion yet - that the creator of Hamlet and Macbeth was the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth I. In Oxford: Son of Queen Elizabeth I, Paul Streitz, an American writer, makes the sensational claim that Elizabeth I produced several children, overturning accepted notions of the Virgin Queen.
He further argues that the first child, secretly sired in 1548, w
Source: Deutsche Welle
April 21, 2006
The imposing Martin Luther Memorial Church in Mariendorf, south Berlin, looks like many others built in the 20th century, with its brick and stone Bauhaus-style exterior. But the last surviving Nazi-era church in Germany is also a place where pastors preached from pulpits adorned with Aryans, and babies were baptised in a font featuring carvings of a Nazi storm trooper.A protestant parish is trying to raise money to restore the Martin Luther Memorial Church in Berlin -- and its National Socialis
Source: BBC
April 19, 2006
Judges in India will no longer have to be addressed in court as "my lord" or "my lordship" - terms dating back to the days of British rule over India. The Bar Council of India said "your honour" or "honourable court" can be used in the courtroom instead.
Lawyers can also address the court as "sir" or its regional equivalent. Lawyers welcomed the move, with a top lawyer telling the BBC it was time to
Source: Boston Globe
April 19, 2006
MONTGOMERY, Ala. --The City Coucil has a message for late civil rights icon Rosa Parks and other blacks who were mistreated in Montgomery during the 1950s: We're sorry.
The majority-white council voted unanimously Tuesday to make a formal apology to Parks, who died in October, and four women who filed a federal lawsuit that resulted in court orders mandating the desegregation of city buses.The council's resolution also apologized to "all others
Source: People's Daily Online
April 19, 2006
Chinese archaeologists have unearthed some 30 beheaded skeletons dating back more than 2,000 years in central China's Henan Province, a cradle of the Chinese civilization.
The skeletons were obviously warriors, the tallest of whom was at least 1.85 meters, said Sun Xinmin, head of the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archeology. The human remains were found scattered in a pit in the city of Xinzheng, adjacent to a major battlefiel
Source: Institute for War and Peace Reporting
April 19, 2006
Armenians have said that the famous medieval Christian cemetery of Jugha in Azerbaijan has been razed, comparing its destruction to the demolition of two giant Buddha figures by the Taleban in Afghanistan. Azerbaijan has hit back by accusing Armenia of scaremongering, and of destroying Azerbaijani monuments on its own territory. It has become one of the most bitterly divisive issues in the Caucasus – but up until now no one has been able to clear up the mystery surrounding the medieval cemetery'
Source: NYT
April 19, 2006
With bells, sirens and a moment of silence, San Franciscans turned out before dawn Tuesday, mixing a mournful tone with a colorful, costumed carnival spirit to commemorate the centennial of the earthquake that devastated this city.The early-morning ceremony, attended by a clutch of the earthquake's survivors among a crowd estimated at 8,000 to 10,000, culminated at 5:12 a.m., the time that the quake of April 18, 1906 — a 7.8 or 7.9 on modern scales — tore along the San
Source: NYT
April 19, 2006
WASHINGTON, April 18 — Germany agreed Tuesday to allow access to a vast trove of information on what happened to more than 17 million people who were executed, forced to labor for the Nazi war machine or otherwise brutalized during the Holocaust.
The German government announced at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here that it was dropping its decades-long resistance to opening the archives kept in the town of Bad Arolsen. The files, which make up one of the largest Holoca
Source: NYT
April 19, 2006
Early in her reign, Queen Elizabeth II made Britons an offer they could scarcely refuse.
"I cannot lead you into battle, I do not give you laws or administer justice, but I can do something else," she said. "I can give you my heart."
It was a smart arrangement.On Friday, April 21, the queen will turn 80, the head of a sometimes quarrelsome, often criticized dynasty that has etched its record in tales of divorce and untime
Source: MSNBC
April 18, 2006
The Alabama Legislature gave final approval to a bill that sets up a process to pardon civil rights icon Rosa Parks and hundreds of others arrested for violating segregation-era laws.
The sponsor of the bill, Democratic Rep. Thad McClammy, said the legislation could lead to pardons for Parks, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and hundreds of others convicted of violating laws aimed at keeping the races separate. McClammy said the arrests date back as far as the early 1900s.
Source: NYT
April 18, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO, April 17 — When she was 14 months old, Della Vattuone-Bacchini survived the Great Quake of 1906, which ruptured the San Andreas fault, twisted rail lines into pretzels and sparked a three-day inferno that burned much of this city to the ground.
But whether she makes it through this year's centennial, she said, is an entirely different question"It's been a mad rush," said Ms. Vattuone-Bacchini, 101, of the anniversary celebrations. "
