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: Netscape News
April 17, 2006
Veterans of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba marked the 45th anniversary of their failed, CIA-backed bid to overthrow Fidel Castro's communist regime.Scores of veterans, along with their friends and family members, took part in a half-hour ceremony on Miami's famed "Calle Ocho" to honor the memory of the fallen rebels.
Those marking the anniversary left flowers at a monument paying tribute to those who took part in the aborted invasion, and pled
Source: The Guardian
April 17, 2006
Ireland's defence forces marched through the streets of Dublin to the sound of brass bands, the rumble of tanks and the roar of military aircraft yesterday to mark the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising.
Because of political sensitivities, it was the first military parade to commemorate the rebellion - long regarded as the springboard for Irish independence - in more than 30 years. The Easter march was abandoned at the height of the Northern Ireland conflict, but last year's pled
Source: Independent (UK)
April 17, 2006
Almost 90 years after Nicholas II, Russia's last Tsar, was executed with his family, his self-proclaimed heirs say they have documentary proof that he was murdered on the explicit orders of the Bolshevik government.
Descendants of the Romanov dynasty say papers in the archives of the modern-day Russian government show that the killing deserves to be classed as an act of "political repression", and that Nicholas should therefore be officially rehabilitated.
Source: CNN
April 16, 2006
With no more than 3,000 members in the United States and 85,000 worldwide, this offshoot of the Catholic church has been accused of using lavish riches and carefully cultivated clout to do everything from propping up Francisco Franco's Spanish dictatorship in the 1950s to pushing through its founder's premature sainthood to planting conservative minions in governments from Warsaw to Washington.
But most of all, it has been known for its silence.
Now, the leaders of the
Source: Washington Times
April 16, 2006
La reconquista, a radical movement calling for Mexico to "reconquer" America's Southwest, has stepped out of the shadows at recent immigration-reform protests nationwide as marchers held signs saying, "Uncle Sam Stole Our Land!" and waved Mexico's flag.
Even as organizers urged marchers to display U.S. flags, the theme of reclaiming "stolen" land remained strong. One popular banner read: "If you think I'm illegal because I'm a Mexican, learn t
Source: Washington Times
April 16, 2006
The Emancipation Day parade through downtown tomorrow will close sections of Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest for most of the day as hundreds are expected to celebrate the 144th anniversary of the end of slavery in the District.
The parade, more than 100 years old, is a celebration of President Abraham Lincoln's freeing 3,100 blacks in the District in 1862 -- nearly nine months before he signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
Source: NYT
April 16, 2006
Scholars who study the armed forces say [that the supportive comments made this past week by General Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for Secretaqry Rumsfeld] were a public restatement of a bedrock principle of American governance: civilian control of the military.
"This is what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is expected to do by tradition and law," said Dennis E. Showalter, a military historian at Colorado College who has taught at the Air Force Academy
Source: NYT
April 16, 2006
WHEN a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck San Francisco 100 years ago Tuesday and the city — like New Orleans last year — lay in ruins, Theodore Roosevelt was president and cars were just a plaything of the rich.
By the time San Francisco regained its past glory, at least according to some historians here, the automobile had started to reshape America's cities, Roosevelt was dead and, four presidents later, the country was on the precipice of the Great Depression.
Source: NYT
April 16, 2006
SHHH! Don't tell anyone: The British and American intelligence services worked together in World War II.
What may seem to some an obvious historical fact struck a Central Intelligence Agency apparatchik in 2002 as a secret still worth protecting. He redacted a sentence describing the "close coordination" of the allies' spies from a 1946 memorandum recounting war propaganda duties before approving its public release. For good measure, he also took out the number of American
Source: NYC website
April 17, 2006
Virtually all New Yorkers have an immigrant story in their families, even if a generation or more old. Immigrant History Week, established by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2004, is a tribute to our common heritage and the contributions of immigrants in the City of New York. This year, Immigrant History Week is commemorated from April 17 to 23, beginning with April 17, the date in 1907 when more immigrants entered through Ellis Island than any other day in its operation. A wonderful array of even
Source: Wa Po
April 15, 2006
The two-year-old modern history textbook used at Baghdad's Mansour High School for Boys doesn't mention the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq in 2003.
There's not a word about Iraq's annexation of -- and subsequent expulsion from -- Kuwait in 1990 and 1991, or its grinding eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s that took the lives of a generation of young men.Perhaps most conspicuously absent from the book, earlier versi
Source: Financial Times
April 15, 2006
This summer's soccer world cup is proving to be another test of how Germany deals with its Nazi past. Events in recent weeks, including warnings of extremist protests during the tournament and police raids on the country's leading far-right political party, have temporarily shifted the world cup spotlight away from football and on to neo-Nazis and racism in modern German sport and society.
In anticipation of the influx of hundreds of thousands of foreign fans, several city authoriti
Source: Robert Townsend in AHA Perspectives (April 2006)
April 1, 2006
Historians teach more and slightly larger classes than faculty in most other disciplines, but make less use of technology, according to the 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty.
Alongside the valuable data on who teaches history in two- and four-year colleges and universities and what they earn that we reported in the March 2006 Perspectives, the new study also provides important insights into some work practices of historians, and allows us to see them in the larger contex
Source: Bruce Craig in the AHA Perspectives (April 2006)
April 1, 2006
Over the last couple of years, several historians and scholars have been either prevented from taking up teaching posts or not allowed to make presentations to scholarly organizations because they have been determined by government officials to be security risks. For example, back in October 2004, the government made a wholesale rejection of visa applications from Cuban scholars and intellectuals invited to attend a national meeting of the Latin American Studies Association (see "AHA Expres
Source: Inter Press Service
April 14, 2006
Hundreds of languages disappeared from Latin America and the Caribbean over the past 500 years, and many of the more than 600 that have survived could face the same fate in the not-so-distant future.
United Nations agencies and many experts maintain that it is an avoidable tragedy, but there are those who see it as the inherent fate of all but a few languages. Faced with Western culture and the dominant presence of Spanish, Portuguese and English in the
Source: BBC
April 14, 2006
A senior US marine officer says he is willing to apologise for the damage caused by his troops to the ancient Iraqi site of Babylon.
US forces built a helicopter pad on the ancient ruins and filled their sandbags with archaeological material in the months following the 2003 invasion.
Colonel Coleman was chief of staff at Babylon when it was occupied by the First Marine Expeditionary Force.
Babylon's Hanging Gardens were among the Seven Wonders of the Anc
Source: MSNBC
April 14, 2006
One day after receiving two medals more than six decades late, a World War II Army veteran in a California nursing home died at age 87, the Ventura County Star reported.
On Wednesday, Adam Macht was pinned with Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals — more than 60 years after he earned them.
Macht served as a combat infantryman under Gen. George S. Patton during World War II in Tunisia, Algeria and French Morocco. But he never received the Bronze Star he earned for heroic
Source: International Herald Tribune
April 14, 2006
BABYLON, Iraq In this ancient city, it is hard to tell what are ruins and what is just ruined.
Crumbling mud-brick buildings, some 2,500 years old, look like smashed sandcastles at the beach. Signs of military occupation are everywhere: trenches, bullet casings, shiny coils of razor wire and blast walls stamped "This side Scud protection."But Iraqi leaders and UN officials are not giving up on it. They are working assiduously to restore Babylon, home t
Source: Reuters
April 14, 2006
Residents of a Cypriot village, intrigued for decades by a tale of buried treasure and an underground flight of steps leading nowhere, have decided to get to the bottom of the mystery.
More than half a century after British colonial rulers forced them to abandon their last attempt to explore the site, residents of Tseri village in central Cyprus have begun excavating the 1,500-year-old tunnel and stairway.
Antiquities officials say the stone structure is part of an anci
Source: BBC
April 14, 2006
Belfast is applying the finishing touches to a series of events to mark the 95th anniversary of the launching from the city of the RMS Titanic.
The fifth annual 'Titanic Made in Belfast' festival begins on Easter Saturday 15 April and continues until Saturday 22 April.
The ill-fated liner, which sank with the loss of 1,500 lives on its maiden transatlantic voyage in 1912, was built at Belfast's Harland and Wolff shipyard.
