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: Seattle Times
March 15, 2006
CINCINNATI -- A national museum commemorating the Underground Railroad is $5.5 million in the red just 18 months after opening, and officials said they will seek public money to continue operations.When the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center opened in August 2004 with an annual budget of more than $10 million, officials said they would rely on admissions, donations and grants. But the center's chief executive, John Pepper, said income has not met expect
Source: Washington Post
March 20, 2006
The Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace, like the president it honors, has always been outside the mainstream. Opened in 1990 in Yorba Linda, Calif., it is the only presidential library with no original presidential papers; a 1974 law kept them in Washington out of concern that Nixon might destroy materials related to the Watergate scandal that forced him to resign. Built for $40 million, the nine-acre complex, which includes a museum and conference space, is alone among presidential libraries
Source: Toronto Star
March 18, 2006
The moment Pietro Casasanta came face to face with ancient Rome's most powerful gods, his breath cut short and his knees buckled.
"I almost had a heart attack," says Casasanta, one of Italy's most successful tombaroli, or tomb robbers. "I knew I had discovered something very beautiful and very valuable."Casasanta, his son and an associate working a small Caterpillar power shovel were digging in broad daylight at an archeological site east of
Source: CNN
March 17, 2006
OYSTER BAY, New York (AP) -- A group of mostly white seventh and eighth graders sleepily sauntered into their school library one recent morning, soon to get a surprise awakening about a part of their town's history they never knew existed.
"Did anybody in this room know there were 60 enslaved Africans, people, human beings, buried a mile from here?" Alan Singer, a professor at Hofstra University, asked them. "Those people have been erased from history. It is as if the
Source: Newsday
March 20, 2006
Benedict dropped an ecclesiastical bombshell, proving his merit as a historian and a pastor. He said that sacramental ordination to priesthood was not the only avenue to ministerial service, but "nevertheless, it is right to ask oneself if more space, more positions of responsibility, can be given to women, even in the ministerial services."He did not elaborate.
Why is this such a bombshell? The priest asked about governance and ministry, each of which
Source: Email from Chuck Jones's Iraq Crisis Newsletter
March 20, 2006
Starting in October 2001, about a year and a half before the US and its allies invaded Iraq, dozens of Iraqi exiles and international experts were brought together to figure out how to create a new Iraq should Saddam Hussein somehow be taken out of power. Seventeen working groups were organized to cover Transitional Justice, Public Finance, Public Outreach, Democratic Principles, Water, Agriculture and the Environment, Defense, Local Government, Economy and Infrastructure, Civil Society, Transpa
Source: cronaca.com
March 17, 2006
A £1 MILLION Egyptian statue has been removed from Bolton museum after staff discovered it was fake. The exhibit, known as the Amarna Princess, was bought for £440,000 two years ago by council bosses who claimed it was worth £1 million.
Detectives from the Metropolitan Police's Arts and Antiques unit have taken the statue off display and launched an investigation.
Other exhibits have also been removed from a London Museum.
Source: cronaca.com
March 18, 2006
Over seven years a California archeologist analyzed 5,700 bird bones from a huge Indian shell/waste mound on the shores of San Francisco Bay. The bones laid out a 1900-year history of the Indians’ bird hunting. They’d hunted dozens of wild bird species to local extinction, starting with the biggest geese and working their way clear down to tiny sandpipers. . .
The early European settlers found birds in abundance only because Spanish explorers had inadvertently brought such epidemi
Source: stonepages.com
March 12, 2006
Chinese archaeologists have found two prehistoric settlements, dating back to more than 4,000 years ago, at the Puchengdian ruins in central China's Henan province. The Puchengdian site were designated as the first group provincial-level cultural relic protection units of Henan in 1963. With an area of 150,000 square meters, the site contain relics of the Neolithic age and the Xia, Shang, Zhou and Han dynasties. One of them was confirmed by archaeologists to belong to the late period of the Long
Source: Press Release -- Network of Concerned Historians (NCH)
March 18, 2006
Amnesty International reports once again about death threats against members of a Guatemalan forensic anthropology team. These teams can be perceived as "protohistorians": they excavate mass graves to find evidence for the genocide and other crimes against humanity committed during the civil war (1960-96) and are therefore of great concern to the historical profession. URGENT ACTION APPEAL
16 March 2006
UA 238/05 (originally issued
Source: International Herald Tribune
March 20, 2006
In the cavernous Victory Palace, the home of Romania's government, history is being made in a small two-room office. Here, a staff of just three people under Marius Oprea has embarked on a task that until this year had been blocked by successive governments since the execution of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in December 1989.Oprea, 41, is in charge of the Institute for the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism. It was the first time such an institute has been establishe
Source: Times (London)
March 20, 2006
The Vatican has begun moves to rehabilitate the Crusaders by sponsoring a conference at the weekend that portrays the Crusades as wars fought with the “noble aim” of regaining the Holy Land for Christianity.The Crusades are seen by many Muslims as acts of violence that have underpinned Western aggression towards the Arab world ever since. Followers of Osama bin Laden claim to be taking part in a latter-day “jihad against the Jews and Crusaders”.
The late Pope Jo
Source: Live Science
March 20, 2006
If the ancient Greeks sold kitschy postcards to tourists 2,000 years ago, they would have depicted much different views of the popular sites that visitors flock to today. Archaeologists say many of the stony ruins looked much different in their prime. Many were brightly painted in hues that have faded with time and, in some cases, with forced removal. The Parthenon in Athens was once covered in colorful splashes of paint, for example.
It has long been known that
Source: Reuters
March 19, 2006
A court case in which two historians accuse Dan Brown of copying their work in his novel ``The Da Vinci Code'' is due to finish on Monday, ending one of the most closely watched copyright claims of recent years.Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh wrote ``The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail,'' a work of historical conjecture published in 1982, which shares some of the same themes as Brown's best-selling religious thriller.
Authors warn that should the historian
Source: NYT
March 19, 2006
Speeches by Supreme Court justices are usually sleepy civics lessons studded with references to the Federalist Papers and the majesty of the law. That seems to be changing.This month, former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor told an audience at Georgetown University that a judiciary afraid to stand up to elected officials can lead to dictatorship. Last month, speaking in South Africa, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the courts were a safeguard "against oppressive govern
Source: Press Release -- History Channel
March 17, 2006
Each of the 10 films has been created by a different award-winning documentary filmmaker or filmmaking team and spotlights an event that triggered a seismic shift in America's political, cultural or social landscape. Using a range of storytelling techniques including recreations and even animation as well as interviews, archival footage and historical artifacts, the series offers viewers a fresh perspective on well-known historical incidents while also shining a light on the tremendous impact of
Source: BBC
March 17, 2006
General Franco and his fellow generals began a revolt in 1936 against the democratically elected socialist Popular Front government of the Spanish Republic. It followed plans to strip the rich, including the Catholic Church, of its power and wealth and improve workers' rights. Fascism was on the rise in Europe and, in the Irish Free State, the sacked chief of police, Eoin O'Duffy, led the right-wing Blueshirt movement.Irish Republicans attacked their meetings, which frequent
Source: LAT
March 16, 2006
Los Angeles was home to an estimated 10,000 Chinese in the late 19th century -- almost all men who came to America to work on the railroads and ended up in desperate straits, crowded into a filthy Chinese ghetto near what is now Union Station. A recent discovery by a new generation of railway workers building the extension of the Gold Line commuter rail line through Boyle Heights has unearthed this dark but largely forgotten period in Los Angeles history.Last s
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
March 17, 2006
The Latin American Studies Association has announced that it intends to move its future congresses outside the United States, after the Bush administration again prevented all Cuban scholars from attending this year's meeting, which is now under way in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Decrying visa denials as a violation of academic freedom, the group's executive council said in a written statement that it had made the potentially costly decision unanimously.
Source: Oregonian
March 17, 2006
GRESHAM -- The effort to honor former Gresham Mayor Herbert H. Hughes with a monument is officially over.
The City Council killed the proposal Thursday after learning that Hughes' role in an anti-Japanese group during World War II was larger than first thought. "It just needs to go away," City Council President Shane Bemis said Thursday. "It would be difficult to honor someone with that background."
Hughes, who serv
