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: Yahoo News
March 15, 2006
Archaeologists in Bangladesh say they have uncovered part of a fortified citadel dating back to 450 B.C. that could have been a stopping off point along an ancient trade route. So far, a moat round the citadel has been uncovered along with parts of an ancient road at Wari, 85 km (53 miles) northeast of the capital Dhaka.
"The citadel and a raft of artifacts may help redefine history of India," said Sufi Mostafizur Rahman, head of the department o
Source: BBC News
March 15, 2006
Memorabilia from the ill-fated Titanic has continued to fascinate collectors around the world, even though it is not always in the best taste. Belfast City Council is looking for people who might have something suitable for a forthcoming Easter exhibition at the city hall, Titanic - An Image.
The whole story surrounding the ship has been a marketing phenomenon since the 1997 release of the Hollywood film, and Una Reilly of the Belfast Titanic Society said they
Source: Breitbart.com
March 14, 2006
The Great Sphinx of Giza, one of the most famous monuments of Pharaonic Egypt, is to get a facelift, the Egyptian ministry of culture said. Restoration work on the noseless creature undertaken by the High Council for Antiquities is to focus on the beast's neck and chest, rendered fragile by the erosion of desert winds.
Egyptian antiquities boss Zahi Hawas said the last restoration work on the half-man half-lion statue was carried out in 1996.
The
Source: NYT
March 15, 2006
A town near Cologne, Germany, has suspended an installation by a Spanish performance artist that resembles a gas chamber after Jewish leaders and Holocaust survivors complained, officials said. For the piece, "245 Cubic Meters," the artist, Santiago Sierra, hooked the exhaust pipes of six cars up to an old synagogue in Pulheim, flooding the interior with carbon monoxide. Visitors to the installation, which opened on Sunday, were outfitted with breathing masks, abov
Source: Reuters
March 15, 2006
Author Dan Brown conceded on Wednesday that some of the ideas he took from two historians who accuse him of plagiarism were essential to ``The Da Vinci Code,'' but said the bestseller had many other important themes too.On his third and final day in the witness box, the 41-year-old expressed frustration during a grueling session of cross-examination in the closely-watched copyright case at London's High Court.
Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh wrote a 1982
Source: Expatica (Netherlands)
March 14, 2006
Political leaders and human rights groups on Tuesday welcomed a decision by Berlin police to ban demonstrations aimed at the Armenian genocide in World War I.Police on Monday banned two protests due to have been held in the German capital this week which supported the official Turkish position that killings of Christian Armenians by Muslim Turks in 1915 did not amount to genocide.
Organizers of one of the protests warned Europe's cities would &
Source: Pan Armenian.Net
March 15, 2006
The U.S. Department of State refused to comment on the report of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia John Evans’ withdrawal. According to ANCA Executive Director Ara Hamparian, the State Department refrains from commenting on the report, according to which Evans is being forced from office based upon statements last year about the Armenian Genocide. Meanwhile, according to the information placed on the U.S. State Department’s website, Acting Spokesman Tom Casey stated, “U.S. Ambassad
Source: BBC
March 15, 2006
Authorities were faced with a dilemma: allowing a home burial could be seen as conceding Milosevic a measure of historical respect. But for the nationalist leader a foreign resting place would have been a final snub. It's a decision many governments have had to face. Repatriating or honouring the remains of leaders who die after being exiled or overthrown risks signalling the rehabilitation of their reputations - a worrying prospect for authorities keen not to re
Source: The Register
March 15, 2006
A distributed computing project has successfully cracked the second of three unbroken Enigma intercepts dating back to World War II. The naval codes resisted the best efforts of allied cryptographers but are beginning to fall to the combined forces of the net community, brought together by the M4 Project.The second message to yield to the M4 Project fell on 7 March. A translation reveals little more than a routine observation report.
Found nothing on
Source: LA Times
March 15, 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 summer, wo
Source: National Security Archive
March 14, 2006
The first-ever government-wide audit of the ways that federal agencies mark and protect information that is unclassified but sensitive for security reasons has found 28 different and uncoordinated policies, none of which include effective oversight or monitoring of how many records are marked and withheld, by whom, or for how long.The audit began in February 2005 with Freedom of Information requests from the National Security Archive at George Washington University, to
Source: NYT
March 15, 2006
69 years ago his courtyard was filled with hundreds of Chinese seeking refuge from Japanese troops who were rampaging through the city, then China's capital. The invaders subjected Nanjing to a six-week reign of terror, killing large numbers of Chinese soldiers who had thrown down their weapons and murdering and raping thousands of civilians.
The property was the home of John Rabe, a Nazi Party member and employee of Siemens. In addition to sheltering people in his own compound, Mr.
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
March 15, 2006
The liquid many Pittsburghers associate with March 17 is green beer. But there still are a few folks around who can remember St. Patrick's Day 1936, when the dark brown waters of creeks and rivers fast rose into the region's worst natural disaster. Fed by extraordinary snow melt and rain, the ice-filled three rivers crested at the Point that March 18 at the highest mark since anyone has kept track: Just over 46 feet. (That's 15 feet, or more than a story, higher
Source: Weekly Standard
March 13, 2006
The Bush administration has decided to release most of the documents captured in post-war Afghanistan and Iraq. The details of the document release are still being worked out, according to officials with knowledge of the discussions. Those details are critical. At issue are things like the timeframe for releasing the documents, the mechanism for scrubbing documents for sensitive information, and most important, the criteria for withholding documents from the public. But some of the captured file
Source: frontpagemag.com
March 14, 2006
In an interview posted on his own website David Horowitz, author of The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, says his publisher dreamed up the title after the text was written.Quote: The dangerous idea is a marketing strategy which my publisher attached to the book after it was written. The only appearance of the word"dangerous" in the text is in the coupling of the words"dangerous sophistry" to describe some writing by Professor Juan Cole. N
Source: Yahoo News
March 13, 2006
A chamber discovered last month in the Valley of the Kings was a room used by the ancient Egyptians for mummifying pharaohs buried in the area, rather than a tomb, Egypt's top archaeologist said on Monday. Zahi Hawass said five sarcophagi found in the chamber contained remnants of pottery, shrouds and materials used in mummification.
The team from the University of Memphis which discovered the chamber had also opened 10 sealed jars found there to discover
Source: asahi.com
March 13, 2006
Everybody at some time has tossed a coin into a fountain, or elsewhere, for good luck. It turns out the practice has been around for well over 1,000 years, probably longer.
That, archaeologists say, may explain the recent discovery of rare copper coins from the Nara (710-784) and early Heian (794-1185) periods at a dried-up riverbed here. The coins are special because they are what are known as Kocho-Junisen, a term used for 12 types of copper coins
Source: International Herald Tribune
March 14, 2006
Amid a political and intellectual cold war with Japan that revolves to a great extent around the history of China's conquest by its neighbor, China is seizing enthusiastically upon the memory of a man often called China's Oskar Schindler.John Rabe, a German Nazi employee of Siemens, in addition to sheltering people in his own compound, led a score of other foreigners in the city to form an international safety zone that shielded more than 200,000 Chinese from the Japanese.
Source: HNN Homepage
March 14, 2006
An article in the Nation by Max Holland has reignited debate over the CIA’s involvement in the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In the article entitled “The JFK Lawyers’ Conspiracy,” Holland contends that a group of lawyers, namely Mark Lane, Jim Garrison, Gary Hart, and G. Robert Blakey, have conspired to overturn the findings of the Warren Commission, which concluded in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating JFK. In a letter to the editor of the magazine, Lane
Source: Ahistoricality (blog)
March 14, 2006
Welcome to the Fifth Bad History Carnival, the best of the worst! In honor of the "award season," this carnival will be highlighting only the very best. Lifetime achievement award goes to: David Irving.
Other awards....
Holocaust Denial
New Zombie Error
Told You So
Accidental Historical Fictions
Deliberate Historical Fictions
Presentism: Religion
Presentism: Po
