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: BBC News
March 6, 2006
Sandwiched between two of London's best-known tourist attractions is a house so humble in appearance it is overlooked by the mass of passing sightseers. Its fascinating history is the subject of a new book. "Here lived Sir Christopher Wren during the building of St Paul's cathedral," proclaims an ornate ceramic plaque on the house on the south bank of the river Thames.
"Here also, in 1502, Catherine Infanta of Castile and Aragon, afterwards
Source: Washington Times
March 5, 2006
North Carolina marks Confederate Flag Day with a salute to the flag and the heritage many defenders of the flag say it represents. Not everyone wants the heritage to be remembered as something to be proud of, though.
The Charlotte News & Observer reports hundreds crowded the state House chamber Saturday, sang "Dixie" and saluted the flag -- along with a Civil War-era state flag and the current U.S. flag.
The event -- which th
Source: Lawrence Downes in the NYT
March 6, 2006
The Coke-bottle glasses of hindsight can leave even profound historical miseries all blurry with sentimentality. That's one way to explain the Savannah Irish Festival, a two-day celebration of the Great Famine's great contribution to this lovely Southern city — the migration of thousands of starving laborers who toted barges, lifted bales, dug ditches and cellars, and put down roots here in the mid-1800's.Their descendants crowded the Savannah Civic Center for th
Source: Guardian (UK)
March 4, 2006
It is one of the most controversial bombing raids of the second world war. But a new blockbuster TV drama about the bombing of Dresden has provoked withering criticism in Germany, particularly about its improbable sex scene between a shot-down British pilot and a German nurse.Dresden: An Inferno is the first television feature film to be made about the bombing of Dresden. The raid by British bombers on February 13 1945 saw the near total destruction of one of Germany's most
Source: Newsday
March 5, 2006
If anyone can claim credit for inventing the improvised explosive device, it's Lawrence of Arabia.When insurgents in Iraq use IEDs to attack armored vehicles and disrupt U.S. supply lines, they are taking a page from the less-advanced tactics of T.E. Lawrence, the British adventurer who pioneered guerrilla warfare during the 1916-18 Arab revolt against Turkish rule. His main lesson for insurgents: If you're facing a bigger and better-armed adversary, don't engage him d
Source: NYT
March 5, 2006
ONLINE New Orleans recently had a case of nostalgie de la Huey. On BayouBuzz.com, a political discussion site, a participant wrote wistfully about leaders of yesteryear. "I believe we could use another person of Huey Long's caliber to step in," went the note.The object of the writer's longing, of course, was Huey P. Long, the Kingfish, the Depression-era governor and United States senator who dominated the state before his assassination in September 193
Source: NYT
March 5, 2006
Along a little-traveled block of Monroe Street on the city's West Side, a lot has changed, and a lot has not, since the early morning in 1969 when a police raid here left Fred Hampton, the local chairman of the Black Panther Party, dead in a storm of gunfire.The homes, including the one Mr. Hampton died in, have been razed and new ones have been built. And a construction team was hammering away on a new building this week, even as Fred Hampton Jr. showed a visitor the
Source: Harvard Crimson
March 5, 2006
History 10a, “Western Societies, Politics, and Cultures: From Antiquity to 1650,” could soon be ancient history itself.
An expected change to history concentration requirements would abolish a long-standing pillar of the department, according to a professor who has taught the course in the past. But the decision hasn’t been finalized by the department. “No one is willing to defend ‘Western Civ’ and lots of people want to abolish it,” said Baird Professor
Source: Time Magazine
March 5, 2006
They may have been a lot like Kennewick Man, whose hotly disputed bones are helping rewrite our earliest history. An exclusive inside look this week from Time Magazine. the remains that came to be known as Kennewick Man were almost twice as old as the celebrated Iceman discovered in 1991 in an Alpine glacier, and among the oldest and most complete skeletons ever found in the Americas. Plenty of archaeological sites date back that far, or nearly so, but scientists have found
Source: Baltimore Sun
March 4, 2006
DETROIT -- The price to get a spot in Detroit's Woodlawn cemetery has jumped thousands of dollars since civil rights icon Rosa Parks was entombed there last fall, angering some relatives who say it cheapens her legacy.The spaces in the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel were priced at $17,000
before the cemetery gave spots, for free, to Parks, her husband and her
mother. Now, the spaces cost $24,275, and possibly as much as $65,000 for
the slots nearest to Parks' crypt.
Source: History Today
February 28, 2006
Researchers from Utrecht University believe the medieval great plague caused Europe’s temperatures to fall, making humanity’s impact on climate change earlier than previously thought. The team from the Netherlands estimated land use changed around 1347, when the Black Death arrived, which would have caused an agricultural crisis; trees then flourished on land no longer being cultivated. Tests on pollen and leaves in the southeast Netherlands suggest these millions of trees w
Source: Defence News
March 3, 2006
The RAF's most northerly station closed this week – under the watchful eye of a Nimrod Maritime Patrol Aircraft from RAF Kinloss.RAF Saxa Vord on Unst in the Shetlands – the northernmost inhabited island in the UK with a population of about 700 - was a pivotal link providing early warning of air threats to the UK for more than 30 years and as such was a frontline Cold War station.
Its mission was to assist RAF fighters intercept long-range Soviet bombers enterin
Source: Guardian (UK)
March 2, 2006
Peru rejected Yale University's proposal to share thousands of artifacts taken nearly a century ago from the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu and intends to sue, the country's U.S. ambassador said Wednesday.Peru demanded this fall that Yale return the artifacts, which include mummies, ceramics and human bones excavated by explorer Hiram Bingham in the early 1900s.
The university offered to send some artifacts for display at a new museum in Peru, while the rest woul
Source: NYT
March 4, 2006
LONDON, March 1 — The first painting donated in 1856 to the new National Portrait Gallery here was of William Shakespeare, already well enshrined as the nation's literary idol. For the gallery, the oil recorded as NPG 1 seemed like a singularly apt founding work for its collection. And now, as the museum celebrates its 150th anniversary, it is again in the limelight.
But does this so-called Chandos portrait actually depict Shakespeare? Indeed, do any of dozens of other "Shakesp
Source: Advertiser (Australia)
March 3, 2006
REDEEMED sinner, prostitute, wife of Jesus? Mary Magdalene's image has gone through myriad incarnations, and this Lent she's drawing new attention thanks to the upcoming movie The Da Vinci Code, a slew of books and internet arguments. But those looking for a salacious side to the biblical figure will be disappointed: Serious religious scholars agree characterisations that stray from faithful disciple and witness to the Resurrection are bogus. Despite stage and screen portray
Source: Irish Independent
March 3, 2006
THOUSANDS of pieces of archaic legislation - from banning the wearing of armour to outlawing religious practices - are to be abolished, centuries after they were enacted. The Government last night announced a drive to finally ditch vast amounts of legislation inherited from the years before the foundation of the State. Some of the dusty ordinances date back to the Middle Ages.
The public is being encouraged to comment on the determined effort to upd
Source: WSJ Editorial
March 3, 2006
The impact of the plagiarism lawsuit against Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, could be dramatic for the world of writing and publishing. In Britain, as in the U.S., ideas are not protected by copyright--it's the way they are expressed that counts. The accusation here is not that Mr. Brown's novel plagiarized the 1982 book's words. Plaintiff authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh assert that Mr. Brown wrongfully appropriated the "architecture" of their ear
Source: NYT
March 3, 2006
After complaints from historians, the National Archives directed intelligence agencies on Thursday to stop removing previously declassified historical documents from public access and urged them to return to the shelves as quickly as possible many of the records they had already pulled. Allen Weinstein, the nation's chief archivist, announced what he called a "moratorium" on reclassification of documents until an audit can be completed to determine which records sh
Source: Yahoo
March 3, 2006
AZUSA, Calif. - Archaeologists excavating a housing development site found a prehistoric milling area estimated to be 8,000 years old, officials said. Large arrowheads, hearths and stone slabs used to grind seeds and acorns were among the items found at the site at the base of the Angeles National Forest, according to archeologists from Cogstone Resource Management Inc.
No human or animal bones were discovered, the company said.
The consulting firm
Source: NYT
March 3, 2006
30 companies, trade groups, academic institutions and professional organizations are announcing today the formation of the OpenDocument Format Alliance, which will promote the adoption of open technology standards by governments.They say that with government records, reports and documents increasingly being created and stored in digital form, there is a software threat to electronic access to government information and archives. The problem is that public information c
