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 1, 2006
Over 600 years of Welsh military tradition has come to an end on St David's Day with the merger of two famous Welsh regiments. The names Royal Welch Fusiliers and The Royal Regiment of Wales were consigned to history with the birth of the new regiment, The Royal Welsh.
Source: Austin-American Statesman
March 1, 2006
Lost to history until an archivist at the Texas General Land Office found it two years ago in the agency's collections, an eight-page document that is believed to be the first draft of the Republic of Texas Constitution is about to return temporarily to its birthplace 100 miles east of Austin on the bank of the Brazos River, where in March 1836, 59 delegates from Texas gathered to pledge independence from Mexico.These and other documents will be on public display together fo
Source: Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
March 1, 2006
Washington state legislators have moved to make amends 122 years after a mob of American vigilantes crossed into Canada and lynched a native teenager, in an incident that nearly started a cross-border race war.Members of the state's House of Representatives approved a Senate resolution on Wednesday that expressed "deepest sympathy" for the descendents of Louie Sam.
Sam, who belonged to the Sto:lo First Nation whose homelands lie in the Fraser Valley, e
Source: USA Today
February 28, 2006
The statue crowning the U.S. Capitol is called "Freedom." Yet it was a black slave who figured out how to coax apart the 19½-foot, 15,000-pound plaster statue so it could be cast in bronze and rejoined atop the dome.Slaves, in fact, helped build much of the building and grounds of Congress, their owners earning $5 per month for their work. Ed Hotaling, a retired TV reporter in Washington, was among the first to widely publicize this in a report in 2000.
Source: AP
March 1, 2006
In a contest between Americans’ knowledge of “The Simpsons” and what they know about the First Amendment — Bart and Homer win hands down.About 1 in 4 Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half of Americans can name at least two members of the fictional cartoon family, according to a survey.
The study by the
Source: NYT
March 1, 2006
Channel 13, the PBS station serving New York, has dropped plans to show a controversial panel discussion that includes two people who raise doubts about whether the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks was genocide, a spokeswoman said yesterday. The spokeswoman, Stella Giammasi, said the station had made the decision after reviewing the half-hour program, which was to follow a new one-hour documentary, "The Armenian Genocide," scheduled to be broadcast April 17 at
Source: NYT
March 1, 2006
The New York Public Library is expected to announce today that it has purchased the Burroughs archive for its Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature. The acquisition will make the Berg Collection, which also includes Kerouac's literary and personal archive, perhaps the premier institution for the study of the Beats. Burroughs is best known as the author of the hallucinogenic, drug-addled novel "Naked Lunch," which was
Source: Daily News
March 1, 2006
SOME 20,000 AFRICANS buried in a long-hidden 18th century cemetery in lower Manhattan were given one of America's highest honors yesterday, as the White House designated the sprawling grave site a national monument.The burial ground, a 5-acre area near City Hall, was uncovered more than 14 years ago when construction workers broke ground to build a new federal office tower at Duane and Elk Sts.
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Harlem) said President Bush's signing of the
Source: NYT
February 28, 2006
One of history's most violent volcanic eruptions blasted the island of Sumbawa in the East Indies in 1815. The sulfurous gases and fiery ashes from Mount Tambora cast a pall over the entire world, causing the global cooling of 1816, known as the "year without a summer." It left 117,000 people dead. A team of American and Indonesian scientists has now found remains of what it says is the "lost kingdom of Tambora."
Source: NYT
February 28, 2006
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Feb. 27 — In February 1962, it was the hub of the space program, the center where controllers counted down and then watched tensely from their consoles as John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth.
Today the Mercury Control Center stands empty and all but abandoned, half hidden by thick Florida vegetation. Its 10-foot-wide NASA emblem, warped by high winds, flaps even in a light breeze. A trash can on the floor of the hollow control room seems to be t
Source: NYT
February 28, 2006
LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) -- A former high school student barred from her prom because she wore a dress styled as a Confederate battle flag has reached a settlement with the school district, her attorney said.Jacqueline Duty filed a lawsuit after Greenup County school officials called the dress too controversial and kept her out of Russell High School's May 1, 2004 prom.
Duty claimed the district violated her First Amendment right to free speech and to celebrate her h
Source: Inside Higher Ed
February 28, 2006
Andrew Everett, a student senator and senior at the University of Washington, says he had little idea that introducing a resolution in support of building a campus memorial to Col. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, a 1934 graduate of the institution and a World War II Medal of Honor winner, would result in rampant partisan bickering on campus. But, thanks to words and actions by both liberals and conservatives on campus and elsewhere, the lens of politics has now framed a debate that he and others say
Source: Civil War Preservation Trust
February 28, 2006
A once sleepy crossroads town in Pennsylvania where the blood of 50,000 Americans was shed, a fertile valley in Virginia where armies clashed for four long years, and a little-known New Mexico battleground known as the "Gettysburg of the West," were today announced as some of the nation's most endangered Civil War battlefields.At a news conference this morning, the Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT) unveiled its annual report on the status of the nation's hi
Source: Pittsburg Post-Gazette
February 9, 2006
Cemetery Lane in Ross is home to cemeteries that are Jewish, Catholic and Protestant, but few know that an old African-American cemetery also is there on an overgrown hillside hugging the road.Two posts with a fallen chain between them are all that mark the rutted road that leads to the cemetery. Woods crowd the hillside graveyard which, on a recent afternoon, was bone quiet except for a distant train whistle.
"When I first saw it, I thought it
Source: Nashville Business Journal
February 3, 2006
In the waning days of 1864 and the Civil War, Franklin hosted one of the conflict's bloodiest battles. More than 140 years later, that battle is again pitting neighbor against neighbor.
At issue is the effort to reclaim portions of the battlefield, most of which now house commercial ventures. On one side, preservationists and battlefield boosters point out the hard economic advantages of creating a battlefield park, as Civil War buffs pump tourist dollars into the town.
Source: post-gazette.com
February 20, 2006
WHEELING, W.Va. -- On a corner near what was once this city's bustling transportation center is a landscaped lot of about 1.5 acres that civic officials hope can be transformed into a major tourist attraction.But before the tourists who flock to Oglebay Park and the massive Cabela's outdoors store nearby can be persuaded to visit it in downtown Wheeling, millions of dollars will have to be raised for the proposed attraction -- a National Civil War Memorial.
Source: rctimes.com
February 19, 2006
With the Civil War re-enactors, including members of the U.S. Colored Troops, standing at attention, the monument of an African-American Union soldier became a Nashville landmark. The unveiling of the 9-foot-tall bronze statue evoked a spontaneous applause from the audience."The monument will remain as living history to the testimony of the African-Americans who believed so strongly in fighting for their freedom," said Lyn Norris with the local African
Source: WSBTV
February 23, 2006
ALBANY -- Authorities in southwest Georgia are investigating after a Civil War-era cemetery was plowed under by workers at a plantation.The site is next to the Ecila Plantation in western Dougherty County near Albany. Sheriff's investigators say the manager of the plantation told them workers harrowed the area in May or June of 2004 -- NOT knowing the graves were there.
Sheriff's Lieutenant Craig Dodd tells WALB-TV that the area had become "something of an
Source: CNN
February 27, 2006
Archaeologists have found a 3,000-year-old cliff painting made with human hand prints and believed to depict a dancing man and woman in southwestern China, a news report said Monday.The 1.4 meter-by-1.6 meter (50-by-60-inch) painting was found near the Jinsha River in Yunnan province, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Local people guided a three-member team of archaeologists to the painting, said Ji Xueping, associate professor with the Yunnan Institute of C
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
February 28, 2006
A kind of Hindu civil war that wasn't always civil erupted in a Sacramento hearing room Monday over what California middle school students should be taught about ancient India. An emotional four-hour hearing ended with a few angry members of the overflow audience shouting at a subcommittee of the state Board of Education after it rejected changes they sought in six new social studies textbooks for California middle school students. A security guard eventually cle
