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
February 2, 2006
Hollywood film Memoirs of a Geisha has been banned in China after coming in for criticism in the country's media. The decision to cast Chinese actresses Ziyi Zhang and Gong Li in leading roles as Japanese women has caused controversy in China.
Critics say it is insensitive because of Japan's atrocities during their occupation of China in the 1930s.
The Oscar-nominated film, based on Arthur Golden's 1997 novel, was due to be released next week.
Source: Baltimore Sun
February 4, 2006
If this were a telegram, we'd say: TLGRM DED.But this is a newspaper, so we'll say this: Western Union sent its final telegram last week, bringing to a close 150 years of shooting messages around the world, of those square message cards, of messenger boys (and later girls) on bikes and in radio cars fanning out across the country to announce births, deaths and everything in between.
Source: BBC
February 4, 2006
In a dramatic re-enactment Robert the Bruce will plunge his dagger into the 'Red' Comyn, nobleman John Comyn, at the town's Midsteeple. Hundreds of spectators are expected to watch the recreation of the slaying, which is said to have set Scotland on the road to independent nationhood.
The event, on 11 February, is to mark the 700th anniversary of the murder.
Bruce needed Comyn's support if he were to be King, but when this did not come
Source: BBC
February 2, 2006
Human remains dating back almost 4,000 years have been uncovered on Rathlin Island off the County Antrim coast. Senior archaeologists are investigating the remains of a man who could have been buried in the Bronze Age.
The skeleton was found in a crouched foetal-like position, which would indicate a cist burial in about 2000 BC.
The body was accompanied by a food vessel. The remains were uncovered on Monday on the north coast, close to Rathl
Source: The Age (Australia)
February 4, 2006
A disbanded police unit specialising in war crimes has been reformed to look into the backgrounds of British residents suspected of committing atrocities in World War II.Eight officers from Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism branch have been seconded to the War Crimes Unit to focus on former members of the 14th Waffen SS Galizien division that operated in eastern Europe, The Guardian said today.
Some of those who served with the Galizien division, which was active i
Source: NYT
February 3, 2006
Reversing a position it has held for more than 30 years, the Metropolitan Museum of Art said yesterday that it would relinquish ownership of a 2,500-year-old Greek vase, considered one of the world's finest, to Italy. The Italians have long contended that the vase was stolen from an Etruscan tomb near Rome and smuggled from the country.
In documents delivered yesterday in Rome by the Met's lawyers after weeks of negotiations, the museum pledged to return the vas
Source: Economist
February 2, 2006
Two of the great historical issues of the past half-century continue to exert a tug on many of those who believe that only by understanding the past can mankind hope to build a better future: how America came to be what it is today and how the Holocaust and the creation of Israel helped to redraw the landscape of the modern Middle East.1. Night. By Elie Wiesel. Hill and Wang; 144 pages; $6.30 Penguin; £6.39. A terrifying account of the horror of a Nazi death camp where a you
Source: South China Morning Post
February 3, 2006
The archaeological site in Jinsha Village, in the western suburbs of Chengdu in Sichuan province, has shown the world that a stable and religious civilisation flourished there some 3,500 years ago, modifying previous assumptions about the origins of Chinese civilisation. The site, discovered in 2001 by a housing development company, continues to yield a stream of art works and religious symbols.Jade and gold artefacts resembling finds at the nearby site of Sanxin
Source: Ascribe
February 2, 2006
The observance of Black History Month is less edgy today than in the past, partly because Americans' collective memory of racially charged historical events has become a sanitized, feel-good version of the Civil Rights movement, according to Duke University experts in black culture and American history. And, as Americans consider the significance of Black History Month, they need to recognize that the simple dynamic of black and white no longer reflects the complicated rac
Source: LAT
January 26, 2006
He was a man for whom the term muckraker was coined, a crusading journalist and novelist who never hesitated to expose scandal at the highest levels of government and business. But now the integrity of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Upton Sinclair is being questioned 38 years after his death because of the discovery of a letter he wrote in 1929.Quotes from the letter in recent news reports make it seem that the man who exposed the horrors of the meat-packing indus
Source: Ansa
January 2, 2006
Tutankhamun was killed by a sword blow to the knee, Italian experts claim. Two doctors from Bolzano University, longtime researchers into Italy's famed Iceman, were part of an international team that recently took another look at Egypt's most famous mummy.The group found traces of gold leaf bearing animal symbols in the late pharaoah's right kneecap, leading them to surmise that it had fallen off Tutankhamun's raiments and lodged in a hole during mummification .
Source: Delaware News Journal
February 3, 2006
Come Feb. 27, Buck O'Neil and other historically significant Negro League baseball players may receive their own plaques in Cooperstown. A four-year historical study, funded by a $250,000 grant from Major League Baseball, has resulted in a list of 39 Negro League players and executives who will be considered for induction in a special election.Twelve historians will meet Feb. 25-27 in Tampa, Fla., to discuss the merit of each candidate, including O'Neil, one of two living pl
Source: The Kansan
February 3, 2006
Archivists have released tens of thousands of pages of documents from Dwight Eisenhower's administration that could refine historians' understanding of the president's positions on civil rights and national security.The Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kan., announced Thursday that 40,000 pages of previously classified documents on a variety of subjects were being made public. That follows the library's recent release of 7,000 pages specifically related to the Eis
Source: National Geographic
February 3, 2006
One beautification technique of the ancient Norsemen was to file their teeth, a new study shows. A Swedish anthropologist analyzed 557 Viking skeletons dating from A.D. 800 to 1050 and discovered that 24 of them bore deep, horizontal grooves across their upper front teeth.It's the first time that dental modification—a practice found in cultures around the world—has been seen in human skeletons from Europe.
"[These] unique finds of deliberate dental modifica
Source: NYT
February 1, 2006
When President Bush vowed on Tuesday to reduce drastically American dependence on oil from the Middle East, he had plenty of company.President Richard M. Nixon promised in 1971 to make the United States self-sufficient in energy by 1980. President Jimmy Carter promised in 1979 that the nation would "never again use more foreign oil than we did in 1977."
And Mr. Bush has called in each of his past four State of the Union addresses for a reduction
Source: National Coalition for History
February 2, 2006
Several major history organizations have sent a letter to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings requesting that she find within her department’s discretionary budget the funds necessary to initiate a state by state assessment of student’s performance on history tests.The letter, signed by representatives of the American Historical Association, National Coalition for History, National Council for History Education, National Council for the Social Studies, Organization
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists
February 2, 2006
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev nominated the crew of the ill-fated Soviet nuclear submarine K-19, which suffered a loss of coolant accident on July 4, 1961, for a Nobel Peace Prize this week."Through the courage of the heroic sailors, a reactor explosion and a consequent environmental catastrophe in the ocean were averted," Mr.
Gorbachev wrote.
"An explosion on board the K-19 could have been taken for a military provocation or ev
Source: NYT
February 1, 2006
By any conventional measure, Yale's exhibition about Machu Picchu would seem a windfall for Peru. As one of the most ambitious shows about the Inca ever presented in the United States, drawing over a million visitors while traveling to half a dozen cities and back again, it has riveted eyes on Peru's leading tourist attraction. Yet instead of cementing an international partnership, the exhibition, which returned to the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale in September, has brought a low ebb
Source: Radio Free Europe
February 2, 2006
On the occasion of his 75th birthday on 1 February, former Russian President Boris Yeltsin gave a rare interview to the national network Channel One. Robust and fresh, Yeltsin said he is now physically and intellectually active, and enjoying his current family life.Yeltsin said that he considers the dismantling of the totalitarian machinery of the Soviet regime to be the greatest achievement of his presidency. His biggest failure, he said, was the inability to make profound
Source: The Daily Telegraph
February 2, 2006
THE woman who began life as François Mitterrand's secret daughter is considering a political career of her own, having adopted her father's name for the first time.THE woman who began life as François Mitterrand's secret daughter is considering a political career of her own, having adopted her father's name for the first time.
Several former allies of the late socialist president are said to be pressing behind the scenes for Mazarine, 31, to make her first
