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: Independent Online (South Africa)
January 17, 2006
Zulu monarch King Goodwill Zwelithini has urged African academics not to withhold information gathered from research, but to rather use it to rewrite history books for the benefit of future generations.
The king was speaking at an event organised to commemorate the Battle of Isandlwana, between the British and the Zulu in 1879. Zulu historians and academics had gathered to discuss the history of Zulu kings and their role in past battles. He said the history now learnt at school was
Source: Wa Po
January 17, 2006
At the Smithsonian, a tribute to his statesmanship is planned. In London, an exhibit hails his medical contributions. But at McGillin's Olde Ale House in Philadelphia, they know best how to honor Benjamin Franklin on his 300th birthday: with a celebratory toast.
"He was a very jovial fellow who would meet at the taverns, discussing the latest John Locke book or scientific breakthrough over a nice pint of beer," McGillin's owner Chris Mullins said.
Source: scotsman.com
January 16, 2006
More than 250 years later, the site of the last pitched conflict on British soil and where thousands died in an hour of fighting, continues to shed more secrets for experts to examine. Some 600 musket and artillery balls, the lid of a canister of shot, pieces of firearms – even a Celtic cross – have recently been uncovered by a team directed by Dr Tony Pollard, an internationally recognised expert in battlefield archaeology.
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
January 16, 2006
Now 61, Julian Houston has more than four decades up North behind him, first as one of a handful of minorities in a Connecticut boarding school, now as an associate justice of the Middlesex Superior Court. But it's his Southern past that Houston recalls in his book, "New Boy," released for young adults late last year. The book is a fictional account of the life of a black boarding school student in the 1950s, but it's drawn from his experiences.Houston,
Source: BBC News
January 16, 2006
A US Marine who absconded from his base more than 36 years ago as a protest against the Vietnam war has been arrested and may face a court martial.
Ernest Johnson Jr, 55, fled his camp in North Carolina in 1969 after becoming disenchanted with the war in Vietnam.
Using the surname McQueen, he spent the next three decades in a number of states as a regular husband and father.
Mr Johnson, who suffers from prostate cancer, could face a jail sentence and a mandato
Source: Oregonian
January 16, 2006
Hurdle-Toomey, 73, is among the last known children of former U.S. slaves. Although the Forest Grove woman didn't really know her father -- he died at about 90 years old when Hurdle-Toomey was 3 -- she says she has tried to live her life by valuing the same things he did: education, faith and honest labor.
Source: Press Release -- Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
January 16, 2006
New York, NY. Several chapters of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) announced today, Monday, January 16, 2006, their intent to form a national organization and hold the first SDS national convention since 1969. "It seemed appropriate to make this announcement today, on the observed Martin Luther King day", said SDS regional organizer Thomas Good. "We have an anti-war movement that is addressing the issue of stopping the bloodletting in Iraq but the civil rights issue remain
Source: NYT
January 15, 2006
The phrase Unesco World Heritage site has been crossing from the lips of travel agents and popping up more and more on travel Web sites. That's no coincidence: the list has grown steadily from the first 12 in 1978 to 812 today, and includes everything from the Statue of Liberty, the Taj Mahal and Angkor Wat to the Wooden Churches of Southern Little Poland and the Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape in Mongolia.
But as the list expands each year, many, including Unesco staff members, ar
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
January 15, 2006
A descendant seeks a pardon for John Donahoe, hanged in the Molly Maguire era, on grounds his trial was tainted.
Now, nearly 130 years after the gallows floor dropped in the prison, Donahoe's great-great-granddaughter is leading a fight to persuade Pennsylvania to officially pardon the member of the infamous Molly Maguires known as "Yellow Jack."
He was not the cold-blooded killer of a mine boss in the 1870s, insists Margaret Mary Traynor. And at the very lea
Source: canada.com
January 13, 2006
A scientist who found deep grooves chiselled into the teeth of dozens of 1,000-year-old Viking skeletons unearthed in Sweden believes the strange custom might have been learned from aboriginal tribes during ancient Norse voyages to North America -- a finding that would represent an unprecedented case of transatlantic, cross-cultural exchange during the age of Leif Ericsson.
The marks are believed to be decorations meant to enhance a man's appearance, or badges of honour for a group of grea
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
January 14, 2006
ATLANTA On a humid Saturday night in 1906, an Atlanta newsboy named Mendel Romm went downtown to pick up papers for delivery. He talked about what he saw for the rest of his life.
"When he got to Five Points, they were having a race riot," says his son, 77-year-old Mendel Romm Jr. of Buckhead. "They were pulling people off the streetcars and lynching them right there. My father was so scared he ran all the way home."
The 1906 Atlanta Race Riot is the
Source: Los Angeles Times
-1-1
In a closely watched ruling over ownership of artworks looted by the Nazis, an Austrian arbitration court has ordered its government to turn over five multimillion-dollar paintings by Gustav Klimt to a Jewish woman whose family fled Vienna in 1939.Maria Altmann, who now lives in Los Angeles, fought a seven-year legal battle for the paintings, which have an estimated value of $150 million. The most valuable is the renowned 1907 portrait of Altmann's aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, w
Source: The Herald (Glasgow)
January 17, 2006
An Aberdeen historian who is seeking to uncover 165 years of hidden history of Jews in Scotland is appealing for help from the public.
Dr Nathan Abrams, history lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, has already begun to map the history of a number of small but resilient Jewish communities which have existed in various areas from the late 1800s to the present day.He said: "Despite the information I have already been able to glean, I believe there is
Source: Chicago Sun Times
January 17, 2006
Today, America celebrates the 300th birthday of the Founding Father who called himself Benjamin Franklin, printer.
Ben Franklin was much more than that, of course. Take your choice: scientist, diplomat, inventor, civic booster, publishing magnate, politician, writer, celebrity, ladies' man and the most famous kite flier in history.
[See Roundup: Talking About History for more.]
Source: Guardian (UK)
January 16, 2006
Iran announced yesterday it would stage a conference to question the authenticity of the Holocaust, a move certain to stir international anger.
The statement follows a series of inflammatory remarks by Iran's hawkish president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has described the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis in the second world war as a myth and called for Israel to be "wiped off the map". He has also suggested an alternative Jewish state should be set up in Europe or Ala
Source: NYT
January 17, 2006
A prominent Chinese lawyer and collector unveiled an old map on Monday that he and some supporters say should topple one of the central tenets of Western civilization: that Europeans were the first to sail around the world and discover America.
The Chinese map, which was drawn in 1763 but has a note on it saying it is a reproduction of a map dated 1418, presents the world as a globe with all the major continents rendered with an exactitude that European maps did not have for at leas
Source: pacificnews.org
January 14, 2006
Vietnamese on the Internet have been complaining that the March conference on Vietnam at the JFK Library in Boston lacks Vietnamese participation. The conference is the first sponsored by all of the presidential libraries. Quang X. Pham, a Vietnamese American author, is asking for help from Vietnamese American list serve for representation on the upcoming conference:
First of all, this conference dwarfs the Oakland Museum's effort. Most likely C-SPAN will have l
Source: USA Today
January 13, 2006
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who fought the laws and spirit of segregation, may soon take his historical place alongside the most illustrious of U.S. presidents.
Organizers of a King memorial hope to break ground on the National Mall in November, placing the civil rights leader in the same class as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They are accelerating their efforts to raise enough money to begin construction and complete the project in 2008, the 40t
Source: Press Release -- George Mason University's Center for History and New Media (CHNM)
January 16, 2006
The compelling images and stories seared into the
memories of all who lived through last year’s hurricanes will endure through an online
hurricane archive. Anyone may visit the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank: Preserving
Stories from Katrina, Rita, and Wilma at http://www.hurricanearchive.org to read the
submissions of others before contributing their own memories and pictures to this
growing collection. All experiences related to the storms are s
Source: News Channel 8 (Bethesda, Maryland)
January 16, 2006
An important piece of history has been slated for preservation on this Martin Luther King holiday.
A slave cabin that was once home to Josiah Henson has been deeded to the Maryland National Capital Parks and Planning Commission. Henson was the inspirational model for Harriet Beecher Stowe's title character in the abolitionist novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin."As a slave, Henson was once the property of the 500 acre Riley family farm in what is now Bethesda. He
