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: Fox News
January 4, 2006
Organizers in Philadelphia are gearing up for the Jan. 17 celebration of Benjamin Franklin's 300th birthday with pomp and pageantry. But there is just as much reason to party this Friday, Jan. 6, which was Franklin's birth date before time skipped ahead 11 days in 1752.This little-known ripple in American history was a result of the switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, part of an ongoing struggle to realign the days with Earth's orbit.
Beca
Source: Newsfactor
January 4, 2006
In Peru's Andean foothills a group of archaeologists say they have found remnants of the oldest known irrigation canals in South America, which they hope will provide clues to the origin of the region's agriculturally based societies.
"There are four sites in the area that have canals that date minimally 5,300 years ago, maybe a little earlier," team leader Tom D. Dillehay, an archaeologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, told The Associated Press on Tues
Source: BBC
January 4, 2006
French President Jacques Chirac has said a controversial law on the teaching of France's colonial past will be overturned. The law requires teachers to stress positive aspects of French colonialism, especially in north Africa.
Mr Chirac, who plans to run for re-election in 2007, also announced the establishment of a slavery remembrance day in France - on a date to be announced later this year. "The question of slavery is a wound for a large number of our fellow citizens, in pa
Source: Newsfactor Magazine
January 3, 2006
Researchers said Tuesday they'll reveal the results of DNA tests in a documentary film airing this weekend on Austrian television as part of a year of celebratory events marking the composer's 250th birthday.
The tests were conducted last year by experts at the Institute for Forensic Medicine in the alpine city of Innsbruck, and the long-awaited results will be publicized in "Mozart: The Search for Evidence," to be screened Sunday by state broadcaster ORF.
Source: Defense News
January 3, 2006
Poland is to declassify nearly all its secret files from the Warsaw Pact, the military alliance of the Soviet bloc which disbanded in 1991, Defense Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Jan. 3. ”More than 90 percent of the documents will be declassified,” Sikorski told reporters.
Of 1,445 Warsaw Pact files found in Poland’s archives, 441 were not classified military information, and the official secrets status of another 881 will be waived “as of today”, Sikorski said.
Source: Radio Praha
January 3, 2006
Britain's Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was incensed by the Lidice massacre and he wanted the Royal Air Force to wipe out German villages in retaliation. This sense of fury and shock is palpable in cabinet meeting notes that have now been released by the National Archives {and were taken by the then deputy cabinet secretary Sir Norman Brook.}
Churchill called for German villages to be destroyed on a three-to-one basis, but other cabinet members were more cautious. They pointed
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 3, 2006
It may be nearly 1,000 years late but campaigners are pinning their hopes on a preface to the Bayeux Tapestry to win the second Battle of Fulford - the "forgotten" clash of 1066.
The battle is considerably less well known than the clash between King Harold and William the Conqueror, and it even lags behind the Saxon encounter with Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge just before Hastings.However, historians believe that Fulford played a key role in the s
Source: Haaretz
January 3, 2006
When the Philippines government honored Holocaust researcher Racelle Weiman in a public ceremony in Washington, D.C. last May, it was a culmination of sorts for Weiman, who has been working for the past 18 months to uncover the little-known rescue of Jews by the Philippines government during World War II. The Order of Lakandula, one of the Philippines' highest honors, was presented to her by visiting Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alberto Romulo at the Philippine Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Source: BBC
January 4, 2006
Residents of the village of Nobber, north Meath, in the Republic of Ireland, stumbled upon archaeological treasure when they decided to clean up an old graveyard.
Now they are hoping that tombs in the shape of Celtic crosses, dating back 1100 years, will put them on the map, alongside such famous archaeological sites as Newgrange. In the course of cleaning up the wind-swept cemetery, they found small concrete tomb stones, like Celtic crosses, some less than a fo
Source: AP
January 4, 2006
Discovery of an ancient village just outside Jerusalem has brought into question one of the strongest images of biblical times - the wholesale flight of Jews running for their lives after the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
Just beneath the main road leading north from Jerusalem, archaeologists have found the walls of houses in a well-planned community that existed after the temple's destruction. It might lead to rewriting the history books if it was r
Source: History Today
January 3, 2006
Public voting in a new poll will decide a 21st century set of Seven Wonders of the World. A shortlist of 21 global historical landmarks has been created by a Swiss organisation, the New 7 Wonders Foundation. Public phone voting will culminate in the announcement of the New Seven Wonders on January 1st, 2007.The foundation’s aim is to highlight the plight of the world’s cultural heritage; the shortlisted monuments had to be man-made, predate the year 2000 and in a decent stat
Source: Peter Ford in the Christian Science Monitor
January 4, 2006
PARIS – Hardly had the fires died down in the Paris suburbs, as the November rioting by immigrant youths petered out, than the flames of another conflict fed by France's colonial past began to sweep through the political landscape here.
This time they are metaphorical. But the passionate debate under way over whether French history teachers should stress positive aspects of colonialism is generating almost as much heat. The argument reveals the same ambivalence among French politic
Source: Press Release New-York Historical Society
January 3, 2006
The New-York Historical Society has extended the landmark Slavery in New York exhibition for an additional three weeks, through Sunday, March 26, 2006 at the New-York Historical Society, at Central Park West and 77th Street in New York City.
The exhibition has broken attendance records for all shows in the Society’s 201-year history, already attracting hundreds of thousands of diverse visitors (including thousands of public school students) since its opening on October 7, 2005.
Source: BBC News
January 3, 2006
Relatives of victims of Britain's worst sea disaster are to campaign for a permanent memorial in Scotland. The Clyde-built Lancastria was carrying about 9,000 troops when it was sunk by German bombers off the coast of France in 1940 during a mass evacuation.
Source: Romanesko
December 30, 2005
That's what National Security Archive founder and former Washington Post reporter Scott Armstrong tells Bob Garfield.From the transcript:
BOB GARFIELD: How much does the history of the Times' relationship with the government affect its behavior and the Bush Administration's in this particular case?
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: Historically they have had the willingness to suppress information. The Bay of Pigs was something that they soft-pedaled, lowered their story
Source: Boston Globe
January 2, 2006
Truman Capote laments that the editors found it necessary to cut his story. The anthropologist Margaret Mead wonders what happened to the manuscript she sent from Bali. Robert Frost asks for someone to please insert a space between the words I and would in one of his poems.
The Atlantic Monthly -- venerable chronicle of the nation's politics, arts, and letters for 148 years -- is packing up and moving out of Boston to its parent company's offices in Washington, D.C., and, as in any
Source: Wa Po
January 3, 2006
As a young Justice Department lawyer, Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. tried to help tip the balance of power between Congress and the White House a little more in favor of the executive branch.In the 1980s, the Reagan administration, like other White Houses before and after, chafed at the reality that Congress's reach on the meaning of laws extends beyond the words of statutes passed on Capitol Hill. Judges may turn to the trail of statements lawmakers
Source: NYT
January 3, 2006
In 1957, archaeologists determined that the remains of the historic fort at Jamestown no longer existed and had probably washed into the James River. But a young graduate student named William Kelso wasn't convinced.
Three decades after visiting the site of North America's first permanent English settlement, Kelso returned as an archaeologist and discovered evidence of the fort's remains. He and his team have gone on to discover hundreds of thousands of 17th century artifacts.
Source: Ottawa Citizen
January 2, 2006
Westminster Abbey has criticized churches that opened their doors to the filming of The Da Vinci Code last year by denouncing the thriller as "nonsense" that should be exposed by Christians.The abbey barred the filmmakers from its premises in June, saying in a brief statement that the bestselling Dan Brown novel on which the film was based was "theologically unsound." The book's central themes --that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and fathered a child, and
Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
January 2, 2006
Catroppa, 63, will officially retire Tuesday after serving as superintendent for eight years. The historic site in downtown Atlanta showcases the life of the slain civil rights leader and the civil rights movement.During his tenure, Catroppa has nearly doubled annual attendance, in part by bringing in provocative exhibits such as the current one: "Of Ballots Uncast: The African-American Struggle for the Right to Vote." Catroppa also guided the ongoing $4.2 million
