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: AP
December 21, 2005
Few people ever knew, but the murky medieval alleyways of this Atlantic port city once provided cover for a persecuted minority that risked being burnt at the stake.
In the 16th century, an unremarkable thick-walled granite house that still stands in a row of narrow, small-roomed buildings along a cobbled street held a dangerous secret. At the back of the house, steep steps lead down to a warren of alleys ideal for conspiratorial comings and goings that helped keep an outlawed relig
Source: Baltic Times (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania)
December 21, 2005
Local politicians have pilloried a new documentary film, “Baltic Nazism,” covering the Nazi period in the Baltic states. They have gone so far as to appeal to the Russian Embassy and the local prosecutor in an effort to stop the film’s premiere in January, just days after the documentary was shown to local journalists.
The documentary has drawn criticism because it reportedly juxtaposes video material from World War II with recent minority-related demonstrations in the country.
Source: NYT
December 20, 2005
Since the 4,300-year-old tomb was discovered outside Cairo in 1964, Egyptologists have known the names of the two men buried there -Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep- and their occupation, manicurists to the king. But why were they embracing?
Over the years, the tomb's wall art has been subjected to learned analysis, inspiring considerable speculation. One interpretation is that the two men are brothers, probably identical twins, and this may be the earliest known depiction of twins. Anot
Source: Edwin Black in the JTA
December 19, 2005
Iran’s president has shot to the forefront of Holocaust denial in recent days, but it may seem more like self-denial: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad need only look to his country’s Hitler-era past to discover that Iran and Iranians were connected to the Holocaust and the Nazi regime, as was the larger Arab and Islamic world under the leadership of the mufti of Jerusalem.
Iran’s links to the Third Reich began during the pre-World War II years when it welcomed Gestapo agents and other operative
Source: Times Online (UK)
December 20, 2005
RECENTLY unearthed remains of the Temple of Jupiter, the oldest stone building in Rome, are to be opened to the public this week in a move that the Mayor says will bring Ancient Rome alive.
A new architect-designed space, covered in glass, will also feature the bronze equestrian statue of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius with his arm outstretched — the most celebrated statue in the Ancient world — and a gigantic head of the Emperor Constantine. Walter Veltroni, the Mayor of Rome, said
Source: NYT
December 20, 2005
The Rabula Gospels, the first dated Christian manuscript, has been shown at an academic conference in Florence to have been repainted. Pigment tests and scientific analyses of the illustrated manuscript have revealed that the illustrations of A.D. 586 were repainted after it entered the Medicis' Laurentian Library in the 16th century, where it remains today. The oversized book, originally produced in a Syrian monastery, includes the first dated pictorial representation of th
Source: NYT
December 20, 2005
The morning after the ultra-conservative mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was elected president in June, he made a pilgrimage to the tomb of the father of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an act that appears to have foreshadowed exactly how the president-elect planned to lead his country.
"The path of the imam is the absolute path of the Islamic republic," Mr. Ahmadinejad said then. "He was the founder of the revolution. He is the reference of
Source: Peoples Daily (China)
December 20, 2005
The construction of the Roman Limes was quite possibly influenced by the concept of the Great Wall in China, though the two great buildings of the world are far away from each other, said archaeologists and historians.
Although there is no evidence that the two constructions had any direct connections, indirect influence from the Great Wall on the Roman Limes is certain, said Visy Zsolt, a professor with the Department of Ancient History and Archaeology of the University of Pecs in
Source: Reuters
December 20, 2005
A group including Chinese and South Koreans sued a Japanese regional government on Tuesday over a new school textbook they say whitewashes Japan's militaristic past, the Kyodo news agency reported.
Japan approved a new edition of 'The New History Textbook' in April, drawing protests from China and South Korea. The Education Ministry first approved the book, written by nationalist scholars for junior high schools, in 2001 in the face of strong protests from Japan
Source: Japan Focus
December 20, 2005
The Nanjing Massacre remains a touchstone of China-Japan conflict nearly seven decades after the event. Now Chinese plans to honor John Rabe, a Germany citizen in Nanjing, for his efforts to protect Chinese citizens from slaughter have inflamed tensions with Japan over war and rare memory. The Chinese plan offers a rare example in the annals of warfare in general, and China in particular, of recognizing in a public and prominent way the achievements of a foreign national in a world that is domin
Source: Independent (London)
December 20, 2005
For many years, authors, naval historians and tour guides have believed that Lord Nelson went into battle at Trafalgar accompanied by a fearless pet cat called Tiddles. An appearance on breakfast television earlier this month has led to the shock discovery that Nelson's cat was, in fact, a hoax perpetrated 15 years ago by a National Trust employee called Guy Evans. Stephen Fry uncovered the scam after mentioning Tiddles during a BBC interview to plug the DVD of his qui
Source: Daily Telegraph (UK)
December 20, 2005
MOVE over Charles Darwin and Elizabeth Fry. A leading historian wants to see a black face on a banknote to demonstrate the changing social and ethnic composition of Britain.
Mary Seacole, the nurse who served in the Crimea, Olaudah Equino, an 18th century anti-slavery writer, or Dadabhai Naoroji, the first South Asian MP who sat for Finsbury in the 1890s, have all been suggested as candidates. Linda Colley, the author of several books on British identity,
Source: Australian
December 21, 2005
A FILM about two cowboys who ride horses, drive pick-up trucks and fall in love with each other has delighted Hollywood and sent a shiver of horror through America's religious heartland.
But real-life gay cowboys and Wild West historians say that the plot of Brokeback Mountain -- an Oscar favourite after topping the Golden Globes nominations -- is nothing new. And in a claim that is likely to outrage many rural conservatives, they say that homosexuality wa
Source: Boston Globe
December 20, 2005
On the morning of April 9, 1952, American flags flew above 88 steel mills across the country, signaling a change in management. The president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, had seized control of the mills, claiming that the intransigence of the private owners would lead to a strike that would cripple US efforts to win the Korean War.''The president has the power to keep the country from going to hell," Truman told his staff, according to David McCull
Source: USA Today
December 19, 2005
For the NSA, Bush's executive order authorizing the interception of electronic communication without warrants, signed in late 2001, represents a dramatic shift from restrictions on domestic spying imposed after exposure in the mid-1970s of NSA operations against U.S. citizens.Before Bush's secret order, the NSA operated under strict limits on domestic intelligence collection. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 set up a secret federal court t
Source: NYT
December 19, 2005
Steve Blum has been spending his days locked up alone in a silent warehouse in central New Jersey, sorting through boxes of what looks like scrap metal.
But to him, the dusty shingles are buried treasure. These old dies and plates were once used to print items of great worth: bank notes, stock certificates and bond coupons, as well as postage stamps, tickets, playing cards and other types of paper ephemera.
The slabs, about an eighth of an inch thick and ranging from an
Source: KUsports.com
December 19, 2005
Aram Goudsouzian, a history professor at the University of Memphis, said Chamberlain's legacy should not be limited to his basketball prowess.
"He was a national icon," Goudsouzian said. "He was the first real, black celebrity star in college basketball."Chamberlain died in 1999, less than two years after seeing his number retired during a dramatic half-time ceremony at Allen Fieldhouse. He was 63.
In "Can Basket
Source: Christian Science Monitor
December 20, 2005
(NEW GLOUCESTER, ME.)Wafts of fruitcake, fresh from the oven, lace the brick Dwelling House, built in 1883. In the barn across the field, as the sun hangs low on a winter horizon, three pigs gleefully scuttle toward Brother Arnold."Hello kids, hello kids," he coos, patting their rumps as if they were pet dogs.
In many ways, life has changed little in this pastoral patch of southern Maine, where the Shaker community has toiled for more than two centuries. That's why Brother Arnold winces wh
Source: David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
December 19, 2005
America's journalism schools and newspaper publishers refused to aid Jewish refugee journalists who were fleeing Hitler, a leading Holocaust scholar revealed at a conference in Washington, D.C. this week.
Another speaker at the conference described how the leaders of elite American universities not only ignored the plight of Jews under Hitler in the 1930s, but actually engaged in actions that helped enhance the Hitler regime's image in the West.The information w
Source: NYT
December 19, 2005
WILMINGTON, N.C., Dec. 18 - Beneath canopies of moss-draped oaks, on sleepy streets graced by antebellum mansions, tour guides here spin stories of Cape Fear pirates and Civil War blockade-runners for eager tourists.
Only scant mention is made, however, of the bloody rioting more than a century ago during which black residents were killed and survivors banished by white supremacists, who seized control of the city government in what historians say is the only successful overthrow of
