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: NYT & White House website
December 13, 2005
In speeches in Philadelphia President Bush and war critic Rep. John Murtha used dueling lessons from the Revolutionary War in support of their positions yesterday. Speakling at a meeting held by the World Affairs Council, Mr. Bush said:
A few blocks from here stands Independence Hall, where our Declaration of Independence was signed and our Constitution was debated. From the perspective of more than two centuries, the success of America's democratic exp
Source: Press Release David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies,
December 13, 2005
America's journalism schools and newspaper publishers refused to help Jewish refugee journalists fleeing Hitler, according to research to be presented at a conference in Washington, D.C. later this month.Prof. Laurel Leff of Northeastern University will speak on "American Journalism and the Plight of Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany," at the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS), the premier organization of Jewish scholars.
Pro
Source: History Today
December 12, 2005
The museums documentation association is supporting a project to establish a ‘virtual museum’ dedicated to gay and lesbian history. The MDA museums watchdog is backing the Proud Heritage campaign asking archives and museums across the UK to list the artefacts and documents in their collections relating to homosexuality. The group Proud Heritage has just sent out a survey this week hoping to compile these records into a national database; its director Jack Gilbert commented:
Source: History Today
December 13, 2005
Torrential rain in Rome has caused authorities to close the emperor Nero’s palace. Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione stated: ‘Safety is no longer guaranteed’; the Domus Aurea (House of Gold) could be shut for up to two years as the rain threatened to damage the ancient building’s plaster and masonry. Following a fire in AD64, Nero ordered the rebuilding of much of the city and the opulent palace was finished in AD68, the year of the emperor’s suicide. The palace was shut for 18 years until 1999
Source: NYT
December 11, 2005
THE Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently announced that it would give $450 million toward eclectic inventions to aid the world's poor: more nutritious bananas, easier-to-use vaccines and chemicals that leave mosquitoes unable to smell their would-be victims, for example.
But the Gateses were not the first to see that money could sometimes move mountains in public health. They are following in the footsteps of the industrial giants of the late-19th century, said Dr. Howard Mark
Source: AP
December 10, 2005
Building for the future at the U.S. Army's Fort Drum is helping unveil the past. The newest discovery at the northern New York Army post is a prehistoric boat-building site near what would have been the shoreline of Glacial Lake Iroquois.
A team of Fort Drum archaeologists surveying a wooded hillside near where the Army is putting a new National Guard training site unearthed an unusual looking stone tool. With the help of a U.S. Marine archaeologist, the team was able to identify it
Source: Bloomberg News
December 12, 2005
Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi won't ``own up'' to his country's history of violence in Asia, making him the cause of a rift in relations with China and a breakdown in talks between the neighbors, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said at a regional meeting in Malaysia.
Wen canceled an annual trilateral summit with Koizumi and South Korea's President Roh Moo-Hyun during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur because of Koizumi's
Source: NYT
December 13, 2005
Harvard University and Georgetown University each announced yesterday that they had received $20 million donations from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, a Saudi businessman and member of the Saudi royal family, to finance Islamic studies.
Harvard said it would create a universitywide program on Islamic studies, recruit new faculty members in the field, provide more support for graduate students and convert rare Islamic textual sources into digital formats to make the
Source: NYT
December 13, 2005
For more than a century, the young reporters from City News have delivered just-the-facts accounts of Chicago's biggest and, more often, smallest news events.
But City News Service, where flowery prose was mocked and accuracy about the tiniest of factual detail was demanded, is closing. The demise of the wire service, which opened in 1890 as a cooperative deal among Chicago newspapers, signifies many ends.It is the close of a pre-Internet age, when news outlets
Source: Radio Free Europe
December 13, 2005
The kidnapping of a German archeologist in late November highlighted both the historical wealth of Iraq and the perils of exploring that history. In much of the country, archeologists have all but abandoned their work because of security concerns. But officials in Kurdish-administered northern Iraq say the region is secure enough for excavations. The region is rich in potential sites, and only a fraction of them have been researched. One of the most dramatic is in the heart of Irbil, the capital
Source: AP
December 13, 2005
Prosecutors said Tuesday they were preparing charges against the nation's last communist leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, for his imposition of martial law, as Poles marked the 24th anniversary of the clampdown.
Prosecutors argued that Jaruzelski violated the constitution when he imposed martial law in 1981, said Ewa Koj, a prosecutor with the National Remembrance Institute, which pursues communist-era crimes.Jaruzelski, 82, also could face charges for harassme
Source: Wa Po
December 12, 2005
Inside the box at Ford's Theatre where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, most of the furnishings are carefully chosen replicas: the heavy gold drapes and tassels, the red, gold and white floral carpet, the presidential rocker.
But last week, the National Park Service got hold of the real thing. A carved-back, cane-seat parlor chair that was in the presidential box the night Lincoln was shot by actor John Wilkes Booth -- perhaps the one Mary Todd Lincoln was sitting in --
Source: Newsday
December 12, 2005
Earlier this year, a book considered whether he was gay. Another explored whether he was depressed. Then came the bestseller extolling his leadership abilities.
And these are a fraction of the high-profile volumes now tumbling from publishing houses - not to mention the TV histories and films in the works - all centering on a man who died 140 years ago: President Abraham Lincoln."Lincoln does seem to be speaking to the country," says Doris Kearns
Source: NYT
December 12, 2005
Room 117, known as the map room at the New York Public Library, is scheduled to reopen Thursday after a $5 million restoration project that has brought back the Beaux Arts luster of the area that is home to some of the rarest maps in the world.
Source: Financial Times (UK)
December 12, 2005
Nicolas Sarkozy, France's populist interior minister, yesterday attempted to defuse a furious row over the country's colonial past saying France must confront its history to avoid a "repetition of evil" but should refrain from an "excess of repentance".
In an article in Le Journal du Dimanche, Mr Sarkozy said France must acknowledge the legitimate suffering of the victims of its colonial past. However, the frontrunner in the 2007 presidential election race also
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
December 12, 2005
The Atlanta Public Schools Archives & Museum draws connections between the school system's many accomplished alumni as it chronicles the district's rich history. A few of the famous folk who once roamed the hallways of an Atlanta school: boxer Evander Holyfield; comic Nipsey Russell; civil rights advocate Vernon Jordan; and TV judge Glenda Hatchett. Former mayors Ivan Allen Jr. and Maynard Jackson attended Atlanta schools, as did construction magnate Herman Russell and Chick-fil-A founder Tr
Source: USA Today
December 12, 2005
A total of 7.9 million immigrants have come to the USA since 2000, making the first half of this decade the highest period of immigration in U.S. history despite tougher scrutiny after 9/11, figures released Monday show.
Almost half, or 3.7 million, entered illegally, according to an analysis of Census data by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C., group that advocates controlling the flow of legal and illegal immigrants.The report comes
Source: BBC News
December 12, 2005
One might struggle to see the ethical side of bodysnatching, that grisly activity epitomised by Burke and Hare. But, according to a senior curator at the Royal College of Surgeons, some of the greatest discoveries in medical history might not have been possible without it.Few crimes can make the flesh crawl like body snatching, but it was prevalent in the 18th Century.
The image of freshly raided graves scandalised the public, but few of the perpetrators and pr
Source: Günter Bischof, in an email to HNN
December 12, 2005
The quiet determination of the University of New Orleans to be up and running as quickly as possible seems to be the best kept secret in town and has not been reported in the media here. UNO reopened classes on Oct. 11 on its satellite campus in Jefferson parish (1,000 students enrolled in regular classes and 7,000 in on-line classes); meanwhile the main Lakefront campus opened again early in December and so did the Library; intercession classes begin last week and the regular spring term on Jan
Source: NYT
December 12, 2005
Vice President Dick Cheney was one of the first members of the Bush administration to say it, at a campaign stop in Lake Elmo, Minn., in September 2004.
The word getting the workout from the nation's top guns these days is "caliphate" - the term for the seventh-century Islamic empire that spanned the Middle East, spread to Southwest Asia, North Africa and Spain, then ended with the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258. The term can also refer to other caliphates, including the o
