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
December 12, 2005
Scores of extras loiter, their faces covered in soot. A man sprays gray insulation foam - in lieu of concrete dust - at what looks much like the corner of Church and Vesey Streets in Lower Manhattan. Another tosses reams of paper in the air. Nearby, others are debating precisely how to crush a fire truck and an ambulance.
A continent removed from the scrutiny of scarred New Yorkers, Oliver Stone's film about 9/11 rescue workers is deep into its second month of principal photography
Source: CP
December 12, 2005
A British commander's draft report on the 1759 Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec, dated two days after the French surrender, will be put up for sale Thursday at Christie's auction house in New York. The 4 1/2-page report is by George Townshend, who commanded the victorious British forces during the last stage of the battle after the death of Gen. James Wolfe. The outcome of the battle - in which Wolfe's counterpart, French Gen. Louis Montcalm, was also k
Source: Payvand's Iran News
December 12, 2005
A chronicle written by Fazli Isfahani, a historian of the Safavid era, which was surprisingly discovered in the old library of Christ's College of Cambridge University has been edited and will be published digitally in December/January in Britain. "David Brown Book, a publication company in the U.K, is to provide a digital reproduction of a unique manuscript which records the major events of the reign of Shah Abbas Safavid, the greatest king of the Safavid d
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 11, 2005
Teachers in France have accused their government of using the tactics of dictators by enacting a law that imposes an "official history" of their country, requiring them to highlight the "positive aspects" of the French empire.They claim the legislation ignores the torture, slavery and massacres "that sometimes went as far as genocide" and sometimes accompanied French colonialism.
The law aims to protect the reputations o
Source: Bloomberg
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
Source: CBS5 San Francisco
December 12, 2005
Students from a Christian high school are suing to force the state university system to accept credits from religious-themed classes.
The six students from Calvary Chapel Christian School about 80 miles southeast of Los Angeles claim the University of California system violated their rights to free speech, religion and association and equal protection. They cited UC's decision to dismiss as "too narrow" high-school classes such as "Christianity's Influence on American
Source: CNN
December 11, 2005
Using radar equipment along a wall of a landmark building, military specialists Saturday quickly found a time capsule buried more than a century ago by King Kamehameha V.
Historians knew the capsule contained priceless pieces of the islands' history, including photos of royal families dating back to Kamehameha the Great and a constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom. But until now the capsule's exact location was unknown."We found it within the first 10 m
Source: BBC News
December 10, 2005
A petition was handed to the German government this week asking for the former East German parliament building to be saved from demolition.
The fate of the building has raised questions about German identity.It's hard to overlook the Palace of the Republic: a squat, brown building on a vast expanse of empty concrete in the heart of Berlin.
It sits like an angry proletarian opposite the fake Italian Renaissance of the city's cathedral - which holds
Source: BBC News
December 11, 2005
Leading politicians and civic dignitaries were in mid Wales on Saturday to remember Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last Prince of Wales. Welsh MPs, AMs, members of the House of Lords and political leaders gathered at the Cefn-y-Bedd Memorial in Cilmeri near Builth Wells in Powys. A ceremony is held every year on the nearest Saturday to the day the prince was killed.
Source: NYT`
December 11, 2005
To better understand the potential for catastrophic damage from future hurricanes, scientists are looking to the past.
And the future looks very expensive, the scientists said this week at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. With wealth and property values increasing, and more people moving to vulnerable coasts, by the year 2020 a single storm could cause losses of $500 billion - several times the damage inflicted by Hurricane Katrina.Roger
Source: NYT
December 11, 2005
It started as a joke and ended up as a shot heard round the Internet, with the joker losing his job and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, suffering a blow to its credibility.
A man in Nashville has admitted that, in trying to shock a colleague with a joke, he put false information into a Wikipedia entry about John Seigenthaler Sr., a former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville. Brian Chase, 38, who until Friday was an operations manager at a small
Source: NYT
December 11, 2005
Eugene J. McCarthy, the sardonic Senate dove who stunned the nation by upending President Lyndon B. Johnson's re-election drive amid the Vietnam War turmoil of 1968, died early yesterday. He was 89.
A courtly, sharp-witted presence in capital politics for half a century, Mr. McCarthy, a Minnesota Democrat, died in his sleep at an assisted-living home in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, where he had lived for the last several years.
Source: NYT
December 10, 2005
President Bush suggested Friday that history will vindicate his decision to invade Iraq, saying he believed that a half century from now, it will be regarded as important a transition for the world as the democratization of Japan was after World War II.
"I'm absolutely convinced that some day, 50 or 60 years from now, an American president will be speaking to an audience saying, 'Thank goodness a generation of Americans rose to the challenge and helped people be liberated from
Source: Ottawa Citizen
December 10, 2005
If pilgrims worshipping in the Church of the Nativity look up at the roof, they will see a battlefield threatening the future of one of Christendom's most holy sites. Squabbling over crucial roof repairs between the three Christian communities that share custodianship of Jesus's birthplace is endangering the 1,500-year-old basilica.
Large holes in the 500-year-old lead roof have let rainwater flood inside for years. It streams down the walls and threatens to was
Source: David Honigmann in the Financial Times (London, England)
December 10, 2005
Appropriately, the subject to which historians returned time after time this year was the troubled relationship between Europe and the east.
Bettany Hughes's Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore (Jonathan Cape Pounds 20) traces the cultural ripples left by Helen: a villain to medieval moralists, rehabilitated by Eleanor of Aquitaine, traduced by Hollywood.Greeks and Trojans clashed in deadly earnest centuries later. As Tom Holland recounts in Persian F
Source: Courier Mail (Queensland, Australia)
December 10, 2005
ACCORDING to historians, Queensland Aborigines had up to $500 million in wages "stolen" by the State Government and its agents during the 20th century.
The ramifications of that claim remain unresolved, as does the fate of money left in a four-year-old government reparation fund which closes at the end of the month.ome suggest the real amount now owed could run to $3 billion with financial interest, plus proper compensation, and they argue this p
Source: Australian
December 10, 2005
THE credibility of expert witnesses in native title claims came under renewed attack yesterday after the National Native Title Tribunal revealed that it discounts the evidence of anthropologists who are too close to Aboriginal groups.
Tribunal president Graeme Neate said it had criticised some anthropologists for conducting themselves as advocates for Aborigines instead of impartial experts. "That means the court ultimately gives less weight to their
Source: LAT
December 10, 2005
For nearly 140 years, any child born on U.S. soil, even to an illegal immigrant, has been given American citizenship. Now, some conservatives in Congress are determined to change that.
A group of 92 lawmakers in the House will attempt next week to force a vote on legislation that would revoke the principle of "birthright citizenship," part of a broader effort to discourage illegal immigration.The push to change the citizenship policy is backed by
Source: Xinhuanet
December 9, 2005
French President Jacques Chirac intervened Friday by a radio-televisioned speech to try to calm down controversy over France colonization history.
He announced the creation of a mission to "evaluate the actions of parliament in the fields of memory and history" and issue a report within three months, as the French government faces mounting pressure to revoke a law that casts a positive light on the country 's colonial past."Like all na
Source: Email to HNN and Tulane Website
December 9, 2005
Tulane University's History Department will apparently not be facing lay-offs, though other departments will. Not until next week will department chairs meet with the acting dean. But James Boyden, chairman of the History Department, told HNN in an email, "my assumption is that the layoffs will not affect the history department directly. And the department's Ph.D. and M.A. programs are among those that will be continued." He added: "Good news for us on that score, but the bad
