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: CNN
December 7, 2005
About 2,000 sailors, veterans, community leaders and guests bowed their heads Wednesday in remembrance of the attack on Pearl Harbor that hurled the U.S. into World War II 64 years ago.
Four F-15s flown by the Hawaii Air National Guard roared above the bay, including one jet that veered off from the group to symbolize the 2,390 people killed. The USS Chaffee passed by the sunken USS Arizona, where more than 900 sailors remain entombed.
The crowd, which included about 20
Source: Sun-Sentinel (FL)
December 7, 2005
Remember Pearl Harbor? WWII vets worry that it is just a history lesson
These days, few cast their minds back to Pearl Harbor, and some people under 30 are hard pressed to recite what happened on that "Day of Infamy" exactly 64 years ago.
"I have no idea whatsoever," said Kristina Krakehl, 23, of Boca Raton.It's not really that significant," Brinsley Elliott, 20, of Fort Lauderdale, said after being told why Dec.
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)
December 7, 2005
Telling the story of Pearl Harbor can be a challenging task when the classroom has both American and Japanese students.
"It's good they're not judging each other on something their grandparents did years ago, but we do want them to know what happened," said Mary K. O'Donnell, a high school social studies teacher in the Hempfield Area School District (Pittburgh). The district has dozens of Japanese students whose parents work at nearby companies, including the Sony Corp. p
Source: NYT
December 7, 2005
Almost everyone has seen the famous study in black and white, one of those rare photographs that entered the collective memory as a snapshot not of a moment but of an era and maybe something more. It's now on almost any bus in New York City and many of its suburbs, an invitation not just to remember but to reflect.
At the front of a bus, previously reserved for white riders, is Rosa Parks, face turned to the window to her left, seemingly lost in thought as she rides through Montgome
Source: NYT
December 7, 2005
ANGEL ISLAND, Calif., Dec. 1 - It was known, simply, as "the wooden building." For 30 years, from 1910 to 1940, the barren walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station gave mute testimony to the experiences of roughly 175,000 Chinese immigrants who were detained and exhaustively interrogated on this island in San Francisco Bay, the West Coast's insidious version of Ellis Island.
On Thursday, this little-spoken-about place, the physical embodiment of the Chinese Exclusion
Source: Chicago Tribune
December 7, 2005
About five years ago, William Walsh welcomed into his office a man who had a strange mystery to unravel. The man opened a metal box, laid out a swath of green felt and placed a few bone fragments on the fabric.
They were pieces of a skull that had surrounded one of the greatest musical minds of all time, Ludwig van Beethoven's. At least, that's what the visitor said.
On Tuesday morning, Walsh stood at a lectern at Argonne National Laboratory, near Darien, and verified w
Source: Netscape News
December 7, 2005
The US Navy man in charge of the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Nagasaki at the end of World War II has died of organ failure at the age of 93, a family spokesman announced.
Retired vice admiral Frederick Ashworth, who served as weaponeer aboard a B-29 bomber dubbed "Bockscar" and responsible for the technical performance of the 4.5-ton bomb known as "Fat Man," passed away in Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday afternoon, following a series of unsuccessful
Source: WP
December 2, 2005
Down the slope from the Old City's Dung Gate, rows of thick stone walls, shards of pottery and other remains of an expansive ancient building are being exhumed from a dusty pit.
The site is on a narrow terrace at the edge of the Kidron Valley, which sheers away from the Old City walls, in a cliffside area the Bible describes as the seat of the kings of ancient Israel.What is taking shape in the rocky earth, marked by centuries of conquest and development, is as
Source: NYT
December 6, 2005
Mel Gibson, whose "The Passion of the Christ" was assailed by critics as an anti-Semitic passion play - and whose father has been on record as a Holocaust denier - has a new project under way: a nonfiction miniseries about the Holocaust.
Mr. Gibson's television production company is developing a four-hour miniseries for ABC based on the self-published memoir of Flory A. Van Beek, a Dutch Jew whose gentile neighbors hid her from the Nazis but who lost several relatives in c
Source: Guardian
December 4, 2005
It was a summer publishing sensation, an 814-page biography of a man the authors depict as the worst mass murderer of the 20th century, with 111 pages of notes and bibliography. Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang, celebrated author of the world bestseller, Wild Swans, and her husband, historian Jon Halliday, was hailed by reviewers, most of whom were not specialists on China. The book was described as 'a triumph', 'stupendous' and 'awesome' when it was published in Britain. UK sales have reac
Source: NYT
December 6, 2005
Conservation advocates say there are millions of items in American public collections that may be lost unless they receive urgent preservation attention. In a study to be released on Tuesday in New York, Heritage Preservation, a Washington-based conservation group, reports that many such collections are threatened by poor environmental controls, improper storage, inadequate staffing and financing and poor planning for emergencies like floods.
The report includes data from more than
Source: NYT
December 6, 2005
In a two-hour interview on Sunday, Mr. Clark, a tall, gaunt figure, still with a Texas drawl after decades living in New York, set out a rationale for defending Mr. Hussein that would face little contest in American law schools. All men, he said, deserved a fair trial, even history's worst criminals. "Suppose Hitler had survived," he said. "It seems to me that it would have been absolutely critical to give him a fair trial, to let him call witnesses and cross-examine the hell out
Source: Romanesko
December 6, 2005
"Particularly in the current atmosphere of war, a secretive administration ... those sources are our lifeline," Bob Woodward said at a Harvard forum. He told the audience he hasn't been fazed by CIA leak-related criticism. "I can deal with it. I am going about my business."
Source: History Today
November 28, 2005
The History Today Film Award for 2005 was awarded to Laurence Rees for his series Auschwitz: the Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’. The judges commented that they were “united in awe-struck admiration for the high production values, the extensive research, the nuanced complexity, the choice of witnesses which included unrepentant Nazis as well as Holocaust survivors, all of which carefully, soberly and compellingly charted the evolution of the devastating policy to exterminate the Jews of Europe. A
Source: History Today
December 6, 2005
Archaeologists believe they have found the royal burial tomb of Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey. The radar study unearthed the tomb of the British Saint 1,000 years after his birth, as well as unknown 13th and 14th century Royal crypts and burials hidden in the Abbey’s foundations. The research, using ground-penetrating radar (GPR) technology, had been focussed on the Abbey's 1268 Cosmati mosaic pavement next to the High Altar. Dr Warwick Rodwell, the Abbey's Consultant Archaeologist,
Source: BAJR Website
December 7, 2005
Cultural organizations have issued the following statement:
"We, the undersigned cultural organizations, are deeply concerned about the safety of Susanne Osthoff and her escort, and we appeal for Susanne’s swift release so that she may be reunited with her family. An archaeologist and humanitarian aid worker, Susanne has worked tirelessly for many years to aid the Iraqi people and to preserve the cultural treasures of Iraq for all Iraqis. She is truly a friend to all the people
Source: CNN
December 6, 2005
YORK, Pennsylvania (AP) -- The children and sisters of a black woman who was killed during race riots in this central Pennsylvania city 36 years ago will share in a $2 million settlement announced Tuesday by York city officials.
The deal would settle the lawsuit that Lillie Belle Allen's family filed against the city and five former police officers. It also calls for the creation of a memorial to Allen and Henry Schaad, a white city policeman who als
Source: Baltimore Sun
December 6, 2005
At the end of their shift July 7, 1957, the women at the silk mill stopped winding the soft thread. They walked out as usual, leaving behind their aprons, face powder, even a few shoes. The superintendent hung up his straw hat.
None of them ever returned.
And nearly 50 years after the General Textile Mills factory closed overnight, it looks the same, stopped in time, a haunting archive of the industrial life that once flourished in remote mountain towns like this one in
Source: AP
December 6, 2005
Rare copies of a sports newspaper that was credited with uncovering the infamous 1919 Chicago White Sox gambling scandal are missing from a University of Illinois library.
Librarians discovered that two bound volumes of Collyer's Eye from the 1920s were missing this fall, around the time the White Sox won their first World Series in 88 years, said associate university librarian Karen Schmidt."As there was more and more interest in what the White
Source: WP
December 6, 2005
Despite some reservations, engineers evaluating sites for the National Museum of African American History and Culture cited advantages of two spots, one near the Washington Monument and the other at Benjamin Banneker Overlook, a park on a hill above the municipal fish market.
The engineering study did not make an explicit recommendation. The Smithsonian Board of Regents and an advisory council of the African American museum discussed the 198-page Site Evaluation Study yesterday in a
