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 2, 2005
Michael A. W. Evans, a photographer whose picture of Ronald Reagan in a well-worn cowboy hat was on the covers of Time, Newsweek and People after Mr. Reagan's death last year, died yesterday at his home in Atlanta. He was 61.The cause was cancer, the National Press Photographers Association said.
Mr. Evans worked for Time magazine, The New York Times and other publications, but was best known as the official White House photographer during the Reagan
Source: National Geographic News
December 2, 2005
Two centuries ago, the president of the United States sent an odd, obsessed, and self-destructive man to the Mediterranean to lead what amounted to the nation's first war against terror.
Two new books—one by Richard Zacks of Pelham, New York, and the other by Joshua London of Washington, D.C.—tell the story of this campaign against North African pirates in 1805. At the center of the story is William Eaton, who accomplished his task against staggerin
Source: Guardian
December 1, 2005
British diplomats in Jakarta and the Foreign Office lied about their knowledge of Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor and worked with the US and Australia to cover up details of atrocities committed by Jakarta's troops during the attack, declassified documents have revealed.
The duplicity led relatives of two British journalists killed by Indonesian troops in East Timor in the run-up to the invasion yesterday to intensify their demands for a judicial inquiry into their deaths. B
Source: CNN
December 2, 2005
Peru has formally warned Yale University that it will be sued if relics taken from Machu Picchu by famed U.S. explorer Hiram Bingham nearly a century ago are not returned, the Foreign Ministry said Friday.
"Peru has notified Yale University President Richard Levin that a lawsuit is prepared if its rights to the archaeological pieces are not recognized," the ministry said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press."We are convinced
Source: US Newswire
December 2, 2005
While the full impact of the tragic events following Hurricane Katrina will not be fully understood for some time, historians and curators at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History have begun collecting artifacts and photographs to preserve the impact of the disaster and its aftermath on the nation. The museum is working to build a focused collection of objects and photographs that reflects specific aspects of the hurricane's impact alo
Source: Hobart Mercury (Australia)
December 1, 2005
Emily Read, a Year 9 student at Bellerive's Clarence High, received the title of Young Historian of the Year at a ceremony in Canberra.
The 15-year-old said she was both astounded and thrilled."I had seen the other entries and they were all so good -- so I was very surprised when I was chosen," she said.
...
She won top honours for her outstanding essay on the Snug District Disaster Appeal Committee.
The committee was formed
Source: National Coalition for History
December 1, 2005
The total number of doctorates awarded by universities across the United States has increased in 2004, though the number of history PhDs awarded continues to decline slightly. The total number of doctorates awarded is the largest one-year increase since 1992, according to the annual Survey of Earned Doctorates.Over the past 40 years, the total number of doctorates awarded has increased by an annual average of 3.5%, although in recent years, the number has been flat or
Source: National Security Archive Update
December 1, 2005
The largest U.S. intelligence agency, the National Security Agency today declassified over 140 formerly top secret documents -- histories, chronologies, signals intelligence [SIGINT] reports, and oral history interviews -- on the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident. Included in the release is a controversial article by Agency historian Robert J. Hanyok on SIGINT and the Tonkin Gulf which confirms what historians have long argued: that there was no second attack on U.S. ships in Tonkin on August
Source: NYT
December 1, 2005
Over Sunday dinner at his home last spring, Martin Sheen, the star of "The West Wing," casually mentioned to his wife, Janet, and son Emilio Estevez that he had been lobbying members of the Los Angeles school board to proceed with the demolition of the old Ambassador Hotel, where Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 on the night he won the California presidential primary.
Officials were planning to replace the long-shuttered grande dame of Wilshire Boulevard
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 30, 2005
The bicentenary of the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon's greatest victory, is to be shunned by France's two leading politicians. Their absence comes amid an escalating row over whether to fete the emperor as a great leader or denounce him as a dictator.
Neither President Jacques Chirac nor his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin - an ardent admirer of Napoleon - will take part in the official ceremonies to mark the French army's defeat of Austrian and Russian forces on Dec 2, 1805.
Source: Haaretz
November 30, 2005
Genetic testing will not be performed on the bones of Jewish inmates discovered in a Holocaust-era mass grave during construction on a U.S. military camp near Stuttgart, according to a decision by Ulrich Goll, justice minister of the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg.
On completion of the police investigation, the remains will be transferred to the Jewish community of Stuttgart for burial.The Israel Police, which had initially been asked to assist the Germans in
Source: Independent (UK)
December 1, 2005
Two hundred years ago, Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Austerlitz sealed his reputation as a military genius. Today, his country seems undecided as to whether he was a hero or a villain. In period uniforms, and thermal underwear, military enthusiasts from all over the world will gather on Saturday to re-enact one of the greatest victories in French history. They will come from the United States, from Australia, from Canada, from Russia, from Britain, and even some from
Source: NYT
November 30, 2005
Steven Spielberg's film about Israel's revenge for the killing of its athletes by Palestinian guerrillas at the 1972 Munich Olympics opens in three weeks, but the Oscar-winning director has made surprisingly little effort to publicize it.
Leaders of Jewish and Muslim groups as well as diplomats and foreign policy experts will preview ``Munich'' before its U.S. release on December 23, but Spielberg has shied away from the media hype and costly promotional campaigns that typically pre
Source: Times Online (UK)
November 30, 2005
THE Pope is set to abolish the concept of Limbo, overturning a belief held by Roman Catholics since the Middle Ages.
Limbo has long been held to be the place where the souls of children go if they die before they can be baptised. However, a 30-strong international commission of theologians summoned by the late John Paul II last year to come up with a “more coherent and illuminating” doctrine in tune with the modern age is to present its findings to Pope Benedict XVI on Friday.
Source: AP
December 1, 2005
In one book, crazed Chinese communist guerrillas spray benevolent Japanese troops with cyanide. In another, savage Korean immigrants massacre innocent Tokyo residents in the wake of World War II.
If this sounds like a reversal of Japan's history of aggression in Asia, that is just what the authors intend. The scenes appear in two best-selling examples of a growing literary genre in Japan: nationalist comics. The trend, typified by the runaway hits `
Source: AP
December 1, 2005
President Bush signed a bill Thursday authorizing a statue of civil rights leader Rosa Parks in the Capitol's Statuary Hall. The bill gives the Capitol Architect's office two years to obtain a statue.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 30, 2005
For decades after Indian independence the now dusty field in north Delhi where George V staged his sumptuous 1911 Coronation Durbar went to rack and ruin. A tangle of trees and thorny scrub slowly engulfed a towering statue of the monarch and Emperor of India, intended to inspire fear and awe in his subjects.On this open ground, now hemmed in by slums and a dual carriageway, Britain made a lavish statement of imperial power - or overweening vanity.
In Delhi poli
Source: Editor & Publisher
November 30, 2005
Was this past Sunday's "Doonesbury" -- which had George W. Bush defending the burning of Yale University fraternity initiates with a brand in 1967 -- fact or fiction?
"Totally fact-based," replied Garry Trudeau, in response to an E&P e-mail query. "Bush's comment in panel seven is a direct quote, which is why I put it in quotation marks. In the original Yale Daily News expose, we ran a photo of a pledge's seared backside."
Source: Romanesko
November 30, 2005
LeRoy Gore lost his newspaper, the Sauk Prairie Star, after organizing a "Joe Must Go" campaign to recall Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy in 1954. Bill Wineke says Gore once explained why he was willing to take on a guy like McCarthy knowing that he faced personal destruction as a result: "I've wondered sometimes about people like me who take up crusades -- I think any newspaper man has a penchant for exhibitionism -- you wonder how much of it is high principle and how much is a compulsio
Source: NYT
November 30, 2005
After spending $71,000, rejecting the work of two sculptors and arguing for two years, Rocky Mount, N.C., has scrapped plans to honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a bronze statue.
"The Council just felt that this was a no-win situation," said Peter F. Varney, assistant city manager, explaining the 4-to-2 City Council vote on Monday to abandon the effort to commemorate Dr. King's November 1962 visit with a statue in a local park.
