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: National Security Archive
November 22, 2005
Twenty years ago this week the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union concluded their Geneva Summit, which became the first step on the road to transforming the entire system of international relations. Unlike the summits of the 1970s, it did not produce any major treaties and was not seen as a breakthrough at the time, but as President Ronald Reagan himself stated at its conclusion, "The real report card will not come in for months or even years." The movement toward the s
Source: Wa Po
November 22, 2005
Hugh Sidey, 78, the Time magazine journalist who covered the White House for decades and knew presidents and the presidency in a way that few others could match, died yesterday in Paris.
His brother, Ed Sidey, reported the death to the Associated Press. He was told that Mr. Sidey had a heart attack, the wire service said.Mr. Sidey covered the nation's chief executives from Dwight D. Eisenhower through Bill Clinton, traveled with them, saw them in tim
Source: USA Today
November 22, 2005
Beat those jungle drums and break out the banana daiquiris. King Kong, the 1933 adventure fantasy that has been a constant on the DVD most-wanted lists since the format was born in 1997, finally stomps into stores today.
The ornery ape with a thing for shrieking blondes hasn't looked this good since stop-motion master Willis O'Brien's groundbreaking creature first roared into theaters 72 years ago.
"This is unequivocally the most important film yet to be released o
Source: Newsletter of the American Revolution Round Table
November 22, 2005
Our friends at The New-York Historical Society have, once again, mounted an excellent and ground breaking exhibition: "Slavery In New York." It is a presentation that is long overdue. I can remember school in the 1950s: the topic of slavery was barely mentioned. The year 1619, Nat Turner, Dred Scott, and Frederick Douglass were the main focus. Slavery in New York?? Not a word. Today it is not much better: most children, when told that the Northern colonies as well as those in the South
Source: Newsletter of the American Revolution Round Table
November 22, 2005
On January 21, Christie's will auction a full length portrait of George Washington by Charles Willson Peale. It is one of the last Peale portraits of the general in private hands. The painting depicts Washington after the battle of Princeton, leaning casually on a cannon. It was sent as a gift to France but the ship was forced to dock in Spain, possibly to escape British pursuers. There, diplomat William Carmichael, who had replaced John Jay as our man in Madrid, sold it in 1782, and sent the pr
Source: Newsletter of the American Revolution Round Table
November 22, 2005
The Aaron Burr Association announced at their recent meeting in Philadelphia that their founder acquired a black family in the city of brotherly love during his political sojourn there as senator from New York. Louella Burr Mitchell Allen, an 86 year old former nurse, announced at the association's annual meeting that she is Burr's great great, great granddaughter, the descendant of Burr's son, John Pierre Burr. Unfortunately, there is no birth, death or marriage certificate linking Burr to John
Source: The Daily Telegraph (LONDON)
November 22, 2005
Four rare battle flags captured during the American War of Independence by a British officer have been returned after more than two centuries to be auctioned.
The regimental colours seized in 1779 and 1780 by Lt Col Banastre Tarleton, who remains one of the conflict's most controversial figures, have already aroused huge interest among American military historians. They are expected to fetch between pounds 2.3 million and pounds 5.8 million at Sotheby's in New York next year.
Source: Press Release from National Security Archive
November 21, 2005
Marking the tenth anniversary of the Dayton Accords that ended Bosnia's bloody ethnic conflict, the National Security Archive today published the 1997 U.S. State Department study chronicling the American effort to bring peace to the region.On November 21, 1995, the world witnessed an event that for years many believed impossible: on a secluded, wind-swept U.S. Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, the leaders of Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia agreed to end a war. The signing o
Source: Rick Shenkman, reporting for HNN
November 18, 2005
UPDATED COPY 11-21-05
Seven months after deciding to switch its annual convention from San Francisco to San Jose so its members wouldn't have to cross a picket line, the Organization of American Historians says it has struck a secret deal with the two hotels which lost money as a result of the change in venues.
San Francisco's Hilton Hotel had claimed it was owed $390,000 for booked rooms and meeting halls. The San Jose Doubletree said it was owed $42,000 for rooms that we
Source: Wa Po
November 21, 2005
The conference was optimistically titled "Cracking the JFK Case," but it was widely noted that many of the speakers and members of the audience had grown gray hair or lost much of it while looking for the answers.
One of the presentations at the three-day session revived doubts about the famous "single bullet theory" that the House Select Committee on Assassinations thought it had resolved in the late 1970s. Another demolished persistent claims that the Zapruder
Source: NYT
November 20, 2005
Fourteen years ago, Moscow's summer was filled with sheer exuberance. The Soviet Union was suddenly gone, separated into 15 different states and a thousand pieces. People were afraid, but many believed Russia would turn democratic naturally, like a whole nation taking a sudden breath of fresh, free air after being too long underwater.
On the night of Aug. 22, 1991, several construction cranes and a crowd of about 50,000 determined people gathered in central Moscow to seal that promi
Source: BBC News
November 21, 2005
The timing could not have been more symbolic: days before Germany and the world marked the 60th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, Austria announced it had arrested Holocaust denier David Irving. Mr Irving had hit the international headlines five years earlier, when he sued American historian Deborah Lipstadt for libel in Britain.
He lost and the court branded him "an active Holocaust denier".
Lyn Smith, a professor of
Source: BBC News
November 21, 2005
Physicists are celebrating the centenary of Albert Einstein's best known equation: E=mc².
Published in the fourth of a series of papers that shook the foundations of physics in 1905, E=mc² is now linked with the power of the atom bomb.
No equation is anywhere near as recognisable as E=mc².
Source: NYT
November 21, 2005
Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. has compiled a brief but unmistakable record, lawyers and analysts say, that makes him a leader in the camp of conservative theorists and judges who believe federal courts have been too quick to limit religious activities in public life.
During his 15 years sitting in Newark as a member of a federal appeals court, Judge Alito has sided almost uniformly with those who have complained vigorously in recent years that zealousness in enforcing the Constitution's
Source: News.Scotsman
November 21, 2005
Beer bellies and binge-drinking may not be modern phenomena, historians claimed today. Experts at the Museum of London have uncovered evidence of "inflated" stomachs and a 24-hour boozing culture in medieval London. Due to poor quality drinking water back in the 12th century, Londoners were forced to drink ale - as much as a gallon a day.
Artefacts from the time, which are due to go on display at the museum, including a selection of portly Toby jugs de
Source: Los Angeles Times
November 19, 2005
An analysis of skull fragments from German composer Ludwig van Beethoven confirms that he suffered from lead poisoning for many years, a possible cause for his dour demeanor, researchers said Thursday."Beethoven had hoped that some day it would be revealed why he acted the way he did," said Paul Kaufmann, the owner of the skull fragments, who loaned them to the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University.
"He was see
Source: AP
November 20, 2005
History is supposed to teach lessons. Past flu pandemics, it turns out, don't teach much about whether today's bird flu will become a human killer or just make some scientists and officials look like Chicken Little.
In a viral sense, the sky has fallen three times in the last century - in 1918, 1957 and 1968 - when "super-flu" strains killed millions more people than annual flu epidemics.Back then, there weren't surveillance systems or modern genetic t
Source: USA TODAY
November 21, 2005
In the days after Hurricane Katrina hit, Blaine Kern -- "Mr. Mardi Gras" in this city -- hardly felt like partying.
Storm winds hammered his 75,000-square-foot warehouse complex on the west bank of the Mississippi River, where his artists build most of the carnival floats each year. Some of Kern's favorite giant figures were damaged. "Dracula lost his clothes. The Mummy lost his robes," he says. In his east bank studio, Kern, 79, says he found "6 feet of wat
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
November 21, 2005
Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary is three years away, but plans are under way for an elaborate celebration that could cost as much as $9.9 million to promote, produce and advertise, according to a report circulating among potential funders.Two local consultants, paid $50,000 by the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, are recommending that regional officials get several things done by 2008 to boost the profile of Pittsburgh and change its image nationally.
Source: The Guardian
November 21, 2005
The future of Spain's monarchy was cast into doubt yesterday by an opinion poll showing the country's younger voters would rather live in a republic.The poll in El Mundo newspaper - on the 30th anniversary of the re-establishment of the monarchy after the dictator Francisco Franco died - suggested almost a quarter of Spaniards considered themselves republicans. A 50% increase in declared republicans over five years was the result of a surge in the number of 18 to 29-year-old
