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
October 20, 2005
The Supreme Court stripped Gen. Augusto Pinochet of his immunity from prosecution in connection with $27 million that he and his wife and children are said to have illegally obtained and deposited in overseas accounts. As a result, the 89-year-old former dictator can now be charged with tax fraud, perjury and use of falsified documents, and prosecutors have said they plan to do so. Similar legal rulings in the past that allowed General Pinochet to be accused of murder and human rights abuses wer
Source: Elsevier
October 20, 2005
A balanced scholarly sudy of the impact of the Iraq War on libraries and archives has been published on a site open to all readers. The author of the study is Ian M. Johnson, a British scholar. Summary The early reports that appeared during and immediately after the 2003 war and subsequent civil disorder in Iraq provoked public and professional concern about the impact on libraries and archives services. However, many of the early reports were later prove
Source: New York Magazine
October 20, 2005
Did Jewish intelligence evolve in tandem with Jewish diseases as a result of discrimination in the ghettos of medieval Europe? That’s the premise of a controversial new study that has some preening and others plotzing. What genetic science can tell us—and what it can’t.Last summer, Henry Harpending, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Utah, and Gregory Cochran, an independent scholar with a flair for controversy, skipped cheerfully into the center of th
Source: Press Release: NYU Wagner's Brademas Center for the Study of Congress
October 20, 2005
A lot has changed in the 30 years since Congress passed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act, which assured Federal ownership of the tapes and papers of the Nixon presidency.
The John Brademas Center for the Study of Congress at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service will host a day-long Symposium on Presidential and Public Papers, to explore the history of the legislation, its role today and current issues in archiv
Source: NYT
October 19, 2005
Arthur W. Wang, co-founder of the intrepid publishing house of Hill & Wang, which took a chance on the early work of Elie Wiesel and Roland Barthes and was known for its Dramabooks series and books on American history, died on Friday in Wellesley, Mass. He was 87. The cause was complications of Alzheimer's disease, Mr. Wang's wife, Mary-Ellen, said.
[Eric Foner recalled in an email to HNN that Mr. Wang published an extraordinary list of history books. "I always felt he lov
Source: Omaha World-Herald (Nebraska)
October 19, 2005
A new exhibit at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station, Texas, will feature 4,500 square feet of displays filled with contemporary and historic photographs, artifacts, maps and timelines covering the development of America's railroads.
Trains: Tracks of the Iron Horse -- which will include a section on presidential train travel -- will open Nov. 7 and run through July 30. The museum is located on the campus of Texas A&M University.
Source: The San Francisco Chronicle
October 19, 2005
A tiny piece of Homer has finally reached home after an odyssey longer than the one endured by the original Odysseus, happy UC Berkeley scholars said Tuesday.
At a celebratory ceremony, the campus gingerly offered a glimpse of scraps of Homer's "Odyssey" and other invaluable texts on ancient papyrus that were unearthed in Egypt more than a century ago but experienced a delivery delay on their way to the Berkeley campus."This is an exciting day for
Source: The Courier Mail (Queensland, Australia)
October 19, 2005
Mad, crazy, tacky, and a sick joke. And these are just some of the more family-friendly reactions to NSW MP Danna Vale's scheme for a Gallipoli theme park in Victoria.
Ms Vale's Gallipoli park proposal -- mooted for the Mornington Peninsular -- yesterday earned her widespread condemnation from the Opposition, colleagues, veterans and historians alike.Talkback callers lampooned the park idea with one sarcastically proposing a tourist excursion complete with a bul
Source: Boston Globe
October 19, 2005
Taunton Residents endured a second day of nerve-racking waiting with no end in sight, as an aged, failing wooden dam just outside downtown strained to protect the city's commercial and residential hub from potentially catastrophic flooding.
"It could go on for days," said Mayor Robert Nunes of the crisis that had forced the indefinite evacuation of a nearly 3-square mile area of this sprawling, working- class city.Just north of downtown, the Whittenton
Source: The Independent (London)
October 20, 2005
Napoleon's imprisonment in 1815 and his death six years later gifted St Helena its place in history and cemented the island in the popular imagination as a byword for isolation.
But the British Government has had a belated change of heart over its remotest prison colony and is seeking to turn the outpost of Empire into a modern-day paradise island, fit for five-star tourists.Pitted against them is an alliance of conservationists concerned the island's unique bio
Source: MSNBC
October 19, 2005
A tiny, hand-painted sign mounted on a flimsy barbed wire fence warns visitors to Peru’s Nazca lines: “No entry. Area off-limits.” It’s not much of a deterrent. The latest threat to the vast U.N. World Heritage site, where enigmatic shapes and lines, stylized figures of birds and animals were etched in the desert 2,000 years ago, is a camp of around 30 shacks that appeared in August.The rudimentary straw-matting huts are pitched in the dry earth on the fringe of
Source: Press Release from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
October 19, 2005
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has released a new book entitled, “Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings 1760-1820” which restores to view some of the extensive anti-slavery literature that flourished in early America. The book reprints fifteen anti-slavery texts that, almost without exception, have been out of print for nearly two centuries.
The twelve students who each contributed one chapter to the book were the first ever to be name
Source: NYT
October 19, 2005
Did Archimedes really produce a death ray 2,200 years ago? According to Greek and Roman historians, he set Roman warships afire with a polished mirror that focused the sun’s rays from afar during the siege of Syracuse. Last year the Discovery Channel program "MythBusters" declared the story a myth after failing to reproduce the feat.
The program intrigued David Wallace, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When he presented the death ray as an offbeat
Source: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
October 18, 2005
A movie about Russia's war in Afghanistan, a topic that was taboo under the Soviet system, is breaking box office records in Russia. Fyodor Bondarchuk's Ninth Company took in more than $9 million US in its first six days, according to the Hollywood Report. It outperformed even Hollywood films in its first weekend, according to Slovo, its Moscow producer. The movie follows the adventures of six teenagers from Siberia who join the army and end up in Afghanistan from 1987 to the end of the war in 1
Source: Advertiser (Australia)
October 15, 2005
THAT resounding phrase, "England expects every man will do his duty," is 200 years old on Friday.
It was to become the by-word of patriotism in the British Empire and even earned the attention of the Goons and Monty Python.
Journalists know such great words need an originator and an editor and, in this case, the phrase was Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson's. His editor was HMS Victory's signalman.Nelson may have uttered two unforgettable
Source: BBC
October 18, 2005
Nearly 200 members of the Japanese parliament have visited a controversial war shrine, a day after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi went there. The Yasukuni war shrine is seen by Japan's neighbours as a symbol of the country's World War II militarism.
The group, which includes leaders of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, visits the shrine regularly. A meeting between the Chinese and Japanese foreign ministers to discuss a possible summit is now in doub
Source: BBC
October 18, 2005
The last Australian veteran to see active service in World War I has died, aged 106.
William Evan Allan joined the Royal Australian Navy in 1914, aged only 14.
He served on a cruiser, HMAS Encounter, until 1918, escorting troop convoys and tracking German warships. He remained in the navy for 34 years.
Source: NYT
October 18, 2005
President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, Harriet E. Miers, pledged support in 1989 for a constitutional amendment that would ban abortions except when necessary to save the life of the woman. Ms. Miers expressed her support for such an amendment in an April 1989 survey sent out by Texans United for Life. The disclosure virtually guarantees that Ms. Miers will be questioned heavily on the subject of abortion rights during hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Source: AP
October 18, 2005
The FBI is investigating the theft of a ceremonial tomahawk believed to be the weapon used to kill Dr. Marcus Whitman, the 19th century missionary and one of the leaders of Northwest settlement. Whitman and his wife, Narcissa, were killed on Nov. 29, 1847, by Cayuse warriors who blamed the Whitmans for a deadly measles epidemic.
The tomahawk disappeared from a display case during visiting hours at the Whitman Mission National Historic Site in southeastern Washington. The thief used
Source: Detroit News
October 18, 2005
The most important strike in American labor history, historians agree, began at the end of 1936. The feisty young United Auto Workers launched the first of a series of sit-down strikes against General Motors at Fisher Body Plant No. 1 in Flint.
The feisty young United Auto Workers launched the first of a series of sit-down strikes against General Motors at Fisher Body Plant No. 1 in Flint. The goals were to earn recognition for the UAW as the bargaining agent for GM workers, and to
