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: Balt Sun
September 16, 2005
Americans know more about TV shows like Desperate Housewives than they know about the U.S. Constitution, according to Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat. That is why he wrote a federal law into the Education Department budget. It requires students to observe the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution, Sept. 17, 1787.
Tomorrow is Constitution Day - the 218th anniversary - and because it falls on a weekend, schools across the nation will e
Source: Independent (UK)
September 16, 2005
Opportunities to study history at postgraduate level have never been more copious. The growth of taught Masters programmes offered by UK universities over the past few years is graphically demonstrated by the annual surveys in History Today magazine.
The 2000 survey noted that "the range of choices... continues to grow exponentially". It listed 156 courses. By 2004 there were 289 on offer, while this year the magazine - evidently feeling that too much valuable space was be
Source: NYT
September 16, 2005
Senator Robert C. Byrd, the Democrat from West Virginia who keeps a copy of the Constitution in his pocket, finds the nation's historical amnesia frustrating. In December he inserted into a giant spending bill a passage requiring every American school receiving federal money to teach about the Constitution on Sept. 17, the date it was signed in 1787.
Saturday is the first annual Constitution Day, and Mr. Byrd's law is focusing considerable attention on the document.
Source: WSJ
September 14, 2005
The 372,000 schoolchildren displaced by Hurricane Katrina are stirring an old debate about whether separate education can really be equal. A number of states, including Utah and Texas, want to teach some of the dispersed Gulf Coast students in shelters instead of in local public schools, a stance supported by the Bush administration and some private education providers. But advocates for homeless families and civil rights oppose that approach. At the center of the dispute is whether the McKinney
Source: Washington Post
September 15, 2005
A Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 2001 attacks, a congressman said Thursday.
The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was expected to name the person who ordered him to destroy the large volume of documents, said Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa.
Source: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History
September 15, 2005
As relief and recovery efforts continue along the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, work is concentrating on assessments of damage to museums, libraries, archives, historic structures, and sites of historic interest.As reports continue to be logged in by the American Association of Museums (see http://www.aam-us.org/aamlatest/news/HurricaneFirstReports.cfm ) it appears that in
Source: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History
September 15, 2005
Another document has now come to light that reflects Robert’s continuing interest in historical scholarship. It is an article entitled “Oral Advocacy and the Re-emergence of a Supreme Court Bar” published this year in an issue of the Journal of Supreme Court History (2005, Vol. 30 No. 1; pp 68-81). In this most recent writing Roberts reflects on the historical trend toward “discernible professionalization among the advocates before the Supreme Court” (of which Roberts is one) and traces the role
Source: NYT
September 15, 2005
In the development of ancient societies, salt was an important building block. It was a crucial trading commodity, and by allowing food to be preserved it enabled empires to expand.
But salt itself is not preserved. Time and water wash it away, so solid archaeological evidence of salt production has rarely been discovered.
Now, researchers have found strong signs that salt was produced in central China in the first two millenniums B.C., during the dynastic period.
Source: NYT
September 15, 2005
Senator Arlen Specter's testy interrogation of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. on the Supreme Court's treatment of Congress may well have left viewers scratching their heads on Wednesday morning, with cryptic references to the "congruence and proportionality test" and to unfamiliar case names like "Lane and Hibbs."
But the line of questioning that Mr. Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is Judiciary Committee chairman, chose to pursue offered a window on the incre
Source: NYT
September 15, 2005
A summer of bad news from Iraq, high gasoline prices, economic unease and now the devastation of Hurricane Katrina has left President Bush with overall approval ratings for his job performance and handling of Iraq, foreign policy and the economy at or near the lowest levels of his presidency, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.
Source: Chosunilbo
September 11, 2005
Dozens were injured when groups calling for the removal of a statue of U.S. general Douglas MacArthur clashed with police in Incheon's Freedom Park on Sunday. The clashes came four days ahead of the 55th anniversary of the Incheon Landing of UN forces led by MacArthur that marked a turning point in the Korean War.Some 4,000 members of progressive groups who had gathered in Sungeui Stadium in Incheon's Nam-gu started marching on the park at 1 p.m. to demand the withdrawal of
Source: Respectful Insolence
September 15, 2005
The twice-monthly roundup of the best history blogging is available at Respectful Insolence.
Source: Washington Times
September 15, 2005
Thousands of students across the country are learning the significance of the national anthem as part of the National Anthem Project. Yesterday, schools and communities nationwide sang the anthem to celebrate its 191st anniversary. The National Anthem Project comes after a nationwide poll found that two out of three American adults don't know all of the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner" -- and many more don't know which song is the national anthem or why it was w
Source: AP
September 14, 2005
It took more than 60 years, but the final letter of a soldier killed in World War II finally made it home. Gary Mathis bought a box of old newspapers at a yard sale in Kansas, and discovered the letter inside a newspaper from 1915. The letter, with military markings from France, was postmarked March 6, 1944. It was addressed to W.J. Krotz of nearby Poole, about 120 miles west of Lincoln.
Mathis placed an announcement and picture of the letter in the Ravenna New
Source: Boston Globe
September 14, 2005
More than 116 years before Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans, a flood in Johnstown exposed the rift between rich and poor, the kindness of strangers and, in the end, the power of the human spirit to rebuild. "It's more than just a disaster. It was the biggest story of the late 19th century," said Richard Burkert, executive director of the Johnstown Flood Museum.
In 1889, flooding wasn't anything new to the approximately 25,000 residents in this v
Source: NYT
September 15, 2005
Presidents have displayed a tendency to declare more disasters in years when they face re-election. Mary W. Downton of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and Roger A. Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado, Boulder, for example, looked at the flood-related disasters that were declared from 1965 to 1997 in an article published in "Natural Hazards Review" in 2001. Even after accounting for the amount of precipitation and flood damage each year, they found that the average num
Source: Helsingin Sanomat (Finland)
September 15, 2005
Finland repatriated most Soviet citizens who tried to defect by crossing into Finland from the late 1950s onward.
A new book claims that contrary to suspicions in Western countries, the tough line was not based on any secret agreements between Finland and the Soviet Union, but rather a policy that was unilaterally implemented by President Urho Kekkonen after he took office in 1956.Nevertheless, according to the book Ei armoa Suomen selkänahasta ("No mercy a
Source: AP
September 15, 2005
Records showing that Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith was arrested while living in upstate New York have resurfaced after a three-decade absence. The documents dating back to the late 1820s were recently handed over to the Chenango County Historical Society by a man whose mother used to be the county's historian.The current county historian, Dale Storms, says the records pertain to Smith's arrests for "glass looking," a 19th-century term for treasure
Source: AP
September 15, 2005
E.H. Gombrich's "A Little History of the World" was an instant success and has been translated into 18 languages, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. But for decades there was no English translation, even though Gombrich spent much of his life in London and wrote his other books in English.
Seventy years after it was rushed into print, a history book beloved by readers of all ages around the world is finally coming out in English.Unemployed at th
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/politics/14terror.html
September 14, 2005
American aviation officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could "seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark," according to previously secret portions of a report prepared last year by the Sept. 11 commission. The officials also realized months before the Sept. 11 attacks that two of the three airports used in the hijackings had suffered repeated security lapses.
