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: South China Morning Post
August 15, 2005
China should adopt a more "truthful and responsible" attitude on the history of the Sino-Japanese war, giving more credit to the Kuomintang and the US for their contribution to the victory, says a People's Liberation Army general and historian.Shao Weizheng said at a weekend conference that Beijing should recognise American support during the war and stop playing down the positive wartime role of the Nationalist government, a long-time rival of the Communist
Source: Sunday Telegraph
August 14, 2005
The British government-backed UK Film Council has been attacked for investing pounds 150,000 of lottery funds in a Bollywood film that savages British rule in India.Historians say The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey, which is the most expensive film ever made in India, is littered with historical inaccuracies.
The movie, which features Bollywood star Aamir Khan and the British actor Toby Stephens, is damning about the rule of the British East India company
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
August 14, 2005
Ninety years ago, some of Marietta's leading citizens gathered to hang a man at what is now Roswell Road and Frey's Gin Court. In 1915, Leo Frank, a Jewish superintendent of an Atlanta pencil factory, was murdered on a farm belonging to former Cobb County sheriff William Frey. Today, the spot is part of a busy strip in the shadow of I-75, crammed with fast food restaurants --- and not far from the Big Chicken.The lynching of Frank, one of the saddest chapters in Mariet
Source: LAT
August 13, 2005
They are former soldiers whose tales of derring-do during World War II are the stuff of legend. But these members of the China-Burma-India Veterans Association, once young and vigorous, seemingly fueled by feelings of immortality, are old men now; many have died over the years. American membership in the veterans group initially totaled about 83,000 in 140 units (known as Bashas, the military acronym for bamboo-and-straw-hut, assembled) throughout the nation. Today, membersh
Source: Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo)
August 13, 2005
The Tokyo metropolitan government is considering rescinding official designations for about 90 percent of its 230 historical sites due to a lack of "historical substance," according to officials. The decision came as a shock, as many of the spots are notable tourist sights and attract many visitors. Tokyo's cultural assets protection measures were first enforced in 1918, allowing the designation of historical assets. In 1955, the metropolitan government intro
Source: Australian
August 13, 2005
AN Australian commander's fatally flawed decision to lay a minefield in Vietnam in 1967 cost the lives of at least 60 of his own men and maimed hundreds of others, new research has revealed.Five sappers died in May 1967 planting 21,048 American-made M16 "jumping jack" mines, which were intended as a barrier to prevent the Viet Cong infiltrating villages in Phuoc Tuy province, close to the Australian military base at Nui Dat in southern Vietnam.
Source: CNN
August 15, 2005
An architect of the U.S. war in Vietnam more than 30 years ago said Sunday that he has "a very uneasy feeling" that some of the same factors that damaged support for the conflict there are re-emerging in the 2-year-old war in Iraq."For me, the tragedy of Vietnam was the divisions that occurred in the United States that made it, in the end, impossible to achieve an outcome that was compatible with the sacrifices that had been made," former Secretary
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
August 15, 2005
Sunday was the 60th anniversary of a glorious day in world history - - the announcement that Japan would surrender, bringing the end of World War. Today is the 60th anniversary of a terrible day in San Francisco's history -- a victory riot that left 11 dead, 1,000 injured and the city's reputation besmirched. "It was the deadliest riot in the city's history,'' said Kevin Mullen, a retired deputy chief of police who has written extensively about crime in San Francisco.
Source: Newsday
August 11, 2005
A politically appointed state panel will examine whether slavery and the "physical and psychological terrorism" against Africans in the slave trade is adequately taught in schools and textbooks. The panel called the Amistad Commission was approved by the Legislature and signed into law last week by Gov. George Pataki. It is charged with recommending to the Legislature and governor changes in curriculum and textbooks, which because of New York's buying power could i
Source: BBC
August 15, 2005
Japan's actions still cast a shadow over the region
As Japan marks the 60th anniversary of its surrender in World War II, its handling of the past still rankles in some parts of Asia. Unlike the reconciliation in Europe of former foes like Britain and Germany, relations between Japan and her Asian neighbours, particularly China, remain very strained.
Japan's imperial army, which annexed Korea as a colony in 1910, later seized control of large parts of C
Source: Washington Times
August 15, 2005
A home movie of Marilyn Monroe swinging a golf club, another of Michael Jordan playing basketball in junior high and an operetta score by march king John Philip Sousa are among the historical oddities found by college students this summer combing through old copyright records at the Library of Congress. Besides the 1954 movie of Monroe at a driving range and video of a 13-year-old Jordan shooting hoops, the curiosities include a pair of photos of the 1901 race between a
Source: Wa Po
August 15, 2005
Some clutch their stomachs or weep when they step into one of the galleries at a Baltimore museum of African American history. The so-called lynching room is a stomach-turning display of newspaper photos and body parts and cruel scenes captured in wax. On a recent afternoon, a young man fainted upon hearing the story of a black couple who were hanged and mutilated by an angry mob, the woman's fetus torn from her and crushed.Yet despite the horrors they face at the National G
Source: NYT
August 14, 2005
FOR those who long considered it folly to settle a handful of Jews among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the decision to remove them starting this week seems an acceptance of the obvious. What possible future could the settlers have had? How could their presence have done the state of Israel any good?But for those, like Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who created and nurtured the settlements, the move to dismantle them is something very diff
Source: NYT
August 14, 2005
In July 1944, American warships were bobbing on the Pacific horizon when a squad of Japanese soldiers swept through this old Spanish fishing port. Jogging down sandy alleys and bursting into stucco homes, they rounded up 30 villagers, all known for their ties to the United States.With the 60th anniversary of Japan's World War II surrender on Monday, elderly Guam residents hope American politicians will go beyond solemn speeches and act to compensate them for abuses the
Source: CBS
August 15, 2005
Lawmakers and interest groups are gearing up for a fight this fall over Social Security, each side hoping to use the retirement and disability program's 70th birthday to build momentum. President Bush and House Republicans have yet to build a groundswell for shifting a portion of Social Security payroll taxes to individual accounts for younger workers. Whatever returns these investment accounts earn would supplement future benefits.
Mr. Bush's proposal for addr
Source: NYT
August 14, 2005
When Jeanine F. Pirro, the Republican district attorney from Westchester County, announced her decision this week to try to topple Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic senator from New York, her battle cry was this: Do not let Mrs. Clinton fool you, she really wants to be president.Ms. Pirro was raising an issue that has come up frequently in New York - a state that has produced more than its share of presidential candidates - and one Mrs. Clinton has faced before. B
Source: Wa Po
August 13, 2005
Next month, after decades during which the Douglass house has been white, the National Park Service will return Cedar Hill to Douglass's preferred color, with coffee, cream and blue detailing.
Some area residents are dismayed at the change. But the painting project is emblematic of the all-out push by Park Service officials to restore Cedar Hill as closely as possible to its original look. Curators want the museum, when it reopens by the end of next year, to precisely reflect the Do
Source: NBC Nightly News
August 12, 2005
The photograph of a sailor kissing a surprised nurse in Times Square remains, 60 years later, an iconic image of the day World War II ended. But who are they? Sunday is VJ Day, the 60th anniversary of the U.S. victory over Japan that ended World War II. And while it’s nearly impossible to think of that day without also thinking of the famous Life Magazine photo of that celebratory kiss in New York’s Time Square, it is possible — for just a few people — to know exactly
Source: NYT
August 10, 2005
Seneca Village, an African-American ghost town that lies beneath Central Park, ingrained but invisible, has been waiting a century and a half to be rediscovered.Today may be the day.
Using ground-penetrating radar in areas west of the Great Lawn where building foundations and burial shafts are believed to exist, archaeologists from Barnard College and City College will try to learn whether there is anything left of the town but ghosts.
Once, there w
Source: Newsweek
August 15, 2005
James Bowell, signalman third class, was standing on the bridge of his ship when the kamikazes came. "The sky was full of airplanes," he recalls, flown by pilots bent on killing as many Americans as possible at the sacrifice of their own lives. It was April 6, 1945, and Bowell's ship, the minesweeper Defense, was part of a picket line protecting the American invasion fleet off Okinawa. A kamikaze plane came right at the Defense, but at the last instant it tilted its wings and flew righ
