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: Newsweek
August 15, 2005
The tune is peppy: bouncing on a sing-song cadence, it almost bleeds Brylcreem. But what's with the lyrics? "She's a redheaded atom-bomb baby/A fortified block-busting gal..." And that jazzy, '50s love song—did the singer really ooze "Want to hug and kiss you and give you a squeeze/You make me radioactive all in my knees"?That's how you listen to "Atomic Platters: Cold War Music From the Golden Age of Homeland Security"—in stunned, can-you
Source: Ottawa Citizen
August 11, 2005
The cold war between the Japanese and Chinese governments has erupted in Ottawa, with their embassies exchanging accusations over the way each is interpreting history.Bilateral relations have been souring over the past few months over the Japanese textbooks' treatment of that country's involvement in the Second World War, a tension compounded by the fight over oil drilling along disputed sea borders.
Now, with the 60th anniversary of Victory Japan Day on M
Source: LAT
August 11, 2005
A little-noticed order issued by President Bush almost four years ago gives White House lawyers the right to block the release of memos written by Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. when he worked for President Reagan.The order, signed by Bush in November 2001, said the "incumbent president" had the right to approve the release of papers from the presidential libraries of his father, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan.
It set off a furor
Source: Knight Ridder
August 10, 2005
Five months before the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA task force plotting to overthrow Fidel Castro concluded that the invasion was ``unachievable'' as a covert paramilitary operation, according to a newly discovered unclassified document.Indeed, historians have documented individuals expressing doubts at various times ahead of the ill-fated mission.
But the document, a 300-page internal CIA history, reveals for the first time that the architects themselves
Source: CNN
August 12, 2005
Three figure-eight knots tied into strings may be the first word from the ancient Inca in centuries. While the Incan empire left nothing that would be considered writing by today's standards, it did produce knotted strings in various colors and arrangements that have long puzzled historians and anthropologists. Many of these strings have turned out to be a type of accounting system, but interpreting them has been complex.
Source: BBC
August 12, 2005
Evidence found at the ancient Soutra Hospital site, in Scotland, suggests the medieval Augustine monks also knew how to amputate limbs, fashion surgical instruments, induce birth, stop scurvy and even create hangover cures. The excavations at Soutra have also unearthed fragments of pottery vessels that were once used for storing medicines such as an analgesic salve made from opium and grease and treatment for parasitic and intestinal worms. Dressings have also be
Source: Chicago Trib
August 12, 2005
For decades, no human knew where to put flowers for the 86 men who disappeared with the USS Lagarto somewhere between Thailand and Australia shortly before World War II ended. In May, a diving team, following the hints of fishermen telling tales of snagged nets, discovered the Lagarto in the Gulf of Thailand. Experts say this is the missing boat because it is believed to be the only American Balao class submarine sunk in the Gulf of Thailand during the war, and because Japanese records released
Source: Armenia Liberty
August 12, 2005
Raffi Hovannisian, a prominent Armenian opposition politician, on Friday strongly condemned the arrest and prosecution of Turkish historian Yektan Turkyilmaz, a student at Duke University, saying that it is dealing a “powerful blow” to the long-running efforts at international recognition of the Armenian genocide.He charged that by seeking to imprison Turkyilmaz on smuggling charges the Armenian authorities have exposed their “false patriotism” and serious problems with the
Source: Stamford Advocate (North Carolina)
August 12, 2005
This month, the long, strange trip of North Carolina's original copy of the Bill of Rights, valued at up to $40 million, came full circle when it was carried by federal marshals back into the same Greek-revival Capitol from which it was taken nearly 140 years ago. George Washington sent it to North Carolina in 1789 as an inducement to the hesitant colony to join a new union, and it was snatched away in the chaos following a tumultuous Civil War to restore that same union.
Source: History Today
August 12, 2005
The iconic bowler hat and cane used by Charlie Chaplin are to be auctioned later this year in a Rock n Pop & Film Memorabilia sale. The trademark items used during the comic’s 22-year career are to be sold at Bonhams in Knightsbridge on November 16th. The props were used by Chaplin in the guise of the Tramp and selected by him in the Keystone Studio costume department in Hollywood in February 1914. The 32-inch long bamboo cane and bowler hat, stamped with the manufacturer’s and original stud
Source: History Today
August 9, 2005
The ancient Bamiyan Buddha statues destroyed by the Taleban regime in Afghanistan could be recreated by lasers. The 140 multicoloured images, powered by wind and solar power, are to be projected onto the four miles of clay cliffs where the 1,600-year-old Buddhas stood before they were pulled down in 2001. The Afghan government has approved of the concept by artist Hiro Yamagata to recreate the images in the Bamiyan Valley Silk Road. The United Nations cultural organisation (Unesco) has to give a
Source: MSNBC
August 12, 2005
A judge granted Edgar Ray Killen a $600,000 bond on Friday so the one-time Klansman can be released from prison while he appeals his manslaughter convictions in the killings of three civil rights workers.Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon said he was convinced by testimony that Killen, who is 80 and uses a wheelchair, was neither a flight risk nor danger to the community.
His June 21 conviction came exactly 41 years after the trio was mobbed and killed on a rural
Source: Kyodo News
August 12, 2005
The Japanese Foreign Ministry on Friday posted on its website information about Japan's positions on history with regard to other Asian nations before and during World War II and postwar compensation. The ministry said it wants the posting of the information, already made public, to deepen international understanding of Japan's perception of history as this year marks the 60th anniversary of the end of the war. The information, initially available only in Japanese, will be provided in English as
Source: WP
August 12, 2005
Crownsville State Hospital sits empty now, shuttered since July 2004. The rusting window grates that once held patients in keep trespassers out.
As sordid as life was at the hospital, particularly for blacks, there is interest in retaining those lonely buildings and preserving the ornate murals, painted by Crownsville patients as art therapy, that still cover many walls and window panes.A small group of former Crownsville employees, black leaders and historians is quietly m
Source: AFP
August 12, 2005
A district of Tokyo adopted a nationalist history textbook for its 23 schools, the third school board to opt for the book that has outraged China and
South Korea. The education board of Suginami, one of 23 wards in the Japanese capital, voted to use the controversial book from April 2006 at its junior high schools which have a total of about 6,300 students, a municipal official said.The textbook makes no mention of the women sexually enslaved by Japanese troops during their
Source: US Newswire
August 12, 2005
Hiram "Harry" Bingham IV, a U.S. diplomat who risked his career to help save more than 2,000 of the world's leading writers, musicians, and artists -- most of them Jewish refugees -- from the Nazis, will be honored on a U.S. postage stamp.
Bingham (1903-1988), a U.S. vice-consul in France under the pro-Nazi Vichy regime, secretly worked side-by-side with rescue activist Varian Fry until the Roosevelt administration halted their activity in 1941, by refusing to ren
Source: Haaretz
August 9, 2005
The State of Israel is in possession of some 1,000 pieces of real estate owned by Jews who died in the Holocaust, Custodian General Shlomo Shahar told a subcommittee of the Law and Constitution Committee on Monday that was discussing the bill for restitution of such property, ahead of its second and third readings.The custodian general said that besides the real estate some 500 other assets of survivors are in his custody, including money and valuables.
In addition, some 3,
Source: NYT
August 12, 2005
A rich vein of city records from Sept. 11, including more than 12,000 pages of oral histories rendered in the voices of 503 firefighters, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians, will be made public today.The histories - a mosaic of vision and memory recalling the human struggle against surging fire, confusion, and horror - were compiled by the New York City Fire Department beginning in October 2001, but to this date, no one from the department has read the
Source: ProJo
August 12, 2005
On a spring night nearly 350 years ago, 100 of Newport's land-hungry elite gathered at a colonial home on Marlborough Street to divvy up the large island to their west owned by the Narragansett Indians. William Coddington and Benedict Arnold, the influential men who presided at the gathering, were joined by the politically and religiously powerful along with sheepherders and land speculators. Among them was young John Greene, who would become the first white settler of the island that bears two
Source: Times Online (UK)
August 12, 2005
WEALTH created the city wall of Pingyao more than 600 years ago. Poverty saved it from destruction by marauding Red Guards in the 1960s. Now the towering four-mile fortification that encircles the ancient town is in danger of tumbling down through neglect. The wall may be the most perfectly preserved in China, which half a century ago could boast 300 city walls. All but four have crumbled, razed by invading Japanese armies during the Second World War, by Chairman Mao’s zeal to do away with the o
