Week of 5-31-04

D-Day: D-Day and other World War II books salute the 60th anniversary of the Normandy invasion.

“Pop” D-Day: In Delaware, a NASCAR driver races a car with a World War II warplane paint job. In Oklahoma, 3,000 paintball enthusiasts re-enact the battle with splotches of pigment and homemade tanks. And all over the land, countless kids gun down virtual Nazis in D-day video games.

D-Day: How will Allied invasion’s legacy live on?

D-Day’s Lessons: On D-Day's 60th anniversary, [George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac] will honor the thousands of American and other Allied soldiers who gave their lives there in 1944. As Americans remember their war heroes, they should also seize this opportunity to break from their go-it-alone approach to world affairs. The parochial lessons that Americans have drawn from World War II paved the way for the dangerously unilateral policies now causing so much trouble in Iraq.

Ronald Reagan: Ronald Reagan will be memorialized at the first presidential state funeral in more than three decades, a ritual rich in traditions from the country's earliest days.

Bilderberg: The Bilderberg group, an elite coterie of Western thinkers and power-brokers, has been accused of fixing the fate of the world behind closed doors. As the organisation marks its 50th anniversary, rumours are more rife than ever.

Ronald Reagan: Ronald Reagan, the cheerful crusader who devoted his presidency to winning the Cold War, trying to scale back government and making people believe it was "morning again in America," died Saturday after a long twilight struggle with Alzheimer's disease. He was 93.

D-Day: The exploits of D-Day have long been legend: the storming of the beaches, parachute drops into enemy territory. But 60 years later, the number of dead is still unclear.

Richard Nixon: For Father's Day, the Richard Nixon Library is offering a "one-of-a-kind collector's item" ... personal checks signed by President Nixon. These historic gems come sealed in a special oak frame with a certificate of authenticity.

History Budgets: A powerful House subcommittee has declined to approve President Bush's proposed big increase in the budget of the We the People history project.

Soviet History: A century after the birth of Soviet Nobel laureate Mikhail Sholokhov, author of "And Quiet Flows The Don," opinions on the writer's legacy are as divided as ever.

The D-Day After: President Bush and other leaders gathering on the beaches of Normandy this weekend will celebrate the heroism and ingenuity of June 6, 1944. But some scholars are paying closer attention to what followed as the victors settled in — black market trade, armed robbery, looting and rape.

D-Day: This year's onslaught of D-Day hype—a continuous barrage of World War II nostalgia stretching from Memorial Day weekend through George Bush's trip to Europe these next few days—has already exhausted all but the most diehard buffs.

D-Day: British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill called Operation Overlord, or the D-Day invasion of Normandy as we know it today, "The most difficult and complicated operation ever to take place."

D-Day: As World Marks D-Day, Russian Veterans Say Their Sacrifices Have Been Overlooked.

Plimoth Plantation: In a new twist on making history come to life, visitors to Plimoth Plantation will now have a chance to pick up similar tools and help reconstruct two houses used in the filming of the public television program "Colonial House." The immediate thing we´re trying to get people to learn is the past is a very different place," said Stuart Bolton, an interpretive artisan at Plimoth Plantation. "It´s not just us in funny clothes. It´s also a very complex story."

Iraqi Heritage Sites: Global Heritage Fund (GHF) and the The World Bank will partner with Iraq’s Minister of Culture and State Board of Antiquities to conduct a 8-day workshop for thirty leading Iraqi site directors and conservators June 15-22nd in Petra, Jordan. The mission of the Iraq Heritage Congress is to develop world-class master conservation plans over the coming year for protection and preservation of the priceless historical and cultural sites in Iraq.

D-Day: The 60th anniversary of D-Day will be commemorated this weekend around the beaches of Normandy, France. It will be a sacred and somber remembrance and a counterweight to strained relations between the United States and France over the Iraq war.

Black History: It's a gesture that is 200 years past due. But, at least for York's soul, the deed is finally happening. York is the slave who was forced to travel on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Today he will finally receive what he was rightfully owed — his freedom and the rank of sergeant.

House Detectives: Curious about your castle? Many homeowners hire researchers to uncover their houses' histories.

Royal Funeral at Last: The heart of the 10-year-old heir to France's throne was cut from his body when he died in prison, pickled, stolen, returned, and DNA-tested two centuries later.

Teacher of the Year: Aspen High School history teacher Karen Green beat out every other nominated educator in Colorado to win the Preserve America History Teacher of the Year Award.

Anti-Semitism Alleged: Estonia has been accused of fuelling anti-Semitism and glorifying Nazism after a memorial was erected there to a colonel in the Waffen SS--Alfons Rebane, an Estonian volunteer--who is alleged to have the blood of thousands of people on his hands.

Obituary: Viktor Danilov, bold historian and champion of the Russian peasantry, has died at age 79.

Michelangelo: The artist Michelangelo may have had the condition Asperger's Syndrome, according to researchers. Two experts in Asperger's, a milder form of autism, say the artist had many of the traits linked with the condition which causes social problems.

Historian Sentenced to Death: Iran's Supreme Court has, for the second time, overturned a death sentence on a history professor convicted of apostasy for attacking clerical rule. Hashem Aghajari, who is a faculty member at a teacher-training college in Tehran, was sentenced to death for a 2002 speech in which he said Iranians "should not blindly follow" the clerics. The sentence prompted the largest student protests in several years. After Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, took the rare step of ordering the judiciary to reconsider the verdict, the Supreme Court overturned the death sentence, and an appeals court later struck down other parts of the sentence. Last month, however, the regional court that handed down the original death sentence reaffirmed it. But now the Supreme Court has once again overturned the sentence. Mr. Aghajari remains in prison. (Subscribers only.)

Bill Clinton: Former President Bill Clinton, whose autobiography My Life hits book stores June 22, talks exclusively to CBS' Dan Rather on 60 Minutes June 20. For one hour.

D-Day: Twelve military historians have contributed to a new book, The D-Day Companion, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the largest and most successful amphibious assault in history.

D-Day: A local veteran prepares to go back to Normandy, France, for the first time since he approached Omaha Beach's 80-foot bluffs on June 6, 1944.

Iraq: Israel looks set to pursue a compensation claim on behalf of Jews who left Iraq over 50 years ago, despite no such similar consideration for Palestinian refugees.

Texas History: On a tapered clearing in the woods just northeast of Rowlett lies the tranquil Cottonwood Cemetery, resting place for some of the area's earliest pioneers.

Obituary: Historian William Manchester dies at 82.

Abu Ghraib: Since the end of April, the entire world has known what many of us have suspected for more than two years: The United States is turning a blind eye to the 1949 Geneva Convention, treating its prisoners of war (POWs) in whatever manner it sees as expedient.

National Archives: It's no secret that the Bush administration has a fetish for secrecy. Whether it's keeping the records of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force concealed or denying the 9/11 commission key documents, the administration regularly displays disdain for open government. But does that contempt extend even to the office of the national archivist?

D-Day: The names of 12,000 war heroes decorated for bravery during the Second World War will soon be searchable online.

Hollywood vs History: Mel Gibson is guaranteed a panning for his forthcoming film on Britain’s warrior queen Boudicca, experts say - either from the feminists who have turned her into an icon, or from the historians for whom she remains an enigma.

War Casualties: With more than 800 U.S. military personnel killed and more than 4,600 wounded, U.S. casualties in Iraq over the past 14 months now compare to those of several of the smaller wars in the nation's history.

War of 1812: The historians know the secret: Between the revolution that created this country and the Civil War that nearly destroyed it, are sandwiched "fourscore" forgotten years. And smack in the middle of them, looms the deadly rematch between the Americans and their sore-loser foes, the British.

World War II: On the eve of June 6, the entrance of the National D-Day Museum will become like a portal to the same day 60 years earlier, when American troops prepared to storm the seaside cliffs of Normandy, France. Looking like a uniformed military officer and standing before an enlarged map of the Norman coast, an historian will conduct about a dozen tactical briefings much like those delivered during the build-up to during the invasion.

Obituary: Archibald Cox, Watergate prosecutor, is dead at age 92.

Obituary: Sam Dash, Watergate lawyer, is dead at age 79.

Great Depression: Next month Harry N. Abrams Inc., working in conjunction with archivists at the Library of Congress, will publish Bound for Glory, America in Color 1939-43, a collection of 175 of the most compelling color images from the archives. The photos had ben lost to history because a bureaucrat had misfiled them.

Obituary: Martin Plamondon II, a cartographer who spent 30 years mapping the 7,400-mile route of the Lewis and Clark expedition, died Wednesday at his home in Minnehaha, a Vancouver suburb. He was 58.

Balkans: A proposed American Embassy on Gradiste hill overlooking Skopje, Macedonia's capital, has created controversy. Macedonians regard Gradiste as one of their most important historical sites.

Civil Rights Movement: The Mississippi town where Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney were killed has yet to officially acknowledge what happened 40 years ago this June.

Immigration: Closed for renovation for seven months, the old barracks at the historic Immigration Station at Angel Island, where thousands of immigrants were detained between 1910 and 1940, is reopen. More than 1 million immigrants were processed at Angel Island, called the "Ellis Island of the West."

Week of 5-24-04

Chinese Censorship: China has banned a Swedish-made computer game accused of "distorting history and damaging China's sovereignty," by showing Manchuria, Tibet and Xinjiang as independent nations, state press said.

Indian History: Some members of the Cahuilla tribe object to the new Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, in LA, saying the 100,000-square-foot museum will stick out "like a sore thumb" on the landscape and put their culture "in a box."

World War II: The Washington Post, in connection with Memorial Day, has published on the Internet a stunning history of the war, complete with photos. (Turn off pop-up blogger to watch.)

Paul Revere: Residents of Connecticut are rallying to champion the importance of their own version of Paul Revere: sixteen year old Sibyl Ludington. Sibyl fans are planning to create films, novels, "education items" and maybe even a TV series based on the teenager's derring do.

Plagiarism Denied: The BBC has apologised to TV historian Marc Morris after phrases he used in a script for a Channel 4 documentary were repeated in another script shown on a rival show. The BBC denies it was guilty of plagiarism, saying the blunder was just the result of an "unfortunate editorial error."

Boston History Museum: A group working to create a major Boston history museum and visitors center yesterday unveiled a unique design -- symbolic of Boston's rich maritime past -- that would combine a raised building in the shape of a ship's hull with slooping parks linking pieces of the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

U.S. Diplomacy: Roger Morris, a diplomat who quit the Nixon administration to protest the invasion of Cambodia, asks U.S. diplomats to resign en masse to protest the Bush administration's diplomacy.

JFK Movie: There is a second movie about John F. Kennedy and his famous torpedo patrol boat, PT-109, heading toward production, and it promises to be different from the 1963 hagio-pic "PT 109." Based on Edward Renehan's book, The Kennedys at War, the movie producers say: "We've tried to bring out that the sinking of PT-109 was a scandal at the time."

Obituary: David Dellinger, whose commitment to nonviolent direct action against the federal government placed him at the forefront of American radical pacifism in the 20th century and led, most famously, to a courtroom in Chicago where he became a leading defendant in the raucous political conspiracy trial of the Chicago Seven, died Tuesday in a retirement home in Montpelier, Vt. He was 88.

Kissinger: Kissinger Tapes Describe Crises, War and Stark Photos of Abuse.

Kissinger: Tapes Show Kissinger During Watergate.

Kissinger: New Transcripts Point to U.S. Role in Chile Coup

Teaching History: Muzzy Lane Software thinks teaching the "What Ifs" of history could help high school and college students learn about history and develop thinking skills. To that end, Muzzy Lane is getting ready to introduce schools to a technology that is already familiar to most of today's students: a video game, but one that is custom-designed for the classroom.

Napoleon: A WAR crimes trial opens today in Italy with one of the country's top prosecutors leading the case against a "ruthless demagogue" charged with perpetrating a massacre. The alleged war criminal in question, however, is not Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic or Pol Pot, but Napoleon Bonaparte. The trial is being held at the medieval and Renaissance town of Pavia, which Napoleon occupied in 1796 as commander of the French revolutionary army in Italy, using conquered Italian territory as a base for attacks on Austria.

Raphael: Unknown pocket Raphael sketch stuns art world. It had apparently spent most of the 20th century tucked in a cardboard folder with the other drawings in a drawer in a private house in London.

Historic Preservation: More than 2,000 Russians have launched a campaign to prevent Moscow's mayor from demolishing one of the city's best-loved buildings. The Neo-Classical Manezh, nestling under the walls of the Kremlin, was built in the ruins of the city after Napoleon's withdrawal in 1812. It was damaged during a recent fire where arson is suspected.

Incest: A New Zealand historian, Peter Munz, has caused a stir with his suggestion that parliament repeal the laws agaionst incest. He had been asked to come to Parliament because of his interest in historical reasons for prohibitions against incest. For 10 years, he had been working on a book on the evolution of culture. Munz told MPs the worldwide taboo against incest was an inheritance from paleolithic society. "In each tribe or society, women must not be available for consumption, so to speak, at home."

Cold War: Nearly two miles to the east of the new WW II memorial, on the other side of the Capitol, there soon may rise a memorial that marks the price of tyranny -- specifically, the 100 million people said to have died during the Cold War. If a federal planning board approves the site in July, the Victims of Communism Memorial finally may have a home at the intersection of Constitution and Maryland Avenues, NE.

Kissinger: Five years after the National Security Archive initiated legal action to compel the State Department and the National Archives to recover the transcripts of Henry Kissinger's telephone calls from his "private" collection at the Library of Congress, the National Archives today released approximately 20,000 declassified pages (10 cubic feet) of these historic records, spanning Kissinger's tenure from 1969 to August 1974 as national security adviser and then secretary of state to President Nixon.

World War II: Color images of D-Day never released before have been compiled from archives in America, Britain, Canada and France to create a new documentary on the 1944 landings. D-Day in Colour will be shown in Britain.

World War II: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the basketball player, has written a history of an all-black tank unit that fought under Patton during WW II.

World War II: Newly published KGB and Stasi files indicate Peter the Great's Amber Room may have been destroyed by the Red Army rather than the Nazis during the Second World War.

Black History Museum: Detroit's Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History must raise approximately $500,000 by June 30, 2004, in order to keep its doors open.

World War II: The designer of the WW II memorial on the Mall says that as a native Austrian whose parents were apolitical and repulsed by Nazi brutality, he was especially stung by comparisons of his work to Nazi architecture, calling them "deliberate distortions" to derail the project.

New York Times Admission: In a remarkably candid note to readers, the editors of the NYT have admitted that they unintentionally misled readers over the past year about the Iraq war, putting credence in reports about WMD which have turned out not to be true.

Supreme Court: A full dozen members of the US House of Representatives have cosponsored legislation, H.R. 3920, which, if passed, would allow Congress to overturn US Supreme Court decisions by a 2/3rds vote. The bill would only apply to "judgments[s]" that "concern an Act of Congress."

Michelangelo's David: Michelangelo's "David" was unveiled on Monday after eight months of cleaning to proud claims that this 14-foot-high marble statue looked little different. "An invisible cleaning," Antonio Paolucci, the superintendent of Florentine art, said reassuringly, "like washing the face of a child."

History Channel: The History Channel has joined up with a game maker to recreate battles from the era of Rome. According to the program's producers, "Rome: Total War's" ability to generate thousands of individual soldiers is an ideal tool to show how Carthaginian general Hannibal pulled off his upset victory.

Most Endangered Historic Sites: The National Trust for Historic Preservation's 2004 list of the most endangered historic places in the United States and the threats they face has been published. Top of the list: Vermont: The state appeared on 1993 list because it faced onslaught of retail development. The National Trust said the threat is worse than ever, with Wal-Mart planning several new superstores that could spur sprawl.

Death Records: Researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of Massachusetts are combing through the death records of some 50,000 people in two Massachusetts communities, Holyoke and Northampton, from the medically revolutionary years of 1850 through 1912 to find out how Americans took care of themselves.

Philip Zelikow: Historian Philip Zelikow is taken to task for arranging that W.W. Norton--a publisher of many of his books--gets a contract to publish the proceeedings of the 9-11 commission in July. Some commissioners indicate that they never knew about his relationship with Norton.

Bush Poll Numbers: A new poll by CBS News said 41 percent of those surveyed approved of the job Bush was doing as president, while 52 percent disapproved. No recent president has been re-elected with such numbers this close to the November elections, but a Gallup Poll gave Harry Truman, who ascended to the office from the vice presidency, a 39 percent approval rating in June 1948, and he went on to squeak out a victory over Thomas Dewey.

Week of 5-17-04

William Manchester: Historian William Manchester will finish the third volume of his biography of Winston Churchill with help from a Florida newspaper feature writer. Paul Reid, a feature writer at The Palm Beach Post, has been chosen to work with Manchester on "The Last Lion, Volume III," the final book in Manchester's biography of Britain's World War II leader.

George McGovern: A library to honor George McGovern is planned for his hometown in South Dakota.

OAH: To help reduce the cost of renting a room at upcoming conventions in DC (2006) and NYC (2008), the Organization of American Historians will shift the schedule of its annual meetings from Wed-Sun to Fri-Mon.

World War II: The World War II Memorial, sober and sunk low in a long frame of elms, rests between the two structures that anchor the Mall.The monument to America's first great warrior, George Washington, towers over it on one side. The statue of America's great uniter, Abraham Lincoln, looks on from the other.

Doonesbury Creator Plans Memorial Day Cartoon: The names of U.S. military personnel who have been killed during the war in Iraq will appear in tiny type over six panels in the "Doonesbury" strip. A note beneath the final panel will say, "List as of April 23, 2004 ..." Comic strip historians say it's the first time such a eulogy has been presented in the comics.

World War II: A guide to recruiting spies in the Second World War advised women to concentrate on their secretarial skills rather than sex. A secret document composed by Maxwell Knight, codenamed ‘M’ and head of the MI5 section responsible for training spies, was among 280 declassified files released to the National Archives in Kew.

Titanic: Three collectors of memorabilia connected to the sunken ocean liner Titanic have combined their possessions and will offer more than 250 items at auction next month, an unprecedented sale of material connected to the doomed vessel.

India Textbooks: The Congress-led coalition has yet to announce who will head the human resource development ministry but the minister will not have to wait long for the Left’s wish list. The author of a history textbook junked by the nationalists wants his book restored.

Obituary: Samuel Iwry, 93, a scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls whose life story could rival the plot of an international adventure novel, died of a stroke May 8 at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore. Mr. Iwry, a professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University, was one of the world's leading Hebrew scholars.

Korea: For the first time ever, a U.S. middle school history textbook is dealing with Korean history as a separate unit. The new textbook published by Harcourt includes four pages that introduce Korean history. This textbook will be used starting from this summer semester.

Jesus Ossuary: Recent research in Jerusalem has questioned the authenticity of an inscription on an ossuary which reads ‘James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus’. Tests on the ossuary – a box containing bones – reveal it is from the 1st century AD. However, the inscription in Aramaic started speculation that the box contained the bones of James the Just, referred to as the brother of Jesus Christ. The latest tests, published in Elsevier's Journal of Archaeological Science, by a team of Israeli archaeologists and geologists has questioned the authenticity of the writing.

Alexandria Library: Archaeologists have found what they believe to be the site of the Library of Alexandria, often described as the world's first major seat of learning.

Napoleon: A French firm has unveiled a multi-million-euro facelift for the site of the 1815 battle at which the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon Bonaparte. In a bid to boost tourism, the local Wallonia government has signed a deal with Paris-based Culture Espaces to transform the rundown battlefield into a world-class heritage site.

National Park Service: This month, the Minute Man park in Concord, MA became the first in the country to offer a cellphone guide. For $5.99, visitors can call up an hourlong take on Paul Revere and the North Bridge.

Politicians: New research from the University of Warwick reveals the celebrities and heroes of 17th century England were politicians, not footballers. The study into ballads of the 1600s reveals that the Duke of Monmouth, James Scot, the illegitimate son of Charles II, was hailed as a true hero in ballads, the equivalent of today’s pop music--despite his flaws.

HNN Bush Poll: A poll conducted by HNN of its members indicates that 81 percent rank the Bush presidency a failure.

Black Death: A medical investigation has concluded humans rather than rats carried the plague epidemics that ravaged medieval Europe. The study of over 100 epidemics, the worst of which were in the mid-14th century, showed that the Black Death was more likely to have been spread by travellers moving between towns and villages rather than rodents.

Nazi Records Released: In the last of the large, focused declassification initiatives of the 1990s, an Interagency Working Group last week announced the release of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents declassified under provisions of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1996.

Obituary: History professor Reginald Zelnik was killed by a water delivery truck that backed up into him. The accident occurred about 4:20 p.m. on the central campus near Moses Hall. Zelnik, 68, died at the scene. Zelnik joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1964. He was a widely respected and distinguished historian and teacher of Russian and Soviet history, considered among the best in the country.

English Manor Up for Sale: Do you have a spare fifty million pounds burning a hole in your pocket? If so you could become lord of the manor at one of the region's finest stately homes. Easton Neston House has been put for sale and included in the price tag is an entire village and racecourse.

Dick Morris: Just two weeks after its release, Rewriting History - Dick Morris's insider account rebutting Hillary Clinton's autobiography, Living History - has hit the New York Times best-seller list, debuting next week at #7.

Brown Decision Commemorated: President Bush and Senator John Kerry descended on this Kansas city on Monday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling that ended school segregation, with Mr. Kerry warning against persistent racial and economic disparities and Mr. Bush saying the nation "has yet to reach the high calling of its own ideals."

Black Schools: Archivists searching for photographs to document the history of Montgomery County, Virginia's Christiansburg Institute, a school for black children founded in 1866. After Brown it was closed.

Rewriting History Textbooks: India's history books, rewritten by the outgoing Hindu nationalist government, are likely to be revamped again once a new Congress-led government takes power, party leaders have indicated.

TV History Archives: KAKE, the local station in Wichita, Kansas, is using its 50 years of archive films and videos to create a weekly show. Many stations in the United States threw out their archives to save space. "We considered ours priceless historical documents."

Black Biographies: The African American National Biography project's first volume, "African American Lives," has been published. The massive compendium, which contains biographies of what editor Henry Louis Gates calls the "all-time greatest hits" of black American history, will be dwarfed by the expected 10 volumes that are planned to follow it.

Martin Luther King: The hearse used to carry Dr Martin Luther King Junior's body to the airport after his assassination is up for sale on E-Bay. "For $10,000 someone can own a piece of civil rights history."

Lincoln: Illinois pastor wants to build a 305 foot statue of Abraham Lincoln (the Lincoln Memorial Lincoln is 19 feet). The statue is based on a drawing by late artist Lloyd Ostendorf, showing Lincoln spilling a tin cup of watermelon juice on the ground. It would be built in ... Lincoln, Ill.

Israeli Plot?: Juan Cole has disassociated himself from the allegation made by a former U.S. official that Israel attempted to assassinate an American ambassador to Lebanon in 1979. The official, says Cole, is not credible.

Week of 5-10-04

Rumsfeld Should Be Fired: Max Boot, the conservative historian who rallied support for the war in Iraq, says Donald Rumsfeld should be fired.

Pentagon Medals: you can serve in both Afghanistan and Iraq and end up with a medal recognizing just one war. It's known in military-speak as the GWOT (rhymes with "fought") medal, for the Global War on Terrorism -- created to recognize a war that "includes many diverse campaigns," as Pentagon spokesman Jim Turner told us in a statement. "The GWOT medals tie today's global war to yesterday's global war, i.e. WWII. We are fighting across the globe and shall be for a long time. When a WWII veteran looks at a current military member, they will share an equality of awards."

Florence Nightingale: SHE was the founder of modern nursing who worked so long into the night to help injured soldiers in the Crimean War that they came to know her as "the Lady with the Lamp." But she was also later derided as a malingerer and a hypochondriac for taking to her bed on and off for more than 20 years. Now sufferers of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome are claiming Florence Nightingale had the condition.

Michelangelo: ART experts have dismissed claims a privately owned wooden statuette of Christ is the work of Michelangelo. The piece, which would be worth a fortune if it were indeed made by the Renaissance master, went on show at the Horne Museum in Florence on Saturday and will be displayed until July.

Brown: The Brown vs. Board of Education National Historic Site opens Monday on the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision that mandated the desegregation of the nation's public schools. The National Park Service site is in the former Monroe Elementary School, one of four segregated schools in Topeka when the case was tried in 1954.

Bush Poll Numbers: Frank Newport of the Gallup Organization pointed out that, in Gallup's surveys, no president since World War II has won reelection after falling below 50 percent approval at this point in an election year. "Looking at it in context, Bush is following the trajectory of the three incumbents who ended up losing rather than the trajectory of the five incumbents who won," he said.

Holocaust: U.S. intelligence officials learned within months of the U.S. entry into World War II that Nazi Germany planned mass killings to eliminate Jews, scholars reviewing newly declassified reports. But the U.S. government gave the information low priority in August 1942, the scholars concluded, not acknowledging that Germany had a plan to exterminate Jews until six months later.

Former Nazi Officials: Declassified government documents shed new light on the secret protection and support given to former Nazi officials and Nazi collaborators by U.S. intelligence agencies in the years following World War II, according to a book by historians who have been reviewing the records for the government. According to a chapter by Timothy Naftali of the University of Virginia, former SS officer Otto von Bolschwing was recruited as an agent in 1949 by the CIA, which decided to protect him from war crimes prosecution by claiming falsely that it had no files concerning his past.

Taliban War on Culture: Scholars are appalled as they learn what happened to a museum on outskirts of Kabul after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. "In early 2001 the Taliban spent three months in the museum. They systematically destroyed every object. Don't imagine defacing a Buddha or taking a few hammer whacks at a stone stele. Imagine reducing every piece to rubble."

Battle of Trafalgar: The British Royal Navy will commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar with the parade of at least 100 ships in 2005 as part of a six-day celebration.

History Textbooks: The Library of Congress has held a day-long conference on the future of the history textbook. Panelists concluded that textbooks remain useful and are now fairly up to date.

World War II D-Day Ceremonies: Canada's government, reacting to criticism that it wasn't helping veterans attend D-Day ceremonies in France next month, has agreed to defray some of the travel costs. Veterans of D-Day and the subsequent battle of Normandy will be reimbursed up to $1,000 each for travel to the 60th anniversary ceremonies on the French coast on June 6.

World War II Slave Labor: A proposal to set up a foundation to compensate Chinese forced laborers in Japan during World War II will be submitted to the Diet, Japan's parliament, later this month. According to the proposal, the fund will come from both the Japanese government and companies involved in the cases.

Berlin: New US Embassy near Brandenburg Gate to be built beginning this fall. The land and the existing building on it were bought by the United States in 1931 with the intention of constructing a magnificent embassy suitable for one of Europe’s great capitals. But with Hitler’s arrival in power in 1933 that plan was put off indefinitely.

Rosenbergs: The son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg--the American Communist Party members turned Soviet spies who were executed for helping Soviets acquire the secrets of the atom bomb--Robert Meeropol, compares the war on terrorism with McCarthyism.

Prisoner Abuse: CIA interrogation manuals written in the 1960s and 1980s described "coercive techniques" such as those used to mistreat detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to the declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive.

Truth Commission: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the first of its kind in the United States, will be sworn in June 12 to uncover the truth about the murder of five people in Greensboro in 1979 during the course of a march protested by the Ku Klux Klan.

Maya: For archaeologists, the digging this season has been especially good at remote Maya ruins in the jungles of Guatemala.

Baseball: A discovery in a western Massachusetts public library may shed new light on the origins of baseball. Legend says Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown, New York in 1839. But historian John Thorn says a document found in the Pittsfield public library predates that by more than 40 years.

History Standards: It could cost tens of millions of dollars to shift Minnesota's schools to a set of proposed social studies and science requirements, according to state officials.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: Goodwin gets a great Mother's Day gift as her son--an Army platoon leader in Iraq--returns home after nearly getting killed when his truck was hit by mortar fire.

Brown Decision: To mark the 50-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's groundbreaking decision that helped end legal segregation in the United States, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History will open "Separate Is Not Equal: Brown v. Board of Education." The one- year exhibition opens May 15 and closes May 30, 2005.

Allende: Alberta premier Ralph Klein taken to task for a speech in which he compared a plan for public auto insurance to Allende's socialist reforms in Chile: "I'm not saying that Pinochet was any better, but because of the only elected communist in Chile, Allende, and the socialist reforms he put in, Pinochet was forced, I would say, to mount a coup."

Emmett Till: Residents of the small Mississippi town where Till lived are divided about the Justice Department decision to reopen the case. "I've been thinking about this long and hard, and I wonder what would be accomplished by reopening this," said one black resident.

Emmett Till: Directors of the documentaries that prompted the reopening of the Till case are elated by the Justice Department's decision.

Holy Grail: Veteran code-breakers from Bletchley Park are involved in researching a mysterious inscription on a stately home monument, rumoured to be a cryptic link with the Holy Grail. Second World War specialists from the National Codes Centre in Buckinghamshire will join other experts in attempting to unravel the code on a 1748 garden ornament in the grounds of the historic stately home of Shugborough.

War Crimes?: Documentary seen in other countries now available in the United States: “Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death.” The documentary provides eyewitness testimony that U.S. troops were complicit in the massacre of thousands of Taliban prisoners during the Afghan War.

Martin Luther King: A small town in Florida has voted to repeal the decision to rename a street in honor of MLK.

Emmett Till: The Department of Justice has just reopened the investigation of the Emmett Till murder in 1955.

Week of 5-3-04

Picasso: French police kept Pablo Picasso under surveillance for nearly 40 years - and when the Spanish-born painter applied for citizenship the authorities could not decide whether he was an anarchist or a communist so they ruled him undesirable just in case.

History: Jefferson Lecturer -- a Harvard poet -- says that the arts are more fundamental to life than history.

Vikings: The discovery of a 1,200-year-old Viking fortress in Ireland has been hailed by a leading historian as "the most significant new find in Viking studies in perhaps a century."

Vietnam: Thousands of veterans from both sides are making the pilgrimage to Dien Bien Phu on the 50th anniversary of the battle that forced France out of Vietnam.

Early Use of Fire: Human-like species migrating out of their African homeland had mastered the use of fire up to 790,000 years ago, the journal Science reports. The evidence, from northern Israel, suggests species such as Homo erectus may have been surprisingly sophisticated in their behavior.

Vietnam War: A Top Secret 1969 study of U.S. intelligence performance during the Vietnam War shows pessimists and dissenters were largely vindicated by history, but were unable to persuade top officials to change policies, according to the newly declassified text obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Touted by TIME Magazine in 1971 as the State Department equivalent of the "Pentagon Papers," the 596-page study summarizes and critiques the Vietnam analysis produced by State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) from 1961 through 1968.

Major Smithsonian Donor Flees to Cuba to Avoid Tax Collector: Herbert Axelrod, a 76-year old pet-products and publishing tycoon and philanthropist known for his charitable donations to cultural institutions including the Smithsonian Institution's (SI) National Museum of American History (NMAH), has fled to Cuba to avoid tax fraud charges. His flight puts on hold a Smithsonian plan to rename the NMAH Hall of Musical Instruments in his honor.

John Kerry Anti-War Activist: A confidential F.B.I. memorandum dated April 29, 1971, on a just-concluded antiwar march on Washington by Vietnam Veterans Against the War concluded that the group's nominal leaders had been overshadowed by "a more popular and eloquent figure, John Kerry," who was "glib, cool and displayed best what the moderate elements wanted to reflect." One version or another of that assessment of the young Mr. Kerry is echoed repeatedly among 20,000 pages of once-secret F.B.I. files, released on Wednesday.

Clinton Library: A historian who has spent 27 years working in presidential libraries was named director of the Clinton Presidential Library. David Alsobrook has spent four years overseeing the preparation and archiving of tens of thousands of documents, memorabilia, gifts and photos from Bill Clinton's presidency for the $165 million library in downtown Little Rock. The library is scheduled to open Nov. 18.

Textbooks: A top textbook consultant shaping classroom education on Islam in American public schools recently worked for a school funded and controlled by the Saudi government, which propagates a rigidly anti-Western strain of Islam, a WorldNetDaily investigation reveals.

Iranian Historian Declines to Appeal Death Sentence: A university professor has decided not to appeal a reinstated death sentence, effectively challenging Iran's hard-line judges to execute him for criticizing clerical rule, his lawyer said Tuesday. The original sentence handed down to Hashem Aghajari in 2002 provoked massive student demonstrations and street battles with hard-line vigilantes. The uproar highlighted the power struggle between reformists and conservatives in Iran.

Maya: More than 2,000 years ago, while Rome was laying waste to Carthage and the Hopewell people were building mounds in Ohio, a grand civilization flourished at a now little-known site in Guatemala called Cival. "It's very interesting when we reverse some existing ideas. We thought the preclassic Maya were a relatively simple society ... and they were not," Francisco Estrada-Belli, who led the excavation work at the site, said Tuesday. "There was a whole civilization during the preclassic time we are just beginning to recover."

South Africa's "Titanic": The latest search for a luxury British liner that sank three years before the Titanic has proved inconclusive. Dubbed ‘South Africa's Titanic’, the SS Waratah sank in July 1909 with the loss of all 211 crew and passengers.

NYT Kills "Arts & Ideas" Section: The NYT is killing the Saturday section "Arts & Ideas" in September. This section frequently featured articles about history and historians.

New History Channel: Scandinavian media outfit Modern Times Group (MTG) has launched a new pay TV channel Viasat History in eight Central and Eastern Europe (C&E) countries.

Rosewood: Governor Jeb Bush recognized the families of those whose lives were changed by the Rosewood Massacre. The massacre happened 81 years ago, and it's called one of the darkest moments in Florida's history.

Not a Lynching: When turkey hunters found the body of a black man hanging from a pecan tree off a dirt road a week ago, folks near and far conjured up the region's ugliest history and feared he had been lynched. Word spread lightning-fast, and Reginald Jackson, the black sheriff of Wilkinson County, was barraged with telephone calls from the media and outraged people across the country. Jackson spent much of last week dousing the "Mississippi is still burning" story. "Some people tend to relive the past, both black and white," he sighed.

Vietnam: Vietnamese veterans of Dien Bien Phu gather to celebrate victory, mourn those lost in epic fight. "It was a defeat that reverberated around the world," said Carlyle Thayer, a Vietnam expert at the Australian Defense Force Academy. "For Vietnam, it was electrifying on a global level. This was a major defeat for a colonial power at the hands of a Third World population."

Paula Jones: Ten years ago this week, a lawsuit was filed that poisoned a presidency. When Paula Jones sued Bill Clinton on May 6, 1994, alleging sexual harassment, she touched off a blizzard of events that made Monica Lewinsky a national figure and led to the first presidential impeachment since 1868. Jones declined repeated requests to comment. A spokeswoman for Clinton said he had no comment.

Thatcher Anniversary: Conservatives are marking the 25th anniversary of Baroness Thatcher's move in to 10 Downing Street. Following her 1979 election victory, the "Iron Lady" went on to transform Britain during her 11 years in power.

Obituary: Manex Goihenetxe’s body and that of a woman were discovered yesterday on the Pic du Biscau (Béarn). Indications are that they were killed in a snow accident on Sunday. He was regarded as "our national historian" by Basques.

Obituary: Wayne David Rasmussen, 89, who retired in 1987 from the Agriculture Department as chief historian, died April 30 at his home in Concord, Mass. He had Parkinson's disease.

China: Grandson of Sun Yat-sen bemoans the ignorance of Chinese history by students. He is hopeful a new government-sponsored museum dedicated to the life of the Chinese revolutionary will revive his memory.

Movie About Jamestown: The New World, a movie exploring the settlement of Jamestown in 1607, is scheduled to begin shooting in the Williamsburg area July 1 and might be released at the end of next year - months before the planned kickoff in 2006 for the two-year-long Jamestown 2007 commemoration. Same company did Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Slavery: A senior officer with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. acknowledged to aldermen yesterday that J.P. Morgan Jr.'s grandfather, Junius, had a business relationship in the 1800s that profited from the slave trade -- but said that should not preclude the financial giant from doing business with the city in the 21st century. The partnership between Junius Morgan and businessman George Peabody was not a ''predecessor company" to what is now J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and should not be considered proof of a legacy of profiteering from slave labor on the part of the current company, said the executive.

Historian Sentenced to Death: A court has reimposed a death sentence on a history lecturer for blasphemy — a verdict that sparked mass student protests when first announced in 2002. Zekrollah Ahmadi, judiciary chief in Hamadan Province, said the judge had confirmed his original ruling against Hashem Aghajari after a review of the case ordered by the Supreme Court.

Millions of State Secrets: The U.S. government classified more than 14 million new national security secrets last year, up from 11 million in the previous year and 8 million the year before, according to the new annual report to President Bush from the oversight office for the national security secrecy system.

Lincoln: On Wednesday, in the Great Hall of Cooper Union, the actor Sam Waterston will deliver a speech that Abraham Lincoln made at the same location in 1860. It will be carried on C-Span. Based on Harold Holzer's book, Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech that Made Abraham Lincoln President.

History Salaries: Historians earn an average of $60,646 per year, according to a new survey published in the Chronicle of Higher Education; that's some $50,000 less than law professors but a few thousand more than English profs. (subscribers only)

Artifacts Returned to Iran: The Oriental Institute (University of Chicago) announced at a press conference that it would return 300 ancient Persian tablets on loan from Iran since 1937. This will mark the first return of archeological objects on loan from Iran since the 1979.

Week of 4-26-04

LBJ Tapes: Johnson Library releases recordings and transcripts of President Johnson's telephone conversations from April through July 1966, as well as two conversations in October 1966 between President Johnson and Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas in which the assassination of President Kennedy is discussed.

Weinstein Nomination: In a letter to Senators Susan M. Collins (Chair) and Joseph I. Lieberman (Ranking Member) of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that will consider the nomination of historian Allen Weinstein as Archivist of the United States, the National Coalition for History (NCH) formally requested that the Senate "initiate the process of formal consultation with members of our [history and archives] communities."

Women in WW II: An award of almost £1million has been announced by the National Heritage Memorial Fund to establish the first British tribute to women involved in the Second World War. The bronze memorial will honour the millions of civilian and servicewomen who contributed to the war effort.

Armenian Genocide/NYT: The NYT has changed its policy and will now refer to the Armenian massacre of 1915 as genocide.

Robert Oppenheimer: Greg Herken, author of Brotherhood of the Bomb has posted several new documents purporting to show that Robert Oppenheimer was a member of a secret communist cell in Berkeley in the 30's and 40's.

WW II: The Canadian who ended Rommel's war: History changed on July 17, 1944 when the Nazis' greatest general, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, was wounded when his staff car was strafed by a Spitfire during the fighting in Normandy. Randy Boswell reports on new research showing it was a Canadian, Charley Fox, who knocked the Desert Fox out of the war.

Beatles: Mark Lewisohn, a cultural historian who has catalogued the entire Beatles-related recordings at Abbey Road and written The Complete Beatles Chronicle, is to produce three volumes over 12 years; wins contract for 1.2 milion pounds.

Slavery: A renegade census taker charged with recording the population of a tiny northeastern North Carolina county in 1860 left behind a record of slave names that is the only such known document in the state -- and perhaps in the nation. The find by a state archivist researching his family background stunned historians and genealogists who routinely find slaves listed only by color (black or mulatto), gender and age.

Obituary: Simon Walker, who has died aged 46, was one of the most respected medieval historians of his generation. His best-known work, The Lancastrian Affinity, 1361-1399 (1990), explored the network of indentured retainers and county gentry dependent on John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. This network, Walker showed, was not characterised by straightforward obedience to the will of the lord, nor did it prevent independent action by gentlemen in defiance of Gaunt, even in the heartlands of his power. It was an analysis that blew apart the view that disorder in 15th-century England arose from the actions of an over-mighty nobility.

Op Ed Page Editor: Michael Kinsley appointed as Los Angeles Times editorial and opinion editor.

WW II: A national monument to the 16 million U.S. men and women who served during World War II opened to the public Thursday, giving veterans of that era a sense of recognition some say was long overdue but well worth the wait.

Mel Gibson: FLUSH from the success of The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson is looking back in time again - to produce an epic about woman warrior Boadicea, who led Britain against Roman conquerors. Dubbed "Braveheart with a bra," the film will chronicle Boadicea's rise from peasant girl to a military leader who united the Celtic tribes of Britain.

Censored Book Published: A former executive's written history of the Montana Power Co., a document that the company refused for three decades to allow to be published, is finally seeing the light of day. Cecil Kirk's 483-page, three-volume history, which he completed in 1970 after his retirement, was donated Monday to the Montana Historical Society by NorthWestern Energy, which took over Montana Power's energy transmission systems two years ago when they were sold to NorthWestern Corp.

WW II Tragedy: Veterans recall a World War II tragedy ‘Exercise Tiger’ was a D-Day practice run that went terribly wrong; sixty years earlier at a top-secret military exercise, a dress rehearsal for the upcoming Allied invasion of occupied France, nine German gunboats sliced through the lightly guarded convoy and torpedoed three lumbering American Landing Ship Tanks, killing 749.

Polio: 50th anniversary of the polio vaccine.

Iraq: The looting that took place in Iraq last April may have led to the loss of 60% of documentation for modern Iraqi history.

Slavery: The return of to Athens, Georgia of the T. R. R. Cobb House next month from its exile in suburban Atlanta, where it has stood moldering in a Confederacy theme park, has sparked debate. Critics question spending $3 million to restore the house of the man who drafted the Confederate constitution and championed slavery.

Billy the Kid: A History Channel documentary written and co-produced by University of New Mexico historian Paul Hutton, featuring discussion with fellow historians N. Scott Momaday and Robert Utley, suggests NM Gov. Wallace agreed to extend amnesty to William H. Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, if he would testify in a court proceeding about the corruption in Lincoln County.

JFK: The author of one of the books on which the discredited History Channel documentary about JFK's assassination speaks out. He stands by his allegations that LBJ was involved and insists the documentary should be rebroadcast to let the public decide.

Christ: Fearing that the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code" may be sowing doubt about basic Christian beliefs, a host of Christian churches, clergy members and Bible scholars are rushing to rebut it. In 13 months, readers have bought more than six million copies of the book, a historical thriller that claims Christianity was founded on a cover-up — that the church has conspired for centuries to hide evidence that Jesus was a mere mortal, married Mary Magdalene and had children whose descendants live in France.

Holocaust: The former residence of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in the Italian capital will host a museum dedicated to Rome's victims of the Holocaust, the city's mayor said. Rome officials said Tuesday that construction of the museum in Mussolini's Villa Torlonia hasn't yet begun, but that they nevertheless expected the museum to open as soon as 2006.

Kerry: 1971 videotape adds to debate over John Kerry's protest when he threw war medals over a fence; Kerry has always said he threw other soldiers' medals. On the tape he says he threw his own.

Black History Museum: An investigation by the Detroit Free Press discovered that the city's black history museum is struggling to meet its payroll; attendance revenue is down by 73%. Some call the museum a failure.

Holocaust: Members of the Jewish community are expressing outrage over what one student described as a “horrific” and “inciteful” Holocaust satire on the cover of the April 21 issue of The Medium, a weekly student entertainment newspaper at Rutgers University. University president Richard McCormick sought an apology from the editors of the weekly, scoring the publication for disregarding “standards of civility, diversity, and collegiality.”

Mona Lisa: Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece of a mysterious woman with a slight smile, is deteriorating, and the Louvre Museum said Monday it will conduct an in-depth technical study to determine why. The thin panel of poplar wood that the work is painted on has become deformed since conservation experts last evaluated the painting, the Louvre said.

Week of 4-19-04

Diary Revealed: James G. McDonald was an American diplomat who knew every major public figure in the 1930's as Europe and later the rest of the world rushed to war. He was also, it turns out, a dedicated and precise diarist, recording his meetings with Hitler, Mussolini and Roosevelt and detailing his own impressions of Nazi intentions. The previously unpublicized diaries, numbering more than 10,000 pages, are now in the possession of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and have been made public.

Albert Einstein: Researchers have discovered a diary belonging to Albert Einstein's last companion. It covers the final years of his life.

Child Labor: The final pages are still being written in a fascinating but little-known chapter in Canada's immigration history: the migration of 100,000 child laborers from Britain at the beginning of the 20th century. The children were used to remedy a labor shortage on farms; they were not treated as members of the family.

Bogus Hitler Diary: A volume of the bogus "Hitler diaries," which were published two decades ago in a blaze of publicity by a German magazine, fetched $7,741 Friday at auction.

Hitler: Germany’s foremost publishing taboo is being challenged by a Jewish historian who is urging the open sale of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, banned for almost 60 years. The campaign, launched by Mr Rafael Seligman, author of a new book on Hitler, has drawn a furious response, notably from other members of the German Jewish community.

Integration: Virginia's governor pledged $2 million Wednesday to fund scholarships for students denied an education when public schools across the state closed rather than integrate in the late 1950s.

Presidential Records: Scholars seeking to overturn President Bush's executive order restricting the release of past presidential papers have filed an appeal with the court that turned them down. They charge that the administration is still sitting on some six dozen Reagan-Bush era documents (some relate to Iran-contra).

Teacher of the Year: Preserve America has announced a national program of Preserve America History Teacher of the Year to honor outstanding teachers of American history across the country. Preserve America is working in this effort with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Finalists of the Preserve America History Teacher of the Year will be selected annually -one each from the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Department of Defense, and U.S. territories. From these winners a national winner will be recognized as the National Preserve America History Teacher of the Year at a ceremony.

Poland: Warsaw has never had a museum commemorating one of the most significant events in its history: the failed 1944 uprising against the Nazis that killed 200,000 and destroyed 80 per cent of the city. But now, after decades of ideological battles over the its legacy, a museum dedicated to the uprising is due to open on August 1, the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of fighting.

Nazi: The top UN human rights watchdog has denounced modern day glorification of the Nazi-era Waffen SS. In a 36-13 vote, the UN Human Rights Commission last week backed a Russian resolution expressing deep concern over the building of memorials to the military section of the dreaded Nazi Schutzstaffel.

Stolen Art: More than 100 drawings stolen by the former Soviet Union during World War II have been officially given back to the Netherlands.

Holocaust: Right-wing historian David Irving is planning a lecture tour of the UK in the run-up to June's European elections. Anti-racist groups yesterday promised to picket all of the lectures, claiming that the British National Party, which is fielding candidates in every UK region, is behind the scheduling of the tour.

Irish: Protestants and Catholics divided over the name of their city: Protestants pointing to a new manuscript find, say it's Londonderry. Catholics say it's Derry.

Sir Walter Scott: An unfinished novel by Sir Walter Scott, written the year before he died and suppressed by his associates as an inferior work by an ailing old man, will finally be published in full for the first time next week.

Russia: In the mountains of southern Siberia, where shamans still practise their ancient rites and most people are descended from Asiatic nomads, there is a whiff of revolt over a 2500 year old mummified princess dubbed the Ice Maiden whose body was discovered in the early 1990s. Locals want her reburied; controversy began soon after a strong earthquake hit the region last September, destroying many buildings.

Japan: Chinese Ambassador Wu Dawei urged Japan on Wednesday to think of a way to resolve issues relating to World War II, referring specifically to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to war-linked Yasukuni Shrine.

Lenin: Russian poll shows that young people (between the ages of 18 to 24) are evenly split on Lenin's role in history. It seems that the younger the people are, the less loyal they are to Lenin, sociologists said.

Government Secrecy: The Los Angeles Times explains "How the Death of Judy's Father Made America More Secretive." A plane crashes at the dawn of the Cold War, and the government seeks a special legal privilege. Its claim sows the seeds of the Patriot Act. But documents now reveal that the government lied about the necessity of keeping details about the crash secret.

Allen Weinstein: Rocky Mountain News editorializes in favor of Weinstein's nomination as chief archivist.

Black History Museum: Organizers of a black history museum in Charleston, SC hope to raise $60 million for the project, including $10 million for an endowment to provide grants to organizations for programs in black history and culture. "I know it's a lot of money," said U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-Columbia, chairman of the museum steering committee. "It's going to be tough, but we're going to get there."

Kerry: Aides to Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign said on Tuesday that they would release all of his military records, including evaluations by his Navy commanders, a day after the campaign had refused to make the documents public.

Nazis: Italian military prosecutors are reopening a grim chapter by charging at least seven former SS officers with taking part in the killings of hundreds in a Tuscanvillage in 1944.

Oral HistoryLaunched ... the largest Web index of English-language oral histories ever assembled – Oral History Online. More than 7,000 interviews and 850 collections, spanning topics from MARC records to Jim Crow to skateboarding in New Zealand, have been fully indexed and are – through May – freely accessible.

Exploration: The first big expedition has gotten under way to look for the lost fleets of the Persian Wars, seeking to bring triremes (a fast galley powered by three banks of rowers pulling up to 200 oars) back to life and retrieve some of the vast treasure of arms and armor believed to have gone down with the warships.

Indians: Indians and the government have turned to mediators to resolve a century-old dispute about the billions Indians claim is owed them from oil, timber, grazing and other leases on their lands.

Allen Weinstein NYT features an article about the controversial nomination of Allen Weinstein as head of the national archives; Weinstein insists he is a "raving moderate" and is committed to "maximum access."

Niall Ferguson A MIDDLE-aged Scots historian yesterday usurped Tony Blair in a list of the 100 World's Most Influential People compiled by Time magazine. Professor Niall Ferguson, who has shrugged off the shackles of academia to become the doyen of the American right, merited a mention in the hallowed directory of the world's movers and shakers.

Wal-Mart More than 250 sociologists, anthropologists, historians and other scholars who gathered at the University of California for a conference on Wal-Mart.

Catholic Church: The Roman Catholic church's mishandling of paedophile scandals among its clergy is not a modern phenomenon but has been going on for hundreds of years, a new book reveals. It describes how the priest who is the patron saint of Catholic schools covered up sex abuse.

HAW: Historians Against the War is being asked by one of its founding members to get involved in the Columbia strike by graduate students. Alan Brinkley's role is questioned.

Week of 4-12-04

Hunley Sub: As many as 10,000 history buffs are expected to pay last respects Saturday to the crewmen of the H.L. Hunley, a tiny, hand-cranked Civil War submarine that sank a warship 140 years ago.

Middle East Studies: The New York Jewish Week reports today that a "committee appointed by the president of Columbia University for months has been quietly probing allegations of bias and intimidation by faculty, particularly in Middle East studies."

Iraq: Bob Woodward's new book reveals that President Bush ordered war plans drawn up to invade Iraq less than two months after U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan and was so worried the decision would cause a furor he did not tell everyone on his national security team.

OAH on Gay Marriage: The Organization of American Historians (OAH) issued a press release today opposing the amendment to ban gay marriages: "Research by numerous scholars who have studied marriage, sexuality, and kinship throughout U.S. history supports the view that diverse types of families, including families built on same-sex partnerships, have existed across time, even as law and government have accorded some of those families unequal status."

Oldest Jewelry The oldest known example of jewelry has been unearthed in a cave in South Africa. A collection of 41 perforated snail shells found at Blombos Cave on the Indian Ocean coast appear to have been strung as beads about 75,000 years ago, making them some 30,000 years older than the next confirmed example of personal ornamentation.

French Oil Contracts in Iraq Kenneth Timmerman, author of the new book, The French Betrayal of America, claims that Chirac opposed the war with Saddam to protect an oil contract that gave a French company 75 percent of the profits on every barrel of oil drilled in one of Iraq’s largest oil fields at Nahr al-Umar for a period of twenty years.

Vietnam The Dien Bien Phu victory has great historical significance for Viet Nam in the 20th century as well as for the international community, it was stated at a workshop on the occasion of the battle's 50th anniversary. The event, held in Ha Noi on Friday. by the Ho Chi Minh National Institute of Political Science, was attended by many war veterans, high-level army officers, as well as researchers and scholars from research institutes and universities.

Amistad: The replica, built in 2000 to be a traveling history museum that teaches people about race relations and civil rights, has arrived in Delaware. The ship tells of a rebellion by African captives in 1839 on the original low-slung vessel.

Allen Weinstein: Concern is growing within the archival and historical communities regarding the Bush administration's hoped for "fast-track" process to replace Archivist of the United States John Carlin with one of its own choosing -- historian Allen Weinstein. According to informed sources, the administration hopes to short-circuit the normal confirmation process and see Weinstein confirmed through an "expedited" process. Their goal--place Weinstein in the position prior to the November election. In Jan. 2005 the records of the first Bush administration will start becoming available.

Robert Byrd: Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut has apologized for remarks he made praising Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia as a leader for any time, even the Civil War, despite Mr. Byrd's past membership in the Ku Klux Klan and his efforts to derail the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Mr. Dodd had said: "I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia that he would have been a great senator at any moment."

Allen Weinstein: The Nation editorializes against historian Allen Weinstein's selection as chief archivist of the U.S.

Titanic: A perfume re-created from a fragrance recovered from the wreck of the Titanic will go on sale this year.

Civil War: As preservationists renew their push to protect the Civil War battlefield from encroaching development in Frederick and Washington counties by buying up development rights, some landowners are reluctant to go along.

Hollywood: Historians fear Tom Cruise's new film about the Battle of Britain will grossly distort the truth.

Genocide: The Belgian defense minister, Andre Flahaut, has come under fire for approving an official document asserting that the biggest genocide of the past 500 years occurred in North America. The 16-page document put North America at the top of a list of genocides, saying an ongoing genocide of Native Americans had claimed 15 million lives since 1492, when Christopher Columbus sailed to the Americas.

Papal Apology: Bartholomew, the patriarch of Constantinople and spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide, has accepted an apology from Pope John Paul II for the sacking of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, by armies of Crusader knights, beginning in 1204.

Holocaust: Filmmaker Steven Spielberg received Italy's highest decoration Wednesday for his work in preserving the history of the Holocaust through film and documentary.

Confederacy: Fourteen Southern governors were invited to this weekend's ceremonial burial of the crew of a sunken Confederate submarine, but none plans to attend. Most of the governors cited scheduling conflicts, but some observers say they may be wary of the political implications of attending an event expected to draw thousands of Confederate re-enactors.

Online: The British National Archives has announced that one million wills from the last millennium will be placed online for the benefit of historians, genealogists and the curious. For £3 you can download the wills of Jane Austen, Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, Percy Shelley, John Donne, Samuel Pepys and William Wordsworth.

Africa: Priest's crusade to return African treasures; the Rev John McLuckie, formerly of St John’s Episcopal Church in Edinburgh, has launched a fresh crusade - to return hundreds of similarly looted items now scattered throughout Britain’s museums and art collections to their rightful place in the African continent.

Bias in History: Scots upset with the British royal website which celebrates Edward I, the English ruler known as the "Hammer of the Scots" because of his strenuous attempts to extend his kingdom north of the Border.

Samuel Huntington: Simon & Schuster publishing a new book by Huntington; in this book, Who We Are, he turns his attention from international affairs to our domestic cultural rifts as he examines the impact other civilizations and their values are having on our own country.

Bias in History: The latest Thomas B. Fordham Foundation study, The Stealth Curriculum: Manipulating America's History Teachers, claim that Widely-used instructional materials that teachers rely upon to supplement their textbooks and their own knowledge may be dangerous to children's educational health.

Islamic Texts: Scholars say irreplaceable Islamic texts representing a historic era of Muslim culture, including West Africa's unique part in it, are decaying to oblivion in sweltering homes. Tens of thousands have been rescued and put in safe storage here and abroad, but many more are scattered around Timbuktu -- private heirlooms handed down from parents to children over the centuries.

Obituary: Distinguished historian and professor emeritus of history at UC Berkeley, Thomas C. Smith died April 3 in Danville. He was 87. Smith was an authority on Japan and wrote four major books about Japanese industrialization, political change, and farm life in the 18th through 20th centuries during his long career.

Israel Boycott: The director of the Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies has come under fire for signing an online open letter that critics say identifies him as supporting an academic boycott of Israel. Zachary Lockman signed the letter at www.academicboycott.org a few weeks ago, joining about 475 academics. The controversy centers around one phrase in the letter, which identifies "the undersigned" as "defenders of Palestinian academic freedom and supporters of the academic boycott against Israel." Lockman now says he opposes the boycott.

Vietnam: Newsweek's cover story this week asks: "A Quagmire in the Making? How Iraq Compares to Vietnam--And Doesn't"

Alamo: Oliver North group, Freedom Alliance, denounces the new Disney movie about the Alamo: "This movie reads more like a Disney fairy tale and promotes a politically correct revisionist agenda aimed at destroying a traditional American hero."

Passion: With The Passion of the Christ soaring back to the top of the box office after weeks in release, Tinseltown's jaw just keeps dropping lower: "I've never seen that before."

Grant: Gettysburg College jury awards historian John Y. Simon $20,000 in connection with his 40 year project: publishing the papers of U.S.Grant.

Archaeology: Israeli archaeologists are studying what are believed to be Christian ruins of the fifth or sixth century discovered by workers building a highway.

Week of 4-5-04

OAH Resolution on Gay Marriage: The executive board of the Organization of American Historians has approved a resolution opposing "a federal constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples." The resolution was sponsored by Ellen Herman, a historian at University of Oregon. Over 100 members of the OAH signed a statement in support of the resolution.

Parallel Passages: Similarities with other writings have turned up in several passages RI Supreme Court Justice Frank Williams wrote in a chapter in a book on Lincoln. Earlier this week he conceded that he "inadvertently" used the opening paragraphs of a 1957 magazine story in an article he wrote on Lincoln in 1993.

Google Searches: Google, the popular search-engine company, has teamed up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 16 other universities around the world to provide a way to search the institutions' collections of scholarly papers, according to university officials.

9-11: The National Security Archive at George Washington University has called for the public declassification of the controversial President's Daily Brief from August 6, 2001, noting that 10 such briefings have been declassified in the past.

WW II: Construction workers have had the National World War II Memorial to themselves for more than 2½ years, laboring behind construction fences to transform a mostly grassy expanse of the Mall into what promises to become one of Washington's most-visited sites. Next week they share their work with the public.

Embarrassed: Devoted Abraham Lincoln scholar and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank J. Williams acknowledged last week that he "inadvertently" used the opening paragraphs of a 1957 magazine story in an article he wrote on Lincoln in 1993. "I feel terrible, mortified, embarrassed," Williams said. "I take full responsibility for it."

Yale: Military historian Mary Habeck denied tenure at Yale; some suspect it was because the university is trying to downplay military history.

Confederate Flag: The former president of the Asheville Chapter of the NAACP and an African-American marching through the South with the Confederate flag. Says he is proud to be a black Confederate American.

Confederate Heritage Month: Prince George County will be one of the localities across the state of Virginia which will observe Confederate History and Heritage Month during April. This comes after a unanimous vote to accept the proclamation.

Aborigines: Over the past 15 years, Australian Aborigines have fought to receive official title to their ancestral lands and for governments to acknowledge the sad history of the removal of their children. Now they have a new target in their sights: the state-sanctioned confiscation of the wages earned by tens of thousands of Aboriginal workers for much of the 20th century.

Reparations: Descendants of slaves have filed a $1 billion lawsuit against U.S. and British corporations, accusing them of profiting by committing genocide against their ancestors.Lawyers for the eight plaintiffs said the complaint was the first slave reparations lawsuit to use DNA to link the plaintiffs to Africans who suffered atrocities during the slave trade.

Jobs Safe: Some 200 federal historians employed by the National Park Service (NPS) appear to have won a modest victory in the Bush administration's ongoing effort to "out-source" federal jobs.

Archivist: On 8 April 2004, the White House announced that President George W. Bush intends to nominate historian Allen Weinstein to become the ninth Archivist of the United States.

Mormons: Illinois officials in Salt Lake City to apologize for the expulsion of the Mormon Church's earliest members and the killing of its founder.

Iraq: Saving Iraq's archaeological past from thieves remains an uphill battle.

Obituary: Emily Beck, daughter of Samuel Eliot Morison and editor of Bartlett's Quotations, dead at 88.

Times Square: Times Square celebrates 100th anniversary. It's named after the NYT.

Plagiarism: White-collar copycats may be less inclined to pilfer the well-chosen words of others now that software designed to ferret out plagiarism is moving out of academia and into the business world.

Holocaust: A Holocaust victim's Bible details the horrors of Mauthausen concentration camp; recently turned over to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum after a descendant spoke with a history professor who realized its value.

Pulitzer Prize: Steven Hahn, author of A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration, who earlier won the Bancroft and Merle Curti awards, has now picked up the Pulitzer Prize in history.

Pulitzer Prize: The tale of a black slave owner by novelist Edward P Jones has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Japan: Prime Minister Koizumi criticized for damning terrorists one day and the next standing in memory of the Japanese militarists of WW II.

High School Student Historians: Awards announcd for the tenth annual Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes for student work of outstanding academic promise in history at the secondary level. Recipients receive a check for $3,000.

Pulitzer Prize: Anne Applebaum, a columnist and member of the editorial board of the Washington Post and author of Gulag: A History receives the non-fiction Pulitzer Prize; an interview on PBS.

Patriotism: Like the United States, Japan is now embroiled in a controversy about a ritual of patriotism comparable to the American debate about the Pledge of Allegiance.

TV History: Television producers are searching for a British family to emigrate to Australia and be transported back in time 200 years to recreate the lives of early settlers "down under." The family will journey to Australia by tall ship and land on an uninhabited stretch of coastline to spend four months in front of the cameras in the reality show "The Colony."

Vietnam: Vietnam cracks down on etailers who sell video games based on the Vietnam War. At least six computer games set in Vietnam are available on the market and Vietnamese officials are unequivocal in their condemnation of all off them.

WW II: Secret papers revealing the vital work of a wartime double agent have been revealed for the first time today with the opening of an exhibition to mark the 60th anniversary of D-Day later this year.

Pulitzer Prizes: For Investigative Reporting: Toledo Blade, for the series exposing Vietnam atrocities.

Pulitzer Prizes: For Biography: Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman. For History: A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South From Slavery to the Great Migration by Steven Hahn.

Religion on TV: ABC News is being given high marks for the history of Jesus and Paul--a special hosted by Peter Jennings.

Audio History: Audible.com, one of the Internet's best-known providers of spoken-word content, has made the 9-11 hearings available for listeners to download - for free - and play on computers and portable audio players.

Kansas: Kansans celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Guilty: An Allegheny County jury on Friday convicted retired Carnegie Mellon University history professor Edward Constant II (age 61) of trying to kill two Mt. Lebanon police officers who responded to a drunken marital spat at Constant's house in 2002.

Scotland: Archaeologists have found evidence that the earliest Scots were braving the Cairngorms treacherous peaks at least seven thousand years ago--far earlier than suspected.

Anniversary: France and Britain celebrated 100 years of peace and the signing of the Entente Cordiale in 1904. But a poll shows that while nearly three quarters of the British (73%) visited France but less one on ten (9%) feels an affinity with the French.

History IQ: The British are a nation of history dunces with many believing Adolf Hitler never existed, a new survey has revealed.

JFK: The History Channel has apologized for airing a documentary that claimed LBJ was behind JFK's murder: "We have a great responsibility and this time we did not live up to it."

9-11 COMMISSION: Last Monday morning 9/11 commission executive director Philip Zelikow faxed a photograph to the White House counsel's office with a note saying that if the White House didn't allow national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify in public before the commission, the photograph would"...be all over Washington in 24 hours," Newsweek has learned. The photo, from a Nov. 22, 1945, New York Times story, showed presidential chief of staff Adm. William D. Leahy, appearing before a special congressional panel investigating the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

NEH: Historians rallying to save the NEH budget by appealing to members of the Senate.

Week of 3-29-04

JFK: The History Channel will feature a special program Wednesday night at 8pm (April 7) dissecting the credibility of The Guilty Men, a British documentary that claimed LBJ was behind JFK's murder. The documentary, broadcast by The History Channel last year, was denounced by former President Gerald Ford and others. The special features historian Stanley Kutler and Bob Dallek, who were hired to review the film. Kutler concludes it's bunk.

Funding Cuts: The House subcommittee that sets spending levels for the National Endowment for the Humanities is taking aim at the $30 million We the People project, which is designed to train history teachers. The subcommittee chairman questioned the necessity of sending teachers to places like Pearl Harbor and Mount Vernon. Couldn't more teachers be trained if they stayed home? (subscribers only)(Click here for a more optimistic account of the hearing.)

Colonial Genocide: Namibians upset that on his recent visit to Africa Gerhard Schroeder bypassed their country; apology wanted "for what historians have termed the biggest genocide committed on African soil during colonial times."

Black History Museum: Detroit's Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, in a first, is directly asking local black churches to help provide support. "At service, we simply say, 'Give what you can.'"

Obituary: Derek Jarrett was best known to the world at large for his definitive four-volume edition of Horace Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, for a series of rigorously researched comparative studies of 18th- century England and France, and for his thoughtful and combative reviews in the New York Review of Books.

Explorers: The discovery of unpublished diaries has for the first time revealed the strained relations between Scott of the Antarctic and his second in command.

Queen: In the event of a nuclear attack on Britain, the Queen was to be taken to a secret cabinet bunker and then flown out of the country, possibly to Canada, secret government files show.

Obituary: George H. Hamilton, a leading authority on modern art, as died at age 93. "George Hamilton was the most important American scholar of modern art in the 20th century, no question," Richard Brettell, professor of aesthetic studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, said.

Korea: In a politically touchy move, an official re-evaluation of the man who killed Korea's military dictator, President Park Chung Hee, is getting under way to determine whether the assassin should be looked upon as a heroic fighter for democracy.

Nukes: A claim that Britain considered using live chickens in a nuclear weapon aroused skepticism Thursday, but officials insisted it was not an April Fool's hoax. "It's a genuine story," said Robert Smith, head of press and publicity at The National Archives. The archives released a secret 1957 Ministry of Defence report showing that scientists contemplated putting chickens in the casing of a plutonium landmine.

Historian Selected: The Asia Society, founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller III to foster understanding of Asia, has a new president, Vishakha N. Desai, the first woman and the first Asian-American to head the organization. She was trained in art history.

Presidential Papers: A case involving the release of papers of former presidents has ended with no clear result. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of Federal District Court in Washington dismissed a lawsuit brought by historians challenging a Bush executive order that expands a president's power to keep secret a former president's papers, saying that the case was moot.

Corruption: Suharto heads the list of leaders of third world countries who plundered their treasuries, according to a new survey compiled by Transparency International. Suharto suspected of stealing more than $15 billion, Marcos more than $5 billion.

Argentina: President Kirchner dedicatesa "museum of memory" to honor the victims of Argentina's harsh military rule.

Slavery: Descendants of black American slaves are suing London's oldest insurance firm, Lloyd's of London, for compensation for allegedly underwriting the ships used in the slave trade.

Alamo: Critics worry that Alamo traditionalists may not like the new Disney version.

Anti-Semitism: Attacks against Jews in Europe have sharply increased, says a report by a European anti-racism watchdog. The study singles out Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain, where it says the rise in anti-Semitism has been of particular concern.

Anti-Semitism: Attacks against Jews in Europe have sharply increased, says a report by a European anti-racism watchdog. The study singles out Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain, where it says the rise in anti-Semitism has been of particular concern.

Textbooks: Report by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute concludes that Pakistani textbooks are rife with biased comments about Hindus: they portray Hindus as backward and superstitious, burning their widows and wives. They portray Brahmins as inherently cruel, asserting their power over the weak, especially Muslims and Shuddras.

Pope: The Pope says that "Christ is the great interpreter and Lord of history, who reveals the hidden thread of divine action that runs through it."

Iraq: NYT says 10 months after it was looted, the Iraq Museum has recovered half its artifacts.

Nixon: Bob Woodward one of 6 panelists at a symposium in memory of Watergate, nearly 30 years after Nixon's resignation.

Iraq: NYT reports that the Bush administration is using Vietnam as a template in choosing the first ambassador to the new Iraq; the choice: select someone like Henry Cabot Lodge, as Kennedy did, or Gen. Maxwell Taylor, as LBJ did.

Obituary: Historian Michael King, author of a celebrated history of New Zealand, has died. He and his wife were killed in a car crash.

Israel: Historian Lawrence Davidson (West Chester University, PA) has issued an open letter signed by 300 people to protest alleged academic violations of freedom at Palestinian universities by Israel. Previously, he helped organize a worldwide boycott of Israel. Israeli leaders say he holds Israel to a double standard.

Fired: Editor of the American Scholar says she was fired. She disputes charge that it was because of budget problems.

Obituary: Alistair Cooke, the urbane and erudite journalist who was a peerless observer of the American scene for almost 70 years, died at his home in New York, the BBC said today. He was 95.

Kerry: A San Francisco-area historian yesterday reported the theft of three boxes of confidential FBI documents, some detailing government surveillance of presidential hopeful John F. Kerry when he was a spokesman for a 1970s veterans group protesting the Vietnam War. "I don't know who could have done this," Gerald Nicosia said yesterday. "It could be somebody who saw the boxes via news reports and wanted a piece of the presidential candidate for posterity, like a piece of the Berlin Wall."

Hitler: The Hitler Cup, commissioned by Adolf Hitler for the winners of a golf tournament after the Berlin Olympics and thought missing for decades, has turned up in Glasgow. The whereabouts of the amber-encrusted brass salver have been the source of competing theories since it provoked a temper tantrum from Hitler when it was won unexpectedly by English golfers in 1936, the Daily Telegraph said.

Racism: Two proposed state laws could change some Florida place names, replacing racially offensive epithets with names more acceptable by today's standards. The issue divides proponents who say the offensive names are a "needless irritant" and others who fear changing place names will cause us to lose parts of our history.

Week of 3-22-04

Historians Against the War: At the annual meeting of the OAH, the executive board approved a resolution sponsored by Historians Against the War (HAW) to investigate alleged instances of repression involving historians. Eric Foner and James Horton signed a HAW petition denouncing the "doctrine of pre-emptive war."

Library of Congress: The LC has picked another round of historic recordings, adding them to the government's official "national register." The list includes William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech (reenactment).

Jail for a Historioan?: The controversy over American scholar James Laine's book Shivaji: Hindu king in Islamic India took a new turn on Monday with Maharashtra's home minister and state NCP president R R Patil deciding to seek Interpol's help in arresting and bringing the author to Mumbai.

Disney: 2 of Disney's big history epics are in trouble: Hidalgo cost $140 million and has taken in just $49 million; the upcoming Alamo cost $107 million ... $32 million over budget ... and the critics suspect the movie's going to flop. Disney delayed the Christmas opening by months.

Plagiarism: A George Mason University review panel has rejected the claims of plagiarism directed against author and George Mason faculty member Beverly Lowry and her Knopf biography, Her Dream of Dreams: The Rise and Triumph of Madam C.J.Walker.

DNA: The mystery over whether Queen Victoria had an illegitimate grandson could be decided by DNA tests - if the country's highest ecclesiastical court allows a body to be exhumed in Kent.

Confederacy: Joseph A. Ridgeaway, a Confederate Navy quartermaster and a crewman aboard history's first successful attack submarine, H.L. Hunley, to be buried nearly 140 years after he died.

History Theme Park: Lincoln, Illinois officials are considering building a Disney-style Lincoln theme park to help their economically stagnant community; Richard Norton Smith commented: "Can you just quote my laughter?"

Bush and Saud: A controversial new book that casts a critical eye on the three-decade-old relationship between the Bush and Saud families, "House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties," by Craig Unger, has been dropped by its British publisher just weeks before it was scheduled to arrive in stores.

Korea & Japan: South Korea and Japan have agreed to produce a comprehensive report next year, containing the results of a three-year bilateral research on the history they share.

History Channel: History Channel announces six new series on its primetime schedule this year as part of its 2004-05 programming slate.

Tulsa Race Riot: Survivors of a race riot that destroyed Tulsa's black neighborhood 83 years ago cannot seek reparations in court because of the long-expired statute of limitations, a federal judge has ruled.

Censorship: Under Putin Russians are once again rewriting history; a new textbook on 20th century Russian history makes no mention of Stalin's ethnic deportations (perhaps to avoid a "distorting" connection with the current Chechen war), largely reduces the period of the Red Terror to 1936-38 and describes the years of Putin's rule in laudatory terms.

Censorship: BJP leader and former deputy chief minister Gopinath Munde has called for a ban on the floor of the assembly on Jawaharlal Nehru's book Discovery of India.

Segregation: Hoping to preserve buildings that tell the history of segregation, struggles and successes, Phoenix today embarks on a $40,000 study to identify properties important to the African-American community.

Carter: In an interview with a British newspaper former president Jimmy Carter said: "There was no reason for us to become involved in Iraq last year. That was a war based on lies and misinterpretations from London and Washington, claiming falsely that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, claiming falsely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."

Kerry: As a high-profile activist who crossed the country criticizing the Nixon administration's role in the Vietnam War, John F. Kerry was closely monitored by FBI agents for more than a year, according to intelligence documents reviewed by the LAT.

Mass Graves: The Guardian reports that dramatic corroboration of the massacre of Afghan prisoners by the US-backed Northern Alliance at the start of the war in 2001 has been provided by American pathologists commissioned to investigate the claims by the UN.

History Standards: History professors at Georgia's two largest universities blasted the proposed social studies curriculum for middle and high school students, saying it would leave young Georgians poorly prepared for college and for citizenship.

Emmett Till: The Justice Department is considering acting on new evidence in the decades-old case of Emmett Till, the black 14 year old who was killed while visiting Mississippi after he allegedly whistled at a white woman.

Week of 3-15-04

Plagiarism: Connecticut college president facing claims that he plagiarized material for an op-ed column published in The Hartford Courant announced his retirement on Friday.

Slavery: A historian has found a 19th century cemetery near Lexington, VA, with gravemarkers that have African symbols etched on their surface, a rare link to the nation's slave-trading past. Rachel Malcolm-Woods, a James Madison University teacher, said the inscriptions, or ideograms, are from the West African Igbo culture and could be the only known examples in the United States.

Mussolini: Secret papers show Mussolini tried to stop persecution of Jews.

Barbara Bush: Bush mum fears repeat of history.

Greece: The new Greek government has stopped work on a pounds 700 million museum being built to house the Elgin Marbles and legal action has begun against those who authorised the project.

Bancroft Prize: Books on the Civil War, theologian Jonathan Edwards and the struggles of Southern blacks were this year's winners of the prestigious Bancroft Prize for history sponsored by Columbia University.

Mel Gibson Movie: The film Hollywood predicted would bomb has exploded, threatening to shatter all-time box-office records as the highest-grossing motion picture in film history.

Genocide: President Paul Kagame of Rwanda yesterday accused France of direct responsibility for the 1994 genocide of at least 800,000 people in the central African country.

Black Women's History: Historians say that black women's history is finally coming its own.

Flunking History: Questions raised about the usefulness of the Kerry campaign's comparison of Bush and Hoover; just 43 percent of the 634 adults questioned by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey correctly identified Herbert Hoover as a past president.

Daniel Pipes: Pipes denounced an event sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace on which he serves; Pipes says that the USIP is working with an organization whose personnel is associated to a group that celebrated 9-11.

Middle East Studies: Columbia University has released the names of the donors who endowed the Edward Said Chair; critics note the list includes the United Arab Emirates among the donors.

Supreme Court: Justice Scalia, in defense of his duck hunting vacation with Dick Cheney, cites numerous examples from history where Supreme Court justices socialized with presidents.

World War II: Fifty-nine years after he narrowly survived the Battle of Iwo Jima, Navajo code talker Teddy Draper Sr. finally has been awarded the Purple Heart by the U.S. Marine Corps.

Egyptian Grave: A grave believed to belong to courtiers or servants of King Aha, the first king of ancient Egypt's first dynasty, was uncovered by an American excavation mission in Abydos in Upper Egypt.

Confederate flag: A judge threw out a lawsuit by an outspoken Confederate flag supporter who sued four grocery store chains that stopped carrying his barbecue sauce because of his views.

Samuel Johnson: The Houghton Library at Harvard University has inherited the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of material relating to Samuel Johnson. It is one of the world's largest and most comprehensive compilations of 18th-century rare books, manuscripts and personal correspondence.

Supreme Court: A Kentucky Republican has introduced a new House bill, HR 3920, to allow Congress to override Supreme Court decisions.

Bill Clinton: Former President Bill Clinton's boyhood home in Hope Arkansas is up for sale on the Internet- based auction house E-Bay. Bids received thus far: over $250,000.

Award: A report by The Blade of Toledo that uncovered Vietnam-era war crimes kept secret for three and a half decades has received the Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers.

Plagiarism A majority of Central Connecticut State University's faculty senate stood solidly behind their embattled president Monday, voting in favor of retaining him despite accusations of plagiarism.

John Kerry: Kerry's no hero in one ex-crewman's eyes. Steven Michael Gardner served side by side with Kerry in Vietnam, was wounded under Kerry's command, and was manning twin .50-caliber machine guns on a night that has forever haunted Kerry - the night his crew killed a young boy in a sampan. But unlike many of Kerry's crewmates, Gardner has not appeared at Kerry's side at campaign rallies, and his view of Kerry at war is far different from the heroic view presented by others.

JFKJFK: Alvin Cluster, a World War II Navy officer and buddy of John F. Kennedy who rallied search parties when JFK's torpedo boat went missing in the South Pacific in 1943, died Monday in the Riverside County town of Rancho Mirage.

John Kerry Writer claims that Kerry attended a meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War in 1971 at which a resolution to assassinate conservative American politicians was voted down. Kerry denies being there; says he had already resigned from the organization, though three people claim he was present.

Plagiarism: Hartford Courant considering using plagiarism-detecting software in the aftermath of the revelation that a Central Connecticut State University president had plagiarized material for an opinion piece.

Slavery Reparations: A law professor at the University of Alabama has suggested that the institution apologize for owning slaves before the Civil War and possibly grant reparations to their descendants.

Indian Artifacts: Authorities crack a ring that was looting Indian artifacts; called one of the largest such rings ever.

Slavery Reparations: Brown University appoints a panel to investigate the possibility of paying reparations for slavery; several of the leading pioneers of the university were slave traders.

Obituary: Keith Hopkins, a professor at the University of Cambridge who was one of the first historians to use sociological methods to study the ancient Roman world, died last Monday at a hospice in Cambridge, England. He was 69.

Holocaust: Federal judge overseeing the distribution of the Holocaust funds from Swiss banks rules that the bulk of the money should go to those in poor countries, angering some families in the United States.

Week of 3-8-04

TEACHING Professor at Indiana University's department of applied health science ordered to stop teaching the history of terrorism in the Middle East after students complained the subject was outside their course's curriculum.

SEX HARASSMENT Historian Makkhan Lal, facing charges of sexual harassment and other irregularities, has been suspended as director of the Delhi Institute of Heritage Research and Management.

KERRY & VIETNAM Kerry no hero in one ex-crewman's eyes: Steven Michael Gardner served side by side with John Forbes Kerry in Vietnam, was wounded under Kerry's command, and was manning twin .50-caliber machine guns on a night that has forever haunted Kerry - the night his crew killed a young boy in a sampan. But unlike many of Kerry's crewmates, Gardner has not appeared at Kerry's side at campaign rallies, and his view of Kerry at war is far different from the heroic view presented by others.

PUTIN One of the reasons Putin is expected to win re-election is that he has restored peoples' faith in their own history.

SLAVES North African pirates abducted and enslaved more than 1 million Europeans between 1530 and 1780 in a series of raids which depopulated coastal towns from Sicily to Cornwall, according to new research.

CONFEDERATE HISTORY Powhatan County (Virginia) won't be joining 16 state municipalities that set aside April as Confederate History and Heritage Month.

CHICAGO Old chalkboards dating to the 1930s have been discovered at the Chicago Board of Trade during renovation; some will be donated to the Chicago Historical Society. They mark the time when trades were received by Morse code and posted on chalkboards.

BUSH FAMILY New book by Craig Unger, excerpted in Salon, claims the House of Saud paid to the Bush family and friends over the years at least $1.477 billion.

ROMAN COINS A man unearthed a priceless hoard of 20,000 Roman coins as he dug a new fishpond in his back garden. Experts say the money may date from the 4th Century and could be the biggest find of its kind in Britain.

FRANCE Rubens is so omnipresent in museums and collections, so renowned for his portraits and religious, historical and mythological paintings, that any retrospective of his work raises the question: Is there anything new to say? In France there is. Remarkably, a major Rubens exhibition that opened March 6 in this northern city is the first overview of his work to be presented in France.

SLAVE PEN Controversy in St. Louis over a new ball park, which some contend is being built on the grounds of a form slave pen. "Unfortunately, that area was known, somewhere between the old and new stadiums, for Lynch's slave pens," said Missouri Historical Society President Robert Archibald.

CHILE New evidence surfaces in the case of the young American filmmaker killed in Chile in 1973 shortly after Allende was overthrown; high officials in the security forces implicated.

GAYS The Chicago Historical Society makes a 5-year commitment to telling the story of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people; though few city residents may know it, the first gay rights organization in the country was started in Chicago by a postal worker on Dec. 10, 1924.

RELIGION Montana county considering a plan to treat a 10 commandments monument as a part of history to get around court decisions forbidding religious objects on public property. If enough money can be raised, the existing monument could be moved to the north edge of the courthouse property and displayed alongside monuments containing text from, for instance, the U.S. Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta and the 1972 Montana Constitution.

DIEN BIEN PHU Vietnam planning major celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu; in Geneva that same year following the military success, Ho Chi Minh secured peace in exchange for the division of the country into North Vietnam and South Vietnam at the 17th parallel.

OBITUARY Russell F. Weigley, 73, a Temple University history professor emeritus whose acclaimed books about military history ranged from an examination of individual battles and personalities to a comprehensive look at American military strategy, died March 3 at his home in Philadelphia after a heart attack.

WW II Fittings and artefacts from the infamous Changi Prison in Singapore will be sent to Australia as part of plans to preserve sections of the Singapore jail where thousands of Allied troops were held by the Japanese in World War II.

BOER WAR The graves and headstones of Breaker Morant and scores of other Australian Boer War fighters have been ransacked and vandalised in South Africa. Armed thieves have stolen metal plaques, crosses and marble tombstones from cemeteries marking the death or disappearance of more than 600 young Australians from 1899-1902.

GALLIC CULTURE France has opened a new front in its battle to defend Gallic culture from the encroachment of the English language by offering crash courses in French to senior diplomats from the 10 countries about to join the European Union.

PLAGIARISM Richard L. Judd, the president of Central Connecticut State University guilty of plagiarism; copied portions of an op ed he wrote for the Hartford Courant; compard with Goodwin and Ambrose.

MUSEUM British Museum hailed for its makeover as a world-class institution.

MICHELANGELO Restoration work on Michelangelo's David has removed around two-thirds of the dirt and sulphate on the statue; work to be finished by May.

ANTONY British Museum expert believes the figures adorning the ancient Portland Vase are Antony and Cleopatra.

MEXICO President Miguel de la Madrid, who governed Mexico for most of the 1980's, confirms in his new memoir that his party stole the election of 1988.

GODZILLA After 50 years of smashing Tokyo and wrestling with Mothra, it's time for Japan's most beloved monster to take a breather: film company to stop producing new Godzilla movies.

RETIREMENT Alistair Cook, age 95, retires his BBC radio column, which began in 1946.

LUCY Archaeologists studying human origins in eastern Ethiopia say a wealth of new finds meant they could hope to discover even older and more complete specimens than the famous fossil "Lucy."

STATUES Experts work to save Easter Island statues; may use a chemical to stabilise the stone monoliths, which have become severely eroded.

CHICAGO COW Perhaps it was not Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern that sparked the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed the downtown area and claimed 300 lives. New research lends credence to an alternative explanation: The fire, along with less-publicized and even more deadly blazes the same night in upstate Wisconsin and Michigan, was the result of a comet fragment crashing into Earth's atmosphere.

ANCIENT WONDERS Iraq, torn apart by years of war and sanctions, remains so rich in hidden ancient wonders that a leading expert believes the world's archaeology books will have to be rewritten over the next decade.

HUMAN FOSSILS Experts analyzing remains of a man, woman and teenage boy unearthed in Romania last year are convinced that the 35,000 year-old fossils are the most complete ever of modern humans of that era.

PERU Dozens of mummies dating back more than 500 years have been discovered on the path of a proposed highway on the outskirts of the Peruvian capital, near an Inca graveyard.

TERRORISM Knight-Ridder finds little evidence to substantiate a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda.

JUAN COLE Historian Juan Cole is organizing scholars to oppose the creation of an advisory board to monitor Middle East studies.

Week of 3-1-04

Ohio legislature considers bill requiring every classroom, auditorium and cafeteria in the state to display the mottos "With God, All Things are Possible" and "In God we Trust" hanging in separate frames measuring at least 11-by-14 inches; follows action by Mississippi and South Carolina.

US Mint replaces Monticello on the nickel with a design featuring a handshake below the inscription: Louisiana Purchase 1803"; Jefferson remains on the obverse.

Another species has been added to the family tree of early human ancestors; Long before Homo erectus, Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy, more than three million years ago) and several other distant kin, scientists are reporting today, there lived a primitive hominid species in what is now Ethiopia about 5.5 million to 5.8 million years ago.

New social studies requirements for all Minnesota students passed their first legislative test Thursday.

More from the Harry Blackmun papers: How his years on the court strained his old friendship with Warren Burger.

Author of a new well-received biography of political fixer Tommy Corcoran can't reveal where he works, says Senate Ethics Committee. (He serves as chief of staff for Senator John Kerry.)

The historic area around Rome�s centre is to be redesigned to give tourists an accurate impression of how the city once stood.

An online poll to decide the greatest Welsh person narrowly won by the former Labour politician Aneurin Bevan.

Honoring New France soldier d'Iberville stirs Newfoundland controversy; famed adventurer is recalled for attacks that killed more than 200.

NYT: His newly released papers indicate that in the 1970s he tilted right against a court that was leftwing, and in the 1980s tilted left against a conservative court.

Georgia voters overwhelmingly approve a new state flag that was backed by African-American groups, ending years of controversy over the Confederate-style flags of the past.

Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) plans to introduce a resolution in the House of Representatives later this month calling for schools to make Western civilization the centerpiece of their curricula.

Kerry and Bush now shown as cousins: 9th cousins twice removed, according to a private genealogical service.

A family in Sweden removed a tree from their garden and found a treasure: 280 silver coins from the early 11th century.

Scottish government to purchase treasures from an old English publishing house: a royalty check endorsed by Jane Austen, letters from Charles Darwin; stacks of correspondence with Lord Byron.

A graveyard of up to 70 gladiators has revealed the ancient Roman pugilists lived on a vegetarian diet.

2 of Kerry's Jewish relatives died in the Holocaust.

U.S. Treasury has warned publishers they may face grave legal consequences for editing manuscripts from Iran and other disfavored nations, on the ground that such tinkering amounts to trading with the enemy.

For several weeks, members of the Iraqi Governing Council have been trying to decide whether they should allow tens of thousands of Iraqi Jews who fled the country in the 1950's and in later years to return.

Houghton Mifflin buys Philip Roth's next novel about what life would have been like for the Jews of the United States had the aviation hero and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt for the presidency in 1940.

More controversy involving the German novelist who tells the story of the production of pornographic films screened at parties for the Nazi elite; Der Spiegel accuses the author of glamorizing the Third Reich

Sixty years later, France's Normandy region is again priming for an American D-Day invasion, hopefully by thousands of tourists.

New study confirms old suspicion that George Washington was sterile.

The papers of Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, author of the Roe v. Wade decision, to be opened this week; NYT and NPR given special access 2 months ago, raising questions that the news is being managed.

Journal of American History publishes a roundtable on "History's Ethical Crisis."

Barnard College has won the 2004 Theodore Hesburgh Award ($30,000) for pedagogical innovation. The award was announced at the American Council on Education convention in Miami on March 1. Reacting to the Past consists of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles informed by important texts.

Week of 3-8-04

TEACHING Professor at Indiana University's department of applied health science ordered to stop teaching the history of terrorism in the Middle East after students complained the subject was outside their course's curriculum.

SEX HARASSMENT Historian Makkhan Lal, facing charges of sexual harassment and other irregularities, has been suspended as director of the Delhi Institute of Heritage Research and Management.

KERRY & VIETNAM Kerry no hero in one ex-crewman's eyes: Steven Michael Gardner served side by side with John Forbes Kerry in Vietnam, was wounded under Kerry's command, and was manning twin .50-caliber machine guns on a night that has forever haunted Kerry - the night his crew killed a young boy in a sampan. But unlike many of Kerry's crewmates, Gardner has not appeared at Kerry's side at campaign rallies, and his view of Kerry at war is far different from the heroic view presented by others.

PUTIN One of the reasons Putin is expected to win re-election is that he has restored peoples' faith in their own history.

SLAVES North African pirates abducted and enslaved more than 1 million Europeans between 1530 and 1780 in a series of raids which depopulated coastal towns from Sicily to Cornwall, according to new research.

CONFEDERATE HISTORY Powhatan County (Virginia) won't be joining 16 state municipalities that set aside April as Confederate History and Heritage Month.

CHICAGO Old chalkboards dating to the 1930s have been discovered at the Chicago Board of Trade during renovation; some will be donated to the Chicago Historical Society. They mark the time when trades were received by Morse code and posted on chalkboards.

BUSH FAMILY New book by Craig Unger, excerpted in Salon, claims the House of Saud paid to the Bush family and friends over the years at least $1.477 billion.

ROMAN COINS A man unearthed a priceless hoard of 20,000 Roman coins as he dug a new fishpond in his back garden. Experts say the money may date from the 4th Century and could be the biggest find of its kind in Britain.

FRANCE Rubens is so omnipresent in museums and collections, so renowned for his portraits and religious, historical and mythological paintings, that any retrospective of his work raises the question: Is there anything new to say? In France there is. Remarkably, a major Rubens exhibition that opened March 6 in this northern city is the first overview of his work to be presented in France.

SLAVE PEN Controversy in St. Louis over a new ball park, which some contend is being built on the grounds of a form slave pen. "Unfortunately, that area was known, somewhere between the old and new stadiums, for Lynch's slave pens," said Missouri Historical Society President Robert Archibald.

CHILE New evidence surfaces in the case of the young American filmmaker killed in Chile in 1973 shortly after Allende was overthrown; high officials in the security forces implicated.

GAYS The Chicago Historical Society makes a 5-year commitment to telling the story of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people; though few city residents may know it, the first gay rights organization in the country was started in Chicago by a postal worker on Dec. 10, 1924.

RELIGION Montana county considering a plan to treat a 10 commandments monument as a part of history to get around court decisions forbidding religious objects on public property. If enough money can be raised, the existing monument could be moved to the north edge of the courthouse property and displayed alongside monuments containing text from, for instance, the U.S. Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta and the 1972 Montana Constitution.

DIEN BIEN PHU Vietnam planning major celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu; in Geneva that same year following the military success, Ho Chi Minh secured peace in exchange for the division of the country into North Vietnam and South Vietnam at the 17th parallel.

OBITUARY Russell F. Weigley, 73, a Temple University history professor emeritus whose acclaimed books about military history ranged from an examination of individual battles and personalities to a comprehensive look at American military strategy, died March 3 at his home in Philadelphia after a heart attack.

WW II Fittings and artefacts from the infamous Changi Prison in Singapore will be sent to Australia as part of plans to preserve sections of the Singapore jail where thousands of Allied troops were held by the Japanese in World War II.

BOER WAR The graves and headstones of Breaker Morant and scores of other Australian Boer War fighters have been ransacked and vandalised in South Africa. Armed thieves have stolen metal plaques, crosses and marble tombstones from cemeteries marking the death or disappearance of more than 600 young Australians from 1899-1902.

GALLIC CULTURE France has opened a new front in its battle to defend Gallic culture from the encroachment of the English language by offering crash courses in French to senior diplomats from the 10 countries about to join the European Union.

PLAGIARISM Richard L. Judd, the president of Central Connecticut State University guilty of plagiarism; copied portions of an op ed he wrote for the Hartford Courant; compard with Goodwin and Ambrose.

MUSEUM British Museum hailed for its makeover as a world-class institution.

MICHELANGELO Restoration work on Michelangelo's David has removed around two-thirds of the dirt and sulphate on the statue; work to be finished by May.

ANTONY British Museum expert believes the figures adorning the ancient Portland Vase are Antony and Cleopatra.

MEXICO President Miguel de la Madrid, who governed Mexico for most of the 1980's, confirms in his new memoir that his party stole the election of 1988.

GODZILLA After 50 years of smashing Tokyo and wrestling with Mothra, it's time for Japan's most beloved monster to take a breather: film company to stop producing new Godzilla movies.

RETIREMENT Alistair Cook, age 95, retires his BBC radio column, which began in 1946.

LUCY Archaeologists studying human origins in eastern Ethiopia say a wealth of new finds meant they could hope to discover even older and more complete specimens than the famous fossil "Lucy."

STATUES Experts work to save Easter Island statues; may use a chemical to stabilise the stone monoliths, which have become severely eroded.

CHICAGO COW Perhaps it was not Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern that sparked the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed the downtown area and claimed 300 lives. New research lends credence to an alternative explanation: The fire, along with less-publicized and even more deadly blazes the same night in upstate Wisconsin and Michigan, was the result of a comet fragment crashing into Earth's atmosphere.

ANCIENT WONDERS Iraq, torn apart by years of war and sanctions, remains so rich in hidden ancient wonders that a leading expert believes the world's archaeology books will have to be rewritten over the next decade.

HUMAN FOSSILS Experts analyzing remains of a man, woman and teenage boy unearthed in Romania last year are convinced that the 35,000 year-old fossils are the most complete ever of modern humans of that era.

PERU Dozens of mummies dating back more than 500 years have been discovered on the path of a proposed highway on the outskirts of the Peruvian capital, near an Inca graveyard.

TERRORISM Knight-Ridder finds little evidence to substantiate a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda.

JUAN COLE Historian Juan Cole is organizing scholars to oppose the creation of an advisory board to monitor Middle East studies.

Week of 3-1-04

Ohio legislature considers bill requiring every classroom, auditorium and cafeteria in the state to display the mottos "With God, All Things are Possible" and "In God we Trust" hanging in separate frames measuring at least 11-by-14 inches; follows action by Mississippi and South Carolina.

US Mint replaces Monticello on the nickel with a design featuring a handshake below the inscription: Louisiana Purchase 1803"; Jefferson remains on the obverse.

Another species has been added to the family tree of early human ancestors; Long before Homo erectus, Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy, more than three million years ago) and several other distant kin, scientists are reporting today, there lived a primitive hominid species in what is now Ethiopia about 5.5 million to 5.8 million years ago.

New social studies requirements for all Minnesota students passed their first legislative test Thursday.

More from the Harry Blackmun papers: How his years on the court strained his old friendship with Warren Burger.

Author of a new well-received biography of political fixer Tommy Corcoran can't reveal where he works, says Senate Ethics Committee. (He serves as chief of staff for Senator John Kerry.)

The historic area around Rome�s centre is to be redesigned to give tourists an accurate impression of how the city once stood.

An online poll to decide the greatest Welsh person narrowly won by the former Labour politician Aneurin Bevan.

Honoring New France soldier d'Iberville stirs Newfoundland controversy; famed adventurer is recalled for attacks that killed more than 200.

NYT: His newly released papers indicate that in the 1970s he tilted right against a court that was leftwing, and in the 1980s tilted left against a conservative court.

Georgia voters overwhelmingly approve a new state flag that was backed by African-American groups, ending years of controversy over the Confederate-style flags of the past.

Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) plans to introduce a resolution in the House of Representatives later this month calling for schools to make Western civilization the centerpiece of their curricula.

Kerry and Bush now shown as cousins: 9th cousins twice removed, according to a private genealogical service.

A family in Sweden removed a tree from their garden and found a treasure: 280 silver coins from the early 11th century.

Scottish government to purchase treasures from an old English publishing house: a royalty check endorsed by Jane Austen, letters from Charles Darwin; stacks of correspondence with Lord Byron.

A graveyard of up to 70 gladiators has revealed the ancient Roman pugilists lived on a vegetarian diet.

2 of Kerry's Jewish relatives died in the Holocaust.

U.S. Treasury has warned publishers they may face grave legal consequences for editing manuscripts from Iran and other disfavored nations, on the ground that such tinkering amounts to trading with the enemy.

For several weeks, members of the Iraqi Governing Council have been trying to decide whether they should allow tens of thousands of Iraqi Jews who fled the country in the 1950's and in later years to return.

Houghton Mifflin buys Philip Roth's next novel about what life would have been like for the Jews of the United States had the aviation hero and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt for the presidency in 1940.

More controversy involving the German novelist who tells the story of the production of pornographic films screened at parties for the Nazi elite; Der Spiegel accuses the author of glamorizing the Third Reich

Sixty years later, France's Normandy region is again priming for an American D-Day invasion, hopefully by thousands of tourists.

New study confirms old suspicion that George Washington was sterile.

The papers of Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, author of the Roe v. Wade decision, to be opened this week; NYT and NPR given special access 2 months ago, raising questions that the news is being managed.

Journal of American History publishes a roundtable on "History's Ethical Crisis."

Barnard College�s �Reacting to the Past� has won the 2004 Theodore Hesburgh Award ($30,000) for pedagogical innovation. The award was announced at the American Council on Education convention in Miami on March 1. Reacting to the Past consists of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles informed by important texts.

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