Breaking News
Highlights
- Vietnam Vet Stages Hunger Strike in Front of White House to Raise Awareness About PTSD
- 'Global warming' and '9/11': words that define the decade
- Klan Enters Debate Over Song at Ole Miss
- Senior counsel to 9-11 Commission claims the government sanitized the record to make itself look good
- Adolf Hitler is 'German Mussolini' warns 1924 French document
- Will a New Bear Market Bring Eugenics Movement Back? New Study from Socionomics Institute Says It's Happened in the Past, Could Happen Again
- New York Times Washington correspondent Jodi Kantor to write book on Obamas
- Sweden sends back Maori remains
- Obama confronts history on Great Wall of China
- Watergate 'Gap' Mystery to be Solved?
WEEK OF JUNE 25, 2007
Norman Mailer et al. say JFK conspiracy believers aren't all nuts
CIAs Dominican station was world’s 2nd largest, historian says
Germany considers rehabilitating soldiers executed for 'treason'
17th-century artifacts, but not many Jamestown Fort-period items
White House Drops Vice President's Dual-Role Argument as Moot
Town wonders how it got a Confederate flag (and what to do about it)
School named after eugenics leader is now Rosa Parks Middle School
Trove of F.B.I. Files on Lawyers Guild Shows Scope of Secret Surveillance
Senate Panel Provides $120M For Teaching American History Grants
Archaeologists uncover site where slaves, free blacks, immigrants worked together
WEEK OF JUNE 18, 2007
Changing Patterns in Social Fabric Test Netherlands' Liberal Identity
Canadian artifacts added to UN's Memory of the World Registry
WEEK OF JUNE 11, 2007
57 years later in Cuba a Hemingway founded fishing competition still going strong
Giuliani Cites Reagan, Not Bush, as Model for Strong Leadership
White supremacists from across the country gather for a trip to the Met.
Canadian Senate says museum should change display that riled vets
Chinese Minister rails: renovation projects damage similar to cultural revolution
The U.S. recruited Japanese speaking Nisei before Pearl Harbor
Chris Moseley Named Senior Vice President for History Chanel
African American Seeks to Prove A Genetic Link to James Madison
Senate votes to study treatment of Germans in U.S. during WWII
WEEK OF JUNE 4, 2007
Gerald R. Ford Prize Awarded for Expose of Bush's signing statements
With donation Computer History Museum buys archive of old machines
Tallahassee branch of the NAACP moving to historic black town
Publishers get clever with anniversary issues of books on 1857 Mutiny
Reunion to offer DNA, oral history to link slave descendants
Claim by insider: LBJ covered-up truth about Israel's attack in '67 on USS Liberty
Auction of war diaries of a member of the King's Scottish Borders
Elie Wiesel and other Jewish Leaders to Confront U.S. Jewish Leaders' Holocaust Record
UK conservative leader says history should celebrate success
Tokyo's 2,001-Foot Tower Will Be Tallest Freestanding Antenna
In Camden, Campbell Co. Says It May Go if Sears Building Stays
Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found Americas Before Columbus
Defense Officials Tried to Reverse China Policy, Says Powell Aide
Aboriginal war heroes whose only reward was discrimination and prejudice
New book details Hitler plot to kidnap pope, foiled by Nazi general
British historian's mistake led to sale of valuable tapestry
WEEK OF MAY 28, 2007
With Korea as Model, Bush Team Ponders Long Support Role in Iraq
Rochester still upset with mayor's plan to get rid of city historian
Saturday, June 30, 2007
The Break-In That History Forgot
Source: HNN Staff (6-30-07)
Egil "Bud" Krogh, one of the Watergate Plumbers, in an op ed in the NYT, claims the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist office was the real start of Watergate. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers.
Friday, June 29, 2007
What's Your Global IQ?
Source: Newsweek (7-9-07)
We are hoping to start a conversation about what we are calling Global Literacy—facts and insights about the world (some objective, some subjective) that we think are worth knowing. We are not saying this is all you need to know; just that what you are about to read amounts to a good start. Our perspective is that of an American publication, but our interests are global, and we invite you to write us with your own thoughts and suggestions; we will be returning to the subject in the coming months, and expect this large-scale undertaking to become an annual project.
As you will see, the questions we raise set up short reported essays; they are not just for brainy Trivial Pursuit fans (though those fans will love them). The topics range from terror to Jane Austen, the economy to Picasso, climate change to Muhammad Ali. For the competitive among you, a 130-question Global IQ test awaits, as does the e-mail to write us.
In a new NEWSWEEK Poll, more Americans were able to name the latest winner of "American Idol" (Jordin Sparks) than could identify the Chief Justice of the United States (John Roberts). We are not tut-tutting or wagging our fingers; there is nothing wrong with knowing the former; our view is that people should probably be fluent with both reality TV and the highest court in the land. Makes life more interesting. It is more troubling, though, that nearly half of the Americans we polled did not know that Judaism is older than Christianity and Islam, or that Libya does not border Iraq.
Norman Mailer et al. say JFK conspiracy believers aren't all nuts
Source: Letter to the editor of the NYT Book Review signed by Norman Mailer et al. (6-17-07)
Bryan Burrough's laudatory review of Vincent Bugliosi's book on the Kennedy assassination (May 20) is superficial and gratuitously insulting. ''Conspiracy theorists'' -- blithe generalization -- should according to Burroughs be ''ridiculed, even shunned ... marginalized the way we've marginalized smokers.'' Let's see now. The following people to one degree or another suspected that President Kennedy was killed as the result of a conspiracy, and said so either publicly or privately: Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon; Attorney General Robert Kennedy; John Kennedy's widow, Jackie; his special adviser dealing with Cuba at the United Nations, William Attwood; F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover (!); Senators Richard Russell (a Warren Commission member), and Richard Schweiker and Gary Hart (both of the Senate Intelligence Committee); seven of the eight congressmen on the House Assassinations Committee and its chief counsel, G. Robert Blakey; the Kennedy associates Joe Dolan, Fred Dutton, Richard Goodwin, Pete Hamill, Frank Mankiewicz, Larry O'Brien, Kenneth O'Donnell and Walter Sheridan; the Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman, who rode with the president in the limousine; the presidential physician, Dr. George Burkley; Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago; Frank Sinatra; and the ''60 Minutes'' producer Don Hewitt. All of the above, à la Burrough, were idiots.
Fred Thompson's senate papers suggest he's not rightwing
Source: Newsweek (6-25-07)
Fred Thompson has a gift for knowing just what to say to anyone, in any situation. In 1998, when Thompson was a Republican senator and a single man about town, New York socialite Georgette Mosbacher invited him to accompany her on an overseas trip. Thompson couldn't go, and summoned the full measure of his Tennessee charm in letting her down. "I am sitting here with a long face and broken heart as I contemplate sunsets on the Mediterranean, which I will not see," he wrote to Mosbacher on his official Senate stationery. "We must remember the unspoken vow that all United States senators take upon entering the Senate: I shall have no money, and I shall have no fun. I, of course regarding myself as an unconquerable soul, am still determined to break the second part of that vow."...
Intimate correspondence like this usually doesn't see light until long after a politician is dead and gone, or at least done with politics for good. Thompson apparently believed he had forever traded Washington for Hollywood when he agreed to put his eight years of Senate records, including personal correspondence, in a public archive at the University of Tennessee. The papers, which have gone largely unnoticed, offer an unusual glimpse at his life as a Washington fixture, and clues about how he might lead as a president—hints that might not please conservative voters who are intrigued by him but who know little about him....
Canadians' self-knowledge dismal, poll shows
Source: Globe & Mail (Canada) (6-29-07)
A new poll by the Dominion Institute shows that Canadians are faring dramatically worse today than they did in 1997 in a test of their knowledge of history, politics, culture and geography.
About 60 per cent would fail today a test similar to the one that immigrants take to become Canadian citizens. A decade ago, when the institute began quizzing Canadians, just 45 per cent were unable to score a passing grade by answering 12 out of 21 questions correctly.
Just as striking is the finding that immigrants have improved their knowledge in the past 10 years and did better than the general population in the latest quiz. About 70 per cent of first-generation Canadians passed, while a decade ago scores in the two groups were similar, with the edge going to those born in this country.
How to fight insurgents? Lessons from the French
Source: Christian Science Monitor (6-29-07)
The Pentagon held a screening in 2003 of "The Battle of Algiers," a movie about French troops winning control of the Algerian capital. President Bush says that he recently read Alistair Horne's authoritative history on the war, "A Savage War of Peace." And last fall, Christopher Harmon, who teaches a course on the Algerian war at the Marine Corps University (MCU) in Washington, lectured marines in Iraq about the Algerian model.
Here in Algeria, some of those who participated in that war find little use in the comparison. But the US military - and the American public - continues to study the 1954-62 Algerian war of independence for lessons on how to fight the insurgency in Iraq.
CIAs Dominican station was world’s 2nd largest, historian says
Source: http://www.dominicantoday.com (6-29-07)
SANTO DOMINGO.- During the United States intervention of Dominican Republic in April ,1965 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had the world’s second largest station in this country, only after Saigon, Vietnam, said the historian Bernard Vega yesterday.
He said that’s one of the reasons for the CIA’s many reports on Dominican Republic.
Bush's Plea For Executive Privilege Has Long History
Source: AP (6-29-07)
Executive privilege. Words famously seared into history when Richard M. Nixon struggled to keep the Watergate tapes private in a criminal investigation.
In a political drama that held the nation in suspense, Nixon took his case to the Supreme Court in 1974, arguing that he had an absolute right of executive privilege to withhold information. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against him and ordered him to turn over the tapes. Nixon resigned two weeks later.
Throughout the nation's history, presidents have repeatedly asserted executive privilege to keep secrets from the courts, the Congress and most anyone else.
No way for students to avoid Gallipoli, historians confirm
Source: Sydney Morning Herald (6-29-07)
THERE was never any suggestion that a national history curriculum should omit the study of Gallipoli, the historians who helped to draft it and the federal Education Minister said yesterday.
The president of the History Teachers Association of Australia, Nick Ewbank, who helped draft the curriculum, said Gallipoli was among the milestones for compulsory study. His fellow working party member, John Gascoigne, from the school of history and philosophy at the University of NSW, said Gallipoli was among the events in the draft curriculum that all students were required to study.
"It is certainly the case that you were expected to address these milestone events in the curriculum and Gallipoli was one of them," Professor Gascoigne said.
A spokesman for the Education Minister, Julie Bishop, said a media report that stated Gallipoli was not compulsory study was incorrect.
For preservationists, a victory at Brandywine
Source: http://www.philly.com (6-26-07)
Amid the kind of steaminess that plagued soldiers on Sept. 11, 1777, federal, state, and local officials reversed history Tuesday, turning the Battle of the Brandywine into an American victory - for preservationists.
On a scenic hillside in Chester County, the Brandywine Conservancy announced the purchase of the 100-acre Skirmish Hill Farm from the Odell family for $8 million last month. The sale completes a two-decade struggle to save this site and others nearby, where some of the bloodiest hand-to-hand combat of the American Revolution occurred.
"We may have lost the Battle of the Brandywine, but we sure as hell won this one," George A. "Frolic" Weymouth, chairman of the conservancy's board of trustees, said enthusiastically.
Search is on for John Paul Jones's ship
Source: Yorkshire Post (6-28-07)
The Americans will be taking to the high seas off the Yorkshire coast this summer in search of their nautical "Holy Grail". Martin Hickes reports on an expensive obsession.
THIS August, a flotilla of American scientists will mount a £175,000 expedition off Flamborough Head in search of a wreck, more than 200 years after it sank.
Two US teams will plunge into the North Sea in search of the flagship of a Scottish captain, known to the Brits as little more than a pirate, but to the Americans as a hero of the American Revolution and the "Father of the American Navy".
They are hoping to discover the legendary USS Bonhomme Richard, which sank in 1779 following a swashbuckling sea battle with the British Navy some 25 miles off the Yorkshire coast.
10,000 years ago they were farming in South America
Source: LAT (6-29-07)
South Americans were raising crops at least 10,000 years ago, about 5,000 years earlier than previously thought and nearly contemporary with the emergence of agriculture in the Old World, based on new ages obtained for agricultural samples excavated from the Andes 20 years ago.
"We always thought there was a gap of several thousand years before agriculture began in the New World," said archeologist Jack Rossen of Ithaca College in New York, one of the authors of the report in today's issue of the journal Science. The new find "is bringing it into line with dates from the Old World."
The plant remains found in the 1,500-foot-high Nanchoc Valley on the lower western slopes of the Andes were not native to the region but came from several other sites on the continent. So even though the communities were small and isolated, the residents were involved in some trade over fairly long distances.
The return of the Viking warship
Source: BBC (6-28-07)
On Sunday, 65 men and women will embark on one of the most ambitious, dangerous and important experimental archaeology projects ever undertaken.
They will attempt to sail a reconstructed Viking warship from Roskilde, Denmark, to Dublin, across some of the roughest seas in the world.
The ship, The Sea Stallion from Glendalough, is the most authentic Viking warship built in nine centuries. It's based on the largest of five ships that were excavated from the bottom of Roskilde fjord in 1962, opposite the small village of Skuldelev.
Brown once again is proving controversial
Source: NYT (6-29-07)
The five opinions that made up yesterday’s decision limiting the use of race in assigning students to public schools referred to Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 school desegregation case, some 90 times. The justices went so far as to quote from the original briefs in the case and from the oral argument in 1952.
All of the justices on both sides of yesterday’s 5-to-4 decision claimed to be, in Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s phrase, “faithful to the heritage of Brown.”
But lawyers who represented the black schoolchildren in the Brown case said yesterday that several justices in the majority had misinterpreted the positions they had taken in the litigation and had misunderstood the true meaning of Brown.
Related Links
Excerpts from the decision
Archives reveal more of Lady Chatterley
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-29-07)
Government disarray over a jury's decision that Lady Chatterley's Lover was not obscene is revealed today in files released by the National Archives.
Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, the Attorney General, and his deputy were involved in the 1960 prosecution at the Old Bailey, despite protestations at the time that it was not politically inspired.
Once Sir Reginald had read the first four chapters, he wrote to Sir Theobald Matthew, the director of public prosecutions: "If the remainder of the book is of the same character, I have no doubt that you were right to start proceedings."
Sir Jocelyn Simon, the solicitor general, was told to meet Sir Theobald "to discuss tactics".
The prosecution of Penguin Books for releasing the novel, with its "four-letter word descriptions" of Lady Chatterley's affair with the gamekeeper Mellors was a failure.
Queen needs 1m pounds for 'Crumblingham Palace'
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-29-07)
The Queen has appealed to ministers for an extra £1 million a year to help with urgent repairs after being told that Buckingham Palace is falling apart, it emerged yesterday.
One huge chunk of stone has already fallen from the East Wing facade into the quadrangle missing the Princess Royal's parked car by a few inches, her aides revealed.
Another chunk fell on the same day that hundreds of guests visited the palace to attend a science reception - though not when the visitors were there.
Such is the deterioration of the East Wing, made of Caen stone imported from France in 1847, that it was "now a major risk to health and safety", according to the Queen's public finance report released yesterday.
The deterioration of the Caen stone - unlike the more robust Bath stone used elsewhere in the palace - is said to be "very significant".
Unesco names World Heritage sites
Source: BBC (6-28-07)
The Sydney Opera House in Australia and the Red Fort in India have been added to a list of the world's most valuable cultural treasures.
A silver mine in Japan and an ancient fortress in Turkmenistan are also now on the Unesco World Heritage list.
Archaeological remains in Iraqi city of Samarra were inscribed and immediately registered as being in danger.
The organisation also agreed to change the official name of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland.
It will now be referred to as Auschwitz-Birkenau, German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945).
Poland sought the change to make clear it had no role in establishing or running the camp.
Germany considers rehabilitating soldiers executed for 'treason'
Source: Der Spiegel (6-29-07)
Most of the 30,000 Germans sentenced to death by Nazi Germany's military courts have been rehabilitated. So far, however, soldiers found guilty of treason -- in many cases unjustly, have been excluded. Now, though, Germany's parliament may be prepared to do just that.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Smithsonian Is Urged to Find a New Chief Fast
Source: NYT (6-27-07)
Citing a harsh report on missteps at the Smithsonian Institution, Senator Dianne Feinstein declared at a hearing on Tuesday that the museum complex should move quickly to replace its ousted top executive rather than take an estimated six months to a year.
“This represents significant jeopardy to the institution,” said Ms. Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. “I have a hard time understanding why we need this huge search period. When the cat’s away, the mice play.”
As Pakistan Chief Looks Ahead, Army Holds the Cards
Source: NYT (6-28-07)
Speculation has been rife in political circles recently that Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, may not survive his wrangle with the chief justice and hold on to power, but a great silence emanates from the one place that may count the most: the barracks and the mess halls of the armed forces, the other great part of Pakistan’s ruling equation....
Lady Bird Johnson Leaves Texas Hospital
Source: AP (6-28-07)
Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady, was released from the hospital Thursday and was resting comfortably at her home, a family spokesman said.
Johnson, 94, was admitted to Seton Medical Center a week ago and treated for a low-grade fever. She remained at the hospital for observation after the fever subsided.
"After a week of observation and tests, the doctors released Mrs. Johnson to go home," said family spokesman Neal Spelce. "Because of her stroke in 2002, her family and physicians always operate with caution.
Historic documents in Atlanta saved from the trash
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (6-28-07)
The caller on the phone did not identify himself, but Augusta historians call him "Deep Throat."
Have a van outside the courthouse at a certain hour, the caller said. Be prepared to load up several garbage bags full of documents.
In fact, the cache of historic records would eventually fill 40 to 50 boxes, and would include pre-Revolutionary War papers, some of them autographed by signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Because someone with connections didn't want to see those documents go into a landfill, the Augusta Genealogical Society received an anonymous tip.
If their contact had not placed a call, Button Gwinnett's signature, and others, would have been trashed, said Thomas Dirksen, Augusta historian, and past president of the society. "Those records would have disappeared, and no one would have thought twice," he said.
National Archives to Assume Control of Nixon Library
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH) (6-28-07)
On June 28, 2007, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) announced that the legal transfer of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace from the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation to the National Archives will take place on July 11, 2007.
Concurrently with the transfer, the new Nixon Library will open approximately 78,000 pages of previously withheld materials.
House saves NHPRC
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH) (6-28-07)
On June 28, 2007, the House of Representatives approved (240-179) the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill (H.R. 2829).
The bill includes $10 million for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), for grants to states, local governments, universities, local historical societies, and others to help preserve and archive materials of historic significance. The Administration had sought to eliminate the NHPRC. The Committee Report (H. Rept. 110-207) accompanying the bill directs that the $10 million will be split $8 million for grants, with $2 million allocated for administrative costs.
The President’s proposed fiscal year (FY) 2008 budget had targeted the NHPRC for elimination. The $10 million reflects a $2.5 million increase over FY ’07.
House Increases FY 2008 Funding for National Archives
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH) (6-28-07)
On June 28, 2007, the House of Representatives, by a vote of 240-179, approved the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill (H.R. 2829) . The bill includes $315 million ($2.1 million above the President’s request, and $35.7 million above fiscal year 2007) for operating expenses of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
The Committee Report (H. Rept. 110-207) accompanying the bill directs that the $2.1 million in additional funding be designated to restore evening and weekend hours for public research at the Archives that were eliminated last October.
Auction of Gandhi's letters no big deal: historians
Source: http://www.rediff.com (6-28-07)
The Prime Minister's Office in New Delhi has stepped up efforts through official channels to acquire the letters and manuscript written and signed by Mahatma Gandhi [Images] just before his assassination and which are coming up for auction in London [Images] on July 3.
Christie's has fixed the opening bid for the draft at 12,000 pounds (app Rs 9,80,000). The issue came up when Satya Paul, senior member of Servants of the People Society drew the government's attention to the sale.
However, many Gandhians and historians have expressed scepticism over the issue.
Many, including historian Ramchandra Guha, are of the view that the issue will only benefit Christie's, the renowned auction house.
Chicago Gangster underworld?
Source: Chicago Tribune (6-28-07)
Few people know it's there -- fewer know where it leads.
In the floor behind the bar at the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, a century-old jazz club in Uptown, lies a door. Beneath it: a musty labyrinth of gangster and Uptown history.
The World Below -- a series of tunnels branching underground from the Green Mill to the bookstore Shake, Rattle & Read a few doors away -- mixes myth and fable, dusty boilers and blood-splattered urinals (more on this in a moment).
In the mid-1910s, the Green Mill was an exclusive hangout for Essanay Studio executives and early film stars such as Charlie Chaplin and Wallace Beery. In recent decades, jazz musicians such as Clifford Jordan, Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr. have graced its stage. But tales of Jazz Age Chicago, when gangsters such as "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn and boss Alphonse Capone defied Prohibition, are most prominent down below.
Cash-Strapped Death Camp Memorial Sites Struggle to Survive
Source: http://www.dw-world.de (6-27-07)
Germany's memorial sites at Nazi concentration camps are in dire economic straits. They are calling for more political responsibility to ensure that they can continue to fulfill their educational task.
The Dachau concentration camp memorial site near Munich receives over 800,000 visitors per year. Internationally, it is among the best-known sites commemorating the memory of the millions who perished in the Holocaust in Europe.
But faced with an acute cash crunch, memorial centers strewn across Germany, Dachau included, are increasingly struggling to carry out their primary task: educating future generations about the horrors of the Holocaust and the valuable lessons they hold for humanity.
Germany to pardon last troops Hitler executed
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-28-07)
Germany is poised to pardon the very last soldiers who were executed during the Second World War for betraying the Nazi regime.
But the move, which follows a decades-long national debate, has revived bitter differences of opinion over what remains an acutely sensitive subject.
The handful of men were among 30,000 German soldiers who were sentenced to death during the war for a variety of "crimes" from desertion to espionage.
Of those, 16,000 were hanged, shot, garrotted or guillotined by a regime determined to crush the merest hint of insurrection in the ranks.
While the vast majority, including deserters, were pardoned under a 2002 law, a few dozen remain with their posthumous reputations tarred.
Gen. Grant's Sword Draws $1.6M Bid
Source: ABC News (6-25-07)
A diamond-adorned sword once owned by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant brought a winning bid of more than $1.6 million in an auction of Civil War items.
The sword given to Grant, who later became the 18th president, was one of the marquee items among the 750 to be auctioned Sunday and Monday by Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas.
17th-century artifacts, but not many Jamestown Fort-period items
Source: http://www.dailypress.com (6-26-07)
Jamestown Rediscovery archaeologists picked their way through nearly 1,500 cubic feet of soil this past week, exposing parts of the historic English fort that have not been seen since slaves transformed the site into a Confederate earthwork during the Civil War. The newly uncovered landscape includes evidence of several early fort-period features, including postholes and a possible grave shaft. But far more prominent and still growing is a large, artifact-filled boundary ditch that dates to the last half of the 1600s.
Shallow Okeechobee reveals pool of artifacts
Source: Miami Herald (6-27-07)
The epic drought gripping Lake Okeechobee has opened a mud-spattered window into Florida's prehistoric past.
Since March, falling water levels have exposed 21 archaeological sites -- for now, the locations a secret to the public. Thousands of artifacts have been unearthed, including pieces of pottery, shell pendants, candleholders, arrowheads and fishing weights.
Human bones, too.
Archaeological teams from the state and Palm Beach County are hunting for still more relics before the rains take hold and they are lost to the lake again.
''It isn't exactly Indiana Jones,'' said Briana Delano, a state archaeologist.
And yet, the endeavor evokes just that image.
Invoking Brown, SCOTUS strikes down school diversity plans
Source: NYT (6-28-07)
In a decision of sweeping importance to educators, parents and schoolchildren across the country, the Supreme Court today sharply limited the ability of school districts to manage the racial makeup of the student bodies in their schools.
The court voted, 5 to 4, to reject diversity plans from Seattle and Louisville, Ky., declaring that the districts had failed to meet “their heavy burden” of justifying “the extreme means they have chosen — discriminating among individual students based on race by relying upon racial classifications in making school assignments,” as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the court....
CIA Documents: Student Dissenters Under Scope
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (6-28-07)
The Central Intelligence Agency's release on Tuesday of more than 700 documents detailing some of its most closely guarded secrets was a reminder of some of the agency's most notorious excesses -- including political assassinations and eavesdropping on American journalists. But the document dump also shed a bit more light on the CIA's early interest in student dissenters, in the United States and elsewhere.
The fact that the agency tracked student dissent was previously detailed in prominent reports on the CIA's activities published in the 1970s -- including those assembled by a commission created by President Gerald R. Ford and headed by Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller, and by a U.S. Senate committee led by Sen. Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho.
The CIA's monitoring of students' activities against the Vietnam War was coordinated by a group within the agency labeled Operation CHAOS, which was given the task of tracking foreign influence in American antiwar movements, including student-led groups.
White House Drops Vice President's Dual-Role Argument as Moot
Source: NYT (6-28-07)
The White House has dropped the argument that Vice President Dick Cheney’s dual role as president of the Senate meant that he could deny access to national archivists who oversee the handling of classified data in the executive branch.
Mr. Cheney’s office had said that his dual role meant that he was technically not part of the executive branch.
In interviews over the last two days, officials have said that while the vice president does, in fact, have the right of refusal, it is for the very opposite reason: He is not required to cooperate with National Archives officials seeking the data because he is a member of the executive branch, with power vested in him by the president.
The White House was in effect walking away from a fight over Mr. Cheney’s place within the Constitution that it has clearly not relished since the dispute broke wide into public view last week.
White House Rebuffs Congress in Firings Inquiry
Source: NYT (6-28-07)
The White House announced today that it was invoking executive privilege to reject subpoenas for internal documents that Congress is seeking in its investigation into the firings of nine federal prosecutors last year.
The White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, made clear that the Bush administration would not release documents from two senior officials — Harriet E. Miers, the former counsel to the president, and Sara M. Taylor, the director of political affairs — and that it would not allow them to testify before Congress. The White House has rejected previous requests from the Senate and House judiciary committees to interview presidential aides, saying instead that it would allow interviews in private if no transcripts were kept.
“It is with much regret that we are forced down this unfortunate path which we sought to avoid by finding grounds for mutual accommodation,” Mr. Fielding said in a statement. “We had hoped this matter could conclude with your committees receiving information in lieu of having to invoke executive privilege. Instead, we are at this conclusion.”
New documents link Kissinger to two 1970s coups
Source: The People's Voice (6-28-07)
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger pushed for the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus and allowed arms to be moved to Ankara for an attack on that island in reaction to a coup sponsored by the Greek junta, according to documents and intelligence officers with close knowledge of the event.
Dozen bishops tied to Polish secret police
Source: Buffalo News (6-28-07)
Documents in secret police files show that about a dozen bishops still alive had ties to Poland’s communist-era secret services, a Catholic Church commission said Wednesday.
WaPo series exposes Cheney's grip on Bush White House
Source: Washington Post (6-28-07)
Dick Cheney is the most influential and powerful man ever to hold the office of vice president. This series examines Cheney's largely hidden and little-understood role in crafting policies for the War on Terror, the economy and the environment.
Sunday: Part 1 Working in the Background
A master of bureaucracy and detail, Cheney exerts most of his influence out of public view.
Monday: Part 2 Wars and InterrogationsConvinced that the "war on terror" required "robust interrogations" of captured suspects, Dick Cheney pressed the Bush administration to carve out exceptions to the Geneva Conventions.
Sidebar: Cheney on Presidential Power
Tuesday: Part 3 Dominating Budget Decisions
Working behind the scenes, Dick Cheney has made himself the dominant voice on tax and spending policy, outmaneuvering rivals for the president's ear.
Sidebar: Expanding Authority for No. 2 Spot
Sidebar: Taking on the Supreme Court Case
Dick Cheney steered some of the Bush administration's most important environmental decisions -- easing air pollution controls, opening public parks to snowmobiles and diverting river water from threatened salmon.
Sidebar: Maintaining Connections
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Teaching history as current events
Source: http://www.ledger-enquirer.com (Columbus, Ohio) (6-27-07)
When we took it down from the wall, Barbara Romey treated the framed certificate like a delicate work of art. No one at the newspaper knew she was taking it. But because she's a historian, I knew she'd take good care of the Ledger's Pulitzer Prize.
OK, so it was the certificate. The gold Pulitzer medal is tucked away in a vault. That didn't diminish the value of this piece of paper that had been displayed at the newspaper since 1955.
Barbara and I met when her class from South Girard Junior High came to the Ledger-Enquirer to talk about the Phenix City cleanup. I expected blank stares and elementary questions. Not from her students. They were locked and loaded.
Claim: U.S. Government took part in Trujillo's execution
Source: http://www.dominicantoday.com (6-26-07)
SANTO DOMINGO.- A journalist and historian said there’s "forceful and irrefutable" proof of the United States Government’s participation in the plot to physically eliminate the dictator Rafael Trujillo.
Víctor Grimaldi, in a 12 page document published in: osersosa.blogspot.com, said to deny the U.S. took part in Trujillo’s death is to “try to block the sun with a finger.”
He said in the first interrogations into the judicial case in June 2, 1961 –which can be obtained on the Internet- several of Trujillo’s executioners said their plans to kill Trujillo and to take power had the U.S. Government’s support.
He said at as a plot the May 30 affair was a failure because only the regime’s most visible head was eliminated.
We should be taking Monday off, not Wednesday
Source: Forbes (6-26-07)
If John Adams had had his way, Independence Day this year would be celebrated on a Monday, providing everyone with a three-day weekend. Instead, this holiday celebrating freedom remains subject to the tyranny of the calendar, which this year dictates that Independence Day falls on Wednesday, July 4.
But July 4 was not, in fact, the date on which the Second Continental Congress voted to dissolve the bonds that connected the 13 colonies to Great Britain. Lots of momentous events have occurred on July 4, but that historic vote wasn't one of them.
If anyone could be considered an expert on American independence, it was Adams. The dyspeptic delegate from Massachusetts was the primary advocate for Richard Henry Lee's historic resolution that "these united colonies are and of a right ought to be free and independent States." The resolution was introduced on June 7, 1776. When Congress finally adopted it on July 2, Adams exulted.
Justice Stevens Calls On History He Lived
Source: WaPo (6-27-07)
Justice John Paul Stevens, the third-oldest person ever to sit on the Supreme Court, turned 87 on April 20. If he's still on the court 142 days from now, he'll overtake Roger B. Taney, who died as chief justice in 1864 at the age of 87 years 209 days.
Stevens still has a long way to go if he wants to catch Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who was 90 when he retired from the court in 1932. But he has already started invoking his considerable life experience to buttress his opinions.
Lucy Fossil Approved for US Tour
Source: AP (6-27-07)
The U.S. State Department gave final approval Wednesday, June 27, 2007, for one of the world's most famous fossils, the 3.2 million-year-old Lucy skeleton unearthed in Ethiopia in 1974, to tour the U.S. on exhibit for the first time. The Smithsonian has objected to the idea, however, because museum experts don't think the fragile remains should travel, so Lucy won't be stopping at the National Natural History Museum, but in other U.S. museums instead.
Photo Tampering an Age-Old Practice
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (6-27-07)
Think the idea of "Photoshopping" pictures is new? Photo tampering goes back to at least around 1860, though the methods were far more low-tech than today (but surprisingly convincing). Apparently this image of Abraham Lincoln is a mash-up of Lincoln's head and John Calhoun's body. Hany Farid, a Dartmouth University professor of computer science, lays out several examples of photo tampering through the ages and points to tools to detect a cut-and-paste job. We saw it mentioned on the Viz blog on rhetoric, visual culture, and pedagogy.
Town wonders how it got a Confederate flag (and what to do about it)
Source: http://www.register-herald.com (6-9-07)
LEWISBURG , WV — Although historical Lewisburg’s abundant landscape of Civil War tales has been well documented, there is one chapter in its war-torn past that’s shrouded in mystery and continues to be embroiled in debate.
Unnoticed by many who live here is a white oval, approximately 6 feet in diameter, high upon the right-hand side wall of the two-story brick building located at 124 W. Washington St. And inside the oval is a red flag with criss-crossed blue bars flying from a post....
How a painted flag of this size can go relatively unnoticed in downtown Lewisburg is because of the building next door that was built sometime in the 1930s. There is about a 4-foot gap between the two buildings, and this obscures the flag from most viewpoints in the city.
However, the flag can easily be seen from the front doors of City Hall across the street. The Register-Herald requested comments about the flag from all seven council members, but only three responded. Mayor John Manchester said only two individuals have personally expressed dislike for the flag since he won office four years ago.
Half the World Soon to Be in Cities
Source: NYT (6-27-07)
By next year, more than half the world’s population, 3.3 billion people, will for the first time live in towns and cities, a number expected to swell to almost 5 billion by 2030, according to a United Nations Population Fund report released today.
The onrush of change will be particularly extraordinary in Africa and Asia, where between 2000 and 2030 “the accumulated urban growth of these two regions during the whole span of history will be duplicated in a single generation,” the report says.
This surge in urban populations, fueled more by natural increase than the migration of people from the countryside, is unstoppable, said George Martin, author of the report, “State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth.”
School named after eugenics leader is now Rosa Parks Middle School
Source: Press Release--Austin Aslan, Community Organizer, Sacramento ACT (6-21-07)
The SCUSD school board voted tonight to rename the former Goethe Middle School officially as Rosa Parks Middle School....
The vote was 5 in favor, with one abstention and 1 no vote. Member Michael Navarrete voted no on the grounds that he wanted a person with local roots to be put on the middle school.
Japan Plays for Time in Sex Slavery Standoff
Source: NYT (6-27-07)
Even before a United States Congressional panel overwhelmingly passed a resolution on Tuesday urging Japan to apologize for its wartime sex slavery, the Japanese government said it would have no comment.
But the vote of 39 to 2 by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs has set the stage for an adoption by the full House of Representatives next month, at which point Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will face pressure to respond in some way or another.
Already Mr. Abe, who initially said Japan would not apologize even if the resolution passed, has quieted his defiance in a bid to minimize its impact. In a news conference before the vote, Mr. Abe said he had no comment on the resolution, saying only that ties between Japan and the United States were “unshakable.”
Humans Have Spread Globally, and Evolved Locally
Source: NYT (6-26-07)
Historians often assume that they need pay no attention to human evolution because the process ground to a halt in the distant past. That assumption is looking less and less secure in light of new findings based on decoding human DNA.
People have continued to evolve since leaving the ancestral homeland in northeastern Africa some 50,000 years ago, both through the random process known as genetic drift and through natural selection. The genome bears many fingerprints in places where natural selection has recently remolded the human clay, researchers have found, as people in the various continents adapted to new diseases, climates, diets and, perhaps, behavioral demands.
A striking feature of many of these changes is that they are local. The genes under selective pressure found in one continent-based population or race are mostly different from those that occur in the others. These genes so far make up a small fraction of all human genes.
Human Family Tree Has Become a Bush With Many Branches
Source: NYT (6-26-07)
Time was, fossils and a few stone artifacts were about the only means scientists had of tracing the lines of early human evolution. And gaps in such material evidence were frustratingly wide....
[Now] new finds have filled in some of the yawning gaps in the fossil record. They have doubled the record’s time span from 3.5 million back almost to 7 million years ago and more than doubled the number of earliest known hominid species. The teeth and bone fragments suggest the form — the morphology — of these ancestors that lived presumably just this side of the human-ape split.
Trove of F.B.I. Files on Lawyers Guild Shows Scope of Secret Surveillance
Source: NYT (6-25-07)
One entry, dated April 14, 1954, was about I. F. Stone, who was described as being a writer from New York. Mr. Stone, it was noted, condemned Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s “persecution of innocent citizens” and likewise the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the Senate’s corresponding committee....
From 1940 to 1975, thousands of reports like these were part of extensive files compiled by the F.B.I. while it carried out a clandestine surveillance campaign on the National Lawyers Guild, an organization founded in New York in 1937 and associated with the labor movement and liberal causes.
They are among a trove of documents that archivists are poring over for the first time. The files provide a detailed history of the lawyers guild and include memos to and from the office of J. Edgar Hoover, internal F.B.I. analysis of the organization, typed and handwritten reports from covert informants and papers identifying people used by the agency to spy on the guild and other groups.
Tooth May Have Solved Mummy Mystery
Source: NYT (6-27-07)
A single tooth and some DNA clues appear to have solved the mystery of the lost mummy of Hatshepsut, one of the great queens of ancient Egypt, who reigned in the 15th century B.C.
Archaeologists who conducted the research, to be announced formally today in Cairo, said this was the first mummy of an Egyptian ruler to be found and “positively identified” since King Tutankhamen’s tomb was opened in 1922.
Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo, said Monday in a telephone interview that the mummy was found in 1903 in an obscure, undecorated tomb in the Valley of the Kings, across the Nile from modern Luxor, and had been largely overlooked for more than a century.
Glacier Girl Flies Again
Source: AP (6-22-07)
A World War II fighter plane once entombed under hundreds of feet of snow and ice in Greenland is back on a mission it began nearly 65 years ago.
Dubbed "Glacier Girl" after being recovered, the P-38 left Teterboro Airport on Friday for another leg of a journey toward Duxford, England, where it's scheduled to land June 29.
Fighter pilot Brad McManus, the first member of his squadron to crash-land onto a glacier in Greenland, is now the only pilot still alive from the group to see one of their planes finally reach England - a flight he never expected any of the damaged aircraft to complete.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Poland Appeals to Label Auschwitz as 'German'
Source: NPR (6-22-07)
Authorities in Poland want to change the name of the Auschwitz concentration camp to officially include the word "German" in the title. Poles hope that will end the problem of Poland being mistaken as the perpetrator.
The change was first discussed last summer. A decision will be made at the UNESCO conference at the end of June.
Related Links
Cliopatria blog
Senate Panel Provides $120M For Teaching American History Grants
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH) (6-21-07)
On June 21, the Senate Appropriations’ Committee approved the Labor, Health & Human Services and Education Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 appropriations bill. The Committee provided $120 million for the Teaching American History Grants program at the U.S. Department of Education. This is $210,000 more than last year’s budget and $70 million more than the President’s request.
The House Labor, HHS & Education Appropriations Subcommittee also provided $120 million for Teaching American History Grants when it adopted its version of the FY ‘08 appropriations bill on June 7. The House Appropriations Committee has yet to schedule its markup.
Juneteenth: Honoring history
Source: http://www.inrich.com (6-25-07)
Barbara Jackson-Bowens doubts she would have made it -- not across the ocean shackled side by side in a slave ship, up the James River to Richmond and then along the riverbank on a 3-mile march from the Manchester dock in the dark.
Yesterday, she came to that riverbank to pay homage to those who did survive. She was among the early arrivals at a Juneteenth celebration commemorating freedom from slavery.
An afternoon of ceremonies, speeches, music and dance preceded a torch-lit walk along the same trail that slaves walked in the years after colonization of Virginia.
Tracing her heritage to African, Cherokee and Dutch ancestors, Jackson-Bowens could claim kinship to all three groups represented at the ceremonies. So, when Upper Mattaponi Chief Kenneth F. Adams reflected on the English arrival in 1607 and its impact on blacks and Indians, "a lot of what he was saying speaks to me," she said.
Okinawa presses Tokyo on history texts
Source: http://www.asahi.com (6-23-07)
-The Okinawa prefectural assembly Friday unanimously adopted a statement urging Tokyo to retract its decision to omit from history textbooks the Japanese military's involvement in mass civilian suicides during the Battle of Okinawa.
"It is an undeniable truth that (mass suicides by Okinawa residents) would have never occurred without the involvement of the Imperial Japanese Army," the statement said.
A group of assembly members traveled to Tokyo to submit the request to the prime minister, the education minister and others.
The statement says the descriptions of the Imperial Japanese Army's involvement should be retained in the textbooks.
In First, Hindu Prayer Will Open Senate Session in July
Source: CNSnews.com (6-26-07)
For what is believed to be the first time in its history, the U.S. Senate will on July 12 be opened with a Hindu prayer, the Senate Chaplain's Office confirmed Monday.
For more than 200 years, the Senate has opened each workday with a prayer usually delivered by the Senate Chaplain, currently Barry Black, a Seventh Day Adventist. It is common, however, for senators to recommend religious leaders from their home states to serve as guest chaplains.
Rajan Zed, a Hindu chaplain from Nevada, on will become the first Hindu to deliver the morning prayer. In a statement announcing his scheduled appearance, Zed called the occasion "an illustrious day for all Americans and a memorable day for us."
Now ancestry.com takes on Native American history
Source: PRNewswire (6-26-07)
Ancestry.com, the world's leading online family history resource, today launched more than 7.5 million names in U.S. Indian Censuses, the largest online collection of Native American family history records. Taken by the Bureau of Indian affairs, the censuses document some 150 years of Native American family history. These censuses create an intimate portrait of individuals living on all registered Indian reservations between 1885 and the 1940s.
History students may skip Gallipoli
Source: Australian (6-27-07)
HIGH school students would be able to avoid studying Gallipoli and the Anzacs under the draft Australian history curriculum prepared as a result of last year's history summit.
The draft for high school history, obtained by The Australian, also overlooks the achievements of the Hawke-Keating governments and the economic reforms of the past 25 years.
A four-member committee that includes controversial historian Geoffrey Blainey and social commentator Gerard Henderson will now review the curriculum for the federal Government, and develop a national Australian history curriculum for Years 9 and 10.
Should Yale University return its relics of Machu Picchu?
Source: NYT Mag (6-24-07)
In many ways, the dispute between Yale and Peru is unlike the headline-making investigations that have impelled the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to repatriate ancient artifacts to their countries of origin. It does not revolve around criminal allegations of surreptitious tomb-raiding and black-market antiquities deals. But if the circumstances are unique, the background sentiments are not. Other countries as well as Peru are demanding the recovery of cultural treasures removed by more powerful nations many years ago. The Greeks want the Parthenon marbles returned to Athens from the British Museum; the Egyptians want the same museum to surrender the Rosetta Stone and, on top of that, seek to spirit away the bust of Nefertiti from the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. Where might it all end? One clue comes in a sweeping request from China. As a way of combating plunder of the present as well as the past, the Chinese government has asked the United States to ban the import of all Chinese art objects made before 1911. The State Department has been reviewing the Chinese request for more than two years.
Archaeologists uncover site where slaves, free blacks, immigrants worked together
Source: Baltimore Sun (6-26-07)
Under blue tents in Cockeysville, archaeologists scrub shards of pottery with toothbrushes. Nearby, small flags jut from the grass and a hole reveals a stone foundation and steps.
It might seem an unlikely place for an archaeological project, just a short distance from Interstate 83 and a light rail stop. But it's where a team of archaeologists working with the Maryland State Highway Administration is unearthing the remnants of a small plantation where slaves, free blacks and European immigrants once labored side by side, an arrangement historians say was more common in Maryland than in other slave states.
Gen. Nguyen Chanh Thi, 84, Seen as Hero in Vietnam, Dies
Source: NYT (6-26-07)
Gen. Nguyen Chanh Thi, a popular and flamboyant South Vietnamese senior officer whose firing in the spring of 1966 set off civil warfare within his own country at the same time it was fighting the Communist north, died Saturday in Lancaster, Pa. He was 84.
Matthew Kalafat, his son-in-law, announced the death.
General Thi administered a huge swath of the northern part of South Vietnam when his chief rival in the ruling military junta, Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, the premier, persuaded eight generals in the 10-man junta to join him in ousting General Thi.
Buddhists, who made up a majority in South Vietnam, rose up in a rebellion that came to be called “the struggle movement.” Interpretations of the importance of the ouster of General Thi, a Buddhist, in starting the rioting and other civil disobedience vary.
American diplomats at first applauded his ouster and accused him of acting like a warlord. The New York Times reported that President Lyndon B. Johnson’s strong expression of support of Premier Ky at a meeting in Honolulu in February 1966 was a tacit license for the Vietnamese leader to act against General Thi.
By summer, government forces, with the aid of the United States military, had defeated the struggle movement. General Thi was dismissed from the army and sent to the United States for sinus treatment, which his son-in-law said he did not need. (The general said his only sinus problem was “the stink of corruption.”) It turned out to be a permanent exile.
Abe Lincoln letter worth every penny
Source: http://www.sj-r.com (6-24-07)
A firefighter from Tampa, Fla., recently has received confirmation that an 1858 Abraham Lincoln letter he bought at a yard sale for $8 is the real thing.
His discovery will be featured in a PBS "History Detectives" episode that was partly filmed in Springfield and that will air nationwide Aug. 27. The show's fifth season begins Monday.
CIA's "Family Jewels" now on public display
Source: National Security Archive (6-26-07)
The full "family jewels" report, released today by the Central Intelligence Agency and detailing 25 years of Agency misdeeds, is now available on the Archive's Web site. The 702-page collection was delivered by CIA officers to the Archive at approximately 11:30 this morning -- 15 years after the Archive filed a Freedom of Information request for the documents.
The report is available for download in its entirety and is also split into smaller files for easier download.
Related Links
MSNBC news story Main NYT story NYT blogs: James Bamford, Tim Weiner, Philip Taubman NYT Timeline of the C.I.A.’s ‘Family Jewels’ Scott Shane: Is the CIA Really More Restrained than the CIA of the Cold War? National Coalition for History news story ABC News story
It's official: CIA tried to get Mafia to kill Castro
Source: Reuters (6-26-07)
The CIA worked with three American mobsters in a botched "gangster-type" attempt to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro in the early 1960s, according to documents released by the CIA on Tuesday.
The CIA hauled the skeletons out of its closet by declassifying hundreds of pages of long-secret records that detail some of the agency's worst illegal abuses during about 25 years of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying and kidnapping.
CIA Director Michael Hayden released the documents to lift the veil of secrecy on the agency's past, even as the Bush administration faces criticism of being too secretive now.
Hayden told agency employees in a statement the trove included "reminders of some things the CIA should not have done" and a glimpse "of a very different era and a very different agency." The documents had been requested 15 years ago by a watchdog group.
Germany has barred movie about a plot to kill Adolf Hitler
Source: CNN (6-26-07)
Germany has barred the makers of a movie about a plot to kill Adolf Hitler from filming at German military sites because its star Tom Cruise is a Scientologist, the Defense Ministry said on Monday.
Cruise, also one of the film's producers, is a member of the Church of Scientology which the German government does not recognize as a church. Berlin says it masquerades as a religion to make money, a charge Scientology leaders reject...
Last of the Mohicans? Not.
Source: AP (6-22-07)
NORWICH, Conn. — The Mohegans were wiped out long ago in the novel "The Last of the Mohicans," but today the real American Indian tribe is flush with casino cash and using it to restore its proud past.
The Connecticut tribe has reclaimed the Mohegan Royal Burial Ground and is restoring it to pay homage to its famed Chief Uncas and his descendants, who were mythologized in James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 work.
The project has been dubbed "The Lasting of the Mohegans."
Conservative Christians stage own Jamestown celebration
Source: Newsweek (6-26-07)
A group of conservative Christians staged their own celebration of the 400-year anniversary of the historic colony—and blasted the official commemoration as politically correct folly that failed to recognize Jamestown's importance as the beachhead of American Christianity.
House panel calls for Japan sex slave apology
Source: Boston Globe (6-26-07)
A resolution calling on Japan to officially apologize for pressing thousands of women into sexual servitude in World War Two won strong approval on Tuesday from a U.S. congressional committee.
CIA releases papers that set off scandal
Source: San Fransicso Chronicle (6-26-07)
The CIA released hundreds of pages of internal reports Tuesday on assassination plots, secret drug testing and spying on Americans that triggered a scandal in the mid-1970s.
History Blog Carnivals in June
Source: History Carnivals Aggregator (blog) (6-26-07)
A blog carnival is a regular round-up of blog posts on a subject. There are a number of history-related carnivals:
- Carnival of Bad History, June 25
- Asian History Carnival, June 25
- Carnival of Genealogy, June 20
- Carnivalesque (Early Modern), June 20
- Military History Carnival, June 17
- Four Stone Hearth (archaeology and anthropology), June 7
- The History Carnival, June 1st.
Was Bronze Age disc used as calendar?
Source: BBC (6-25-07)
Archaeologists have revived the debate over whether a spectacular Bronze Age disc from Germany is one of the earliest known calendars.
The Nebra disc is emblazoned with symbols of the Sun, Moon and stars and said by some to be 3,600 years old.
Writing in the journal Antiquity, a team casts doubt on the idea the disc was used by ancient astronomers as a precision tool for observing the sky.
They instead argue that the disc was used for shamanistic rituals.
Time Magazine cover story: What we can learn from JFK
Source: Time Magazine (7-2-07)
John F. Kennedy's loyal White House aides, Kenneth O'Donnell and Dave Powers, titled their 1972 J.F.K. memoir Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye—despite the fact that they had served him since his days as a scrawny young congressional candidate in Boston. So it's no surprise that Americans are still trying to figure out nearly half a century after his abbreviated presidency who Jack Kennedy really was. Was he a cold war hawk, as much of the history establishment, Washington pundit class and presidential hopefuls of both parties—eager to lay claim to his mantle of muscular leadership—have insisted over the years? Or was he a man ahead of his time, a peace-minded visionary trying to untie the nuclear knot that held hostage the U.S. and the Soviet Union—and the rest of the world?
As the U.S. once again finds itself in an endless war—this time against terror, or perhaps against fear itself—the question of Kennedy's true legacy seems particularly loaded. What is the best way for America to navigate through a world where its enemies seem everywhere and nowhere at the same time? What can we learn from the way Kennedy was trying to redefine the U.S. role in the world and to invite Americans to be part of that change? Who was the real John Fitzgerald Kennedy?
Man who raised 1st Iwo Jima flag dies
Source: AP (6-26-07)
Charles W. Lindberg, one of the U.S. Marines who raised the first American flag over Iwo Jima during World War II, has died. He was 86.
Lindberg, who died Sunday in Edina, Minn., spent years explaining that it was his patrol, not the one in the famous Associated Press photograph by Joe Rosenthal, that raised the first flag there.
On Feb. 23, 1945, Lindberg and five other Marines fought their way to the top of Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi. He was awarded the Silver Star for bravery.
“Two of our men found this big, long pipe there,” he said in 2003. “We tied the flag to it, took it to the highest spot we could find and we raised it. Down below, the troops started to cheer, the ship’s whistles went off - it was just something that you would never forget,” he said.
Veep's secrecy policy the butt of jokes
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists (6-26-07)
The arcane details of national security classification policy became the stuff of late night comedy as White House officials struggled to justify the peculiar refusal of Vice President Dick Cheney to comply with the oversight requirements established by President Bush's executive order on classification.
For two successive days, the White House press briefing was dominated by incredulous reporters who wondered how the Vice President could claim that he both was and was not part of the executive branch; why he complied with oversight reporting requirements in 2001 and 2002, and why he then ceased to comply; and how the Vice President's behavior can be consistent with the executive order when the Administration's own Information Security Oversight Office says that it is not.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Museum to show Poland's Jewish history
Source: CTV (6-24-07)
An empty lawn in the heart of what was once the Warsaw Ghetto will soon become a place not only of mourning, but of celebrating the Jewish life that flourished in Poland before it was destroyed in the Holocaust.
Jewish leaders and President Lech Kaczynski will break ground Tuesday for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. It sits on a highly charged site -- next to the city's monument to the Jews who resisted the Nazis during the 1943 ghetto uprising, and just down the street from the rail siding where many were deported to their deaths.
Escape from Auschwitz: told for first time in English
Source: Independent (6-24-07)
A dramatic first-hand account of how a prisoner managed to escape from Nazi Germany's most notorious death camp and help save more than 120,000 Jews from slaughter is to be told for the first time to an English-speaking audience.
Alfred Wetzler, a Slovak Jew, was one of the tiny number of people to escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau, Europe's heart of darkness during the Second World War, where an estimated 1.1 million Jews arrived of whom scarcely 7,000 survived the onslaught of the Nazis.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Bodies at Masada were Romans not Zealots
Source: International Herald Tribune (6-23-07)
An Israeli anthropologist is using modern forensics and an obscure Biblical passage to challenge the accepted wisdom about mysterious human remains found at Masada, the desert fortress famous as the scene of a mass suicide nearly 2,000 years ago.
A new research paper published Friday takes another look at the remains of three people found in a bathhouse at the site — two male skeletons and a full head of women's hair, including two braids. They were long thought to have belonged to a family of Zealots, the fanatic Jewish rebels said to have killed themselves rather than fall into Roman slavery in the spring of 73 A.D., a story that became an important part of Israel's national mythology.
Lost WWII plane finally due in UK
Source: BBC News (6-23-07)
An American fighter plane will be arriving in Britain from the United States next week - 65 years after taking off. The P38 Lightning was one of eight aircraft forced to land in Greenland after encountering bad weather while en route to the UK in July 1942.
The planes became buried under 300ft of ice but 15 years ago the remains of one, renamed Glacier Girl, were dug up. The aircraft is due to take part in an air show at Duxford, near Cambridge.
Quest for body of Marine who filmed Iwo Jima flag raising
Source: CNN (6-23-07)
Bob Bolus was flipping through Parade magazine two years ago when he came across an article about Sgt. William H. Genaust, who filmed the raising of the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima, Japan, in 1945.
Genaust is believed to have been killed in combat days after shooting the footage, and Bolus was disturbed to learn that his remains were never found. Despite having no connection to Genaust or his descendants, the businessman and one-time mayoral candidate from Scranton, Pennsylvania, decided he would bring the missing Marine home.
Amistad ship retraces slave route
Source: BBC News (6-23-07)
A replica of the 19th Century slave ship, Amistad, is beginning a 22,500km (14,000 mile) transatlantic voyage retracing the route of the slave trade. The trip commemorates the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade within the British Empire.
The Freedom Schooner Amistad will set sail from the US east coast and stop in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean.
Changing Patterns in Social Fabric Test Netherlands' Liberal Identity
Source: Washington Post (6-23-07)
For years, W.B. Kranendonk was a lone ranger in Dutch politics -- the editor of an orthodox Christian newspaper in a nation that has legalized prostitution, euthanasia, abortion and same-sex marriage and allows the personal use of marijuana.
Today, with an orthodox Christian political party in the government for the first time, and with immigration anxieties fueling a national search for identity, the country that has been the world's most socially liberal political laboratory is rethinking its anything-goes policies. And suddenly, Kranendonk no longer seems so all alone.
History project honors vets with 'The Great War'
Source: Air Force Link (6-23-07)
The Veterans History Project, a program of the Library of Congress American Folklife Center, presents "The Great War," a tribute to World War I veterans, in a new section of its Web site at www.loc.gov/vets.
Rich in personal detail, photographs, journals and letters, "The Great War" provides a virtual tour of some of the most compelling collections in the Veterans History Project archives and features stories of nearly two dozen men and women who served in WWI.
"In the Trenches" leads off the series of narratives and takes visitors to the front lines of the first mass war fought with modern weaponry. The second series, "Above and Beyond the Battlefield," takes viewers through an insider's examination of the experiences of aviators and others who served in support of the infantry.
Hungarian teacher suspended for Nazi uniform stunt
Source: Europe Channel (6-23-07)
The deputy head of a Hungarian church school who appeared in photographs wearing a Nazi SS uniform has been suspended from his duties, the head of the Hungarian Church's school authority said Thursday.
History teacher Akos Peter Kosaras, 36, posted pictures of himself dressed in the uniform on the internet, although the pictures have now been removed.
The teacher at a school in the small settlement of Budakeszi just outside Budapest was supposedly playing the role of a "kind-hearted" SS officer during a historical game, the daily Nepszava said.
Anne Frank House receives archive
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer (6-23-07)
Relatives of Anne Frank will loan a collection of photographs and letters to the museum housing the Jewish teenager's hiding place during World War II to mark next week's 60th anniversary of the publication of her diary.
The material, which comes from the Anne Frank archive in Basel, Switzerland, and from Anne's cousin, Buddy Elias, includes photos of Anne, her sister, Margot, her mother, Edith and her father, Otto, that have rarely or never been on public display.
Vietnam era memo: CIA spying on Americans
Source: United Press International (6-23-07)
Newly declassified documents show the CIA spied on and monitored the phone calls and movements of journalists and peace activists during the Vietnam War era.
The revelations, while more than 30 years old, carry with them a whiff of the current debate over the wiretapping of U.S. phone lines by the National Security Agency without court permission and the Pentagon's monitoring of anti-war groups.
The 1975 memorandum written by Associate Attorney General James Wilderrotter was obtained by the National Security Archive in Washington and raises the curtain on nearly 700 pages of documents known as the "family jewels," which detail the CIA's legally questionable activities from that era.
Vietnamese, Americans Appeal Rulings on Agent Orange
Source: New York Sun (6-23-07)
A federal appeals court will soon hear oral arguments in lawsuits brought by citizens of Vietnam and American Vietnam War veterans who say their health has suffered from exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange.
The appeals are being brought under a variety of legal theories, and the court could arrive at opposite conclusions about whether the Vietnamese or American plaintiffs may go forward with their claims against the chemical companies that manufactured Agent Orange.
Viking ship to set sail again
Source: Independent (Ireland) (6-23-07)
ONE of the Viking warships that struck terror into the hearts of thousands of Europeans has been recreated for the first voyage of its kind in almost 1,000 years.
A replica of the battleship 'Sea Stallion' (pictured) will make the journey across the North Sea from Denmark next month. Built in 1042, it was one of the greatest seaborne weapons used by Ireland's bloodthirsty Viking invaders to fight battles at home and abroad.
Putin in call to 'rescue' Stalin
Source: Telegraph (6-23-07)
President Vladimir Putin has raised the prospect of a return to Soviet-style academic censorship after he accused the West of plotting to distort Russian history in an attempt to crush patriotic sentiment in schools.
The Russian leader claimed that a generation of schoolchildren was learning a version of their past that had been deliberately skewed by historians in the pay of the West.
South Korea, Japan history talks enter new phase
Source: Japan Times (6-23-07)
Japanese and South Korean historians began on Saturday a new phase of joint history studies to try to narrow differences in their countries' textbooks amid continuing disputes, such as the wartime sexual slavery issue.
The two sides agreed to hold two more years of discussions and compile a report based on their talks, according to representatives from the two countries...
Friday, June 22, 2007
Okinawa furious at Japan's war suicide revision
Source: Reuters (6-22-07)
Lawmakers from Japan's southern island of Okinawa, site of one of World War Two's bloodiest battles, blasted a government decision to tone down textbook accounts of soldiers ordering civilians to commit suicide.
Mohegans restore ancient burial ground
Source: AP (6-22-07)
The Connecticut tribe has reclaimed the Mohegan Royal Burial Ground and is restoring it to pay homage to its famed Chief Uncas and his descendants, who were mythologized in James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 work.
Abe: US sex slave resolution won't affect relations
Source: IHT (6-22-07)
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday that ties with the United States would not be hurt if a U.S. congressional committee passes a resolution urging Japan to officially acknowledge and apologize for wartime sexual slavery.
Historians and artists' petition slams new French ministry
Source: Syndey Morning Herald (6-22-07)
Nearly 200 professors, artists and others from universities around the world have signed a petition protesting at France's new Ministry of Immigration and National Identity.
Turkish historian challenges Turkey's Article 301
Source: Armenian News Network (6-22-07)
Professor Taner Akcam, a Turkish scholar and Visiting Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, filed an application before the European Court of Human Rights against the
Republic of Turkey, independent correspondent Jean Eckian informs.
Should US return skulls of Vietnamese?
Source: NYT (subscribers only) (6-22-07)
THE White House visit today by President Nguyen Minh Triet of Vietnam will take place just a few miles from the resting place of some of his countrymen. When American G.I.’s returned from the Vietnam War, some tried to smuggle home the skulls of Vietcong and North Vietnamese soldiers. The graffiti-covered skulls served as ashtrays, candle holders and trophies. Six skulls were seized by the Customs Service. They remain in limbo, relegated to a drawer on the campus of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
At a time when President Bush plans to chastise the Vietnamese leader about human rights abuses, a question confronts his own administration: Should we return the Vietnamese trophy skulls?
Agency Is Target in Cheney Fight on Secrecy Data
Source: NYT (6-22-07)
For four years, Vice President Dick Cheney has resisted routine oversight of his office’s handling of classified information, and when the National Archives unit that monitors classification in the executive branch objected, the vice president’s office suggested abolishing the oversight unit, according to documents released yesterday by a Democratic congressman.
The Information Security Oversight Office, a unit of the National Archives, appealed the issue to the Justice Department, which has not yet ruled on the matter.
Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, disclosed Mr. Cheney’s effort to shut down the oversight office. Mr. Waxman, who has had a leading role in the stepped-up efforts by Democrats to investigate the Bush administration, outlined the matter in an eight-page letter sent Thursday to the vice president and posted, along with other documentation, on the committee’s Web site.
C.I.A. to Release Documents on Decades-Old Misdeeds
Source: NYT (6-21-07)
The Central Intelligence Agency will make public next week a collection of long-secret documents compiled in 1974 that detail domestic spying, assassination plots and other C.I.A. misdeeds in the 1960s and early 1970s, the agency’s director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, said yesterday.
In an address to a group of historians who have long pressed for greater disclosure of C.I.A. archives, General Hayden described the documents, known as the “family jewels,” as “a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency.” He also directed the release of 11,000 pages of cold-war documents on the Soviet Union and China, which were handed out on compact discs at the meeting, in Chantilly, Va.
George Washington's Office Unearthed
Source: CBS News Philadelphia (6-21-07)
The archaeological dig at Independence Mall has uncovered another historical treasure. Archaeologists have been working furiously in Old City for the past couple months, revealing the foundation of George Washington’s former office.
“We could never have expected to find a find like this. Things that have such cultural value,” said Ed Lawler of the Independence Mall Association. A foundation fragment from the first president’s office can now be seen protruding from the ground.
Slave quarters unearthed in Alabama
Source: Birmingham News (6-21-07)
Jack Bergstresser looked at a handful of small artifacts spread out on a table Wednesday at Tannehill Ironworks and Historical State Park. "It's not a lot of stuff, but every piece has a really profound story," he said. "These were not people who had a lot of possessions."
The artifacts were found in a dig at what archaeologists are convinced is a former slave quarters at the park. Bergstresser, resident archaeologist and director of Tannehill's Iron and Steel Museum, said the site is one of 15 in two parallel rows with a common area between them. Each appears to be represented by a collapsed hearth and chimney and piles of stones that were likely four corner pillars. The dig is on a site about 36 feet by 39 feet.
An intact tomb brimming with artifacts found in Egypt
Source: Al-Ahram Weekly (6-21-07)
Archaeologists from the Katholicke Universiteit Leuven working at the Middle-Kingdom (2066-1650 BC) tomb of Uky, a top government official, have discovered an intact tomb chamber, complete with funerary goods.
While removing the debris out of a rock-cut shaft found inside the chamber of Uky's tomb, the archaeologists came across a huge limestone block indicating that a major find was imminent, in line with the ancient Egyptian custom of blocking their burial chambers with such a barrier. Through a hole in the block, they could see what they described as a beautifully-carved wooden statue of a man with large, staring eyes. After only an hour the block had been removed, and the team discovered a small but intact chamber richly stuffed with well-preserved wooden objects and containing a decorated sarcophagus.
Fort Johnson's shore, history erodes
Source: Charleston Post and Courier (6-21-07)
Anyone visiting the two sites where the Civil War began couldn't find the contrast more jarring. Fort Sumter — on which the Confederacy opened fire on federal troops on April 12, 1861 — is a national historic monument, maintained by the federal government with the goal of interpreting the Civil War.
But Fort Johnson, from which those shots were fired, is another story. Today, most of that property is owned by the S.C. Department of Natural Resources, which isn't in the history business. If visitors know where to look, they can find a small stone marker placed in 1961 to explain that the historic mortar shot was fired nearby. There also are two or three modest structures that reflect the fort's late 18th century and early 19th century eras. Some earthworks remain along a nature trail.
World War II cemetery in France gets visitor center
Source: International Herald Tribune (6-21-07)
Photos of fresh-faced privates, wizened U.S. generals and the largest amphibious military operation in history. Dented army canteens that once dotted killing fields in France. The booming sounds of gunships echoing over the waves in Normandy — this time, on video.
The Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, best known for its sober rows of white grave markers honoring fallen U.S. troops in World War II, has at last gotten a visitor's center.
Nearly a million visitors trek every year to the cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach, one of the two landing points where U.S. troops stormed ashore on D-Day — June 6, 1944 — and helped the Allies rid the menace of Nazi Germany over Europe.
Canadian artifacts added to UN's Memory of the World Registry
Source: Montreal Gazette (6-21-07)
Two of Canada's oldest archival treasures will join the Gutenberg Bible, France's famed Bayeux Tapestry and more than 150 other globally significant cultural artifacts as part of a United Nations listing of the world's most precious documentary "monuments." A 340-year-old collection of records detailing the operation of the Hudson's Bay Company - spearhead of British claims in the future Canada - and the even older archive of New France's earliest Catholic seminary are the first Canadian additions to the Memory of the World Registry, the textual and audio-visual equivalent of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.
An eclectic assemblage of artifacts of "exceptional universal value," the UN registry has also added the 1939 U.S. film classic The Wizard of Oz and the court transcripts of Nelson Mandela's 1963 trial to a collection billed as a kind of virtual time capsule for civilization.
Other items previously listed include Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the archives of the Warsaw Ghetto.
How Lord Nelson kept his wife happy
Source: Telegraph (6-21-07)
With Lord Nelson's relationship with his mistress threatening his popularity in early 19th century England, it would have been wise to keep his wife financially happy.
A previously unseen copy of a bank statement suggests that is what he did. The document shows Lord Nelson wanted to maintain his wife in reasonable style, possibly to keep her quiet.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
George Washington's office unearthed in Philadelphia
Source: CBS3 Philadelphia (6-20-07)
The archaeological dig at Independence Mall has uncovered another historical treasure. Archaeologists have been working furiously in Old City for the past couple months, revealing the foundation of George Washington’s former office.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Archaeologist sparks hunt for Holy Grail
Source: Telegraph (6-20-07)
An archaeologist has sparked a Da Vinci Code-style hunt for the Holy Grail after claiming ancient records show it is buried under a 6th century church in Rome.
The cup - said to have been used by Christ at the Last Supper - is the focus of countless legends and has been sought for centuries.
Alfredo Barbagallo, an Italian archaeologist, claims that it is buried in a chapel-like room underneath the Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, one of the seven churches which Christian pilgrims used to visit when they came to Rome.
First S Leone war crimes verdicts
Source: BBC News (6-20-07)
Three men have been convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity during Sierra Leone's decade-long war. These were the first verdicts of Sierra Leone's UN-backed war crimes tribunal.
Alex Tamba Brima, Brima Kamara and Santigie Borbor Kanu were senior members of an armed faction that toppled the government in 1997.
Vietnam: Emblems of war persist, but enmity is long gone
Source: International Herald Tribune (6-20-07)
Because "war museum" and "mausoleum" can sound alike, especially if a pedicab driver speaks no English and his passenger no Vietnamese, a recent visitor to Hanoi found himself in a long line waiting to view the embalmed corpse of Ho Chi Minh, "He Who Enlightens."
The change in plans was acceptable. Although he had not been one of those Americans who chanted "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh" during war protests in the turbulent 1960s - still less "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" - the visitor had opposed the war and respected Ho's impulses more than he did Lyndon Johnson's. So, instead of heading for 28 Dien Bien Phu street and the Military History Museum, his original goal, the visitor stayed at the mausoleum in Ba Dinh Square.
Divers Find Richest Shipwreck in History
Source: Sci-Tech Today (6-20-07)
Deep-sea explorers said Friday they have mined what could be the richest shipwreck treasure in history, bringing home 17 tons of colonial-era silver and gold coins from an undisclosed site in the Atlantic Ocean. Estimated value: $500 million.
A jet chartered by Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration landed in the United States recently with hundreds of plastic containers brimming with coins raised from the ocean floor, Odyssey co-chairman Greg Stemm said. The more than 500,000 pieces are expected to fetch an average of $1,000 each from collectors and investors.
Combat Camera Units Document Military Operations
Source: Secrecy News (6-20-07)
Each U.S. military service now has "combat camera" (COMCAM) units that provide a unique visual record of military operations, according to a new manual on COMCAM tactics and procedures (pdf).
The photographic and motion imagery produced by military photographers "enhances the commander's situational awareness and establishes a historical operations record."
If and when such imagery is eventually released, it has the potential to add a new dimension to public understanding of military operations and to supplement external oversight.
No regrets from an ex-Algerian rebel immortalized in film
Source: IHT (6-19-07)
Fifty years ago, when Saadi Yacef was blowing up French men, women and children in the name of Algerian independence, he never imagined Algerians would do the same to each other some day.
Yacef's ultimately successful fight against colonial France was immortalized in the 1965 film "The Battle of Algiers." He played a character based on himself in the movie, which has become a celluloid primer for revolutionaries.
The mystique attached to terrorism across the Middle East and the difficulty of combating its broader appeal have their roots in Algeria, whose war for independence is a model for other Arab movements, from the Palestine Liberation Organization to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
Since 1992, Algerian Islamist insurgents have killed tens of thousands of their fellow citizens. Yacef says he is unrepentant about his role in popularizing the tactic of deliberately targeting civilians, even though the insurgents are using it in his own country for aims he doesn't endorse.
"Our methods and theirs are both cruel, but you must distinguish between an objective - ours - which was liberation, and theirs, which is just destruction," Yacef said in an interview at his home near Algiers.
Fujimori Considers Return to Politics, This Time in Japan
Source: NYT (6-20-07)
The former president of Peru, Alberto K. Fujimori, who is fighting extradition to Peru on human rights and corruption charges, may run for a seat in Japan’s legislative elections, his spokesman said. Mr. Fujimori, who has Japanese citizenship, has been approached by a small opposition party to compete in the upper house election next month, but critics called the move a ploy to avoid extradition to Peru from neighboring Chile, where he is under house arrest. Mr. Fujimori, 68, was arrested in Chile in November 2005 when he arrived unexpectedly from Japan, apparently in a bid for a political comeback in Peru. He had sought exile in Japan, the country of his parents’ birth, after his government collapsed under the weight of a huge corruption scandal.
Report Blasts Pay of Ex-Chief of Smithsonian
Source: NYT (6-20-07)
Even though his supposed fund-raising acumen was used to justify his ballooning salary, the chief executive of the Smithsonian Institution raised less private money for the museum complex last year than his predecessor did in 1999, an independent committee said in a scathing report issued today.
Salary and other compensation for the executive, Lawrence M. Small, whose formal title was Smithsonian secretary, soared from $536,000 in 2000 to $915,000 in 2006, the report said. But ultimately, it added, the institution became more dependent on taxpayer funds and obtained less of its budget from private donations during his tenure.
Eastwood Films Prompt Iwo Jima Name Change
Source: News Max (6-20-07)
Japan has changed the name of the Pacific island of Iwo Jima, site of the famous World War II battle, to its original name of Iwo To after residents there were prodded into action by two recent Clint Eastwood movies.
The new name in Japanese looks and means the same as Iwo Jima - or Sulfur Island - but sounds different, the Japanese Geographical Survey Institute said.
Algeria finds 8,000 year-old rock etchings
Source: Reuters (6-20-07)
Algeria, a treasure house of prehistoric Saharan art, has discovered more neolithic rock etchings in the desert from around 8,000 years ago showing cattle herds, a government newspaper reported Monday.
El Moudjahid daily said local tour guide Hadj Brahim found about 40 images near the town of Bechar, about 800 km (500 miles) southwest of the capital Algiers.
Ancient Romans Preferred Fast Food
Source: Discovery Channel (6-20-07)
Just as a U.S. Presidential state dinner does not reflect how most Americans eat and socialize, researchers think the formal, decadent image of wining and dining in ancient Rome mostly just applied to the elite.
According to archaeologist Penelope Allison of the University of Leicester, the majority of the population consumed food "on the run."
Allison excavated an entire neighborhood block in Pompeii, a city frozen in time after the eruption of volcano Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.
400 Years of US War Records Now Online
Source: Live Science (6-19-07)
For every generation in the United States there has been a war. And with wars come millions of records that can shed light on family history, detailing everything from the color of soldiers' eyes to what their neighbors may have said about them.
On Thursday, Ancestry.com unveils more than 90 million U.S. war records from the first English settlement at Jamestown in 1607 through the Vietnam War's end in 1975. The site also has the names of 3.5 million U.S. soldiers killed in action, including 2,000 who died in Iraq
Ancient Egyptian City Spotted From Space
Source: Live Science (6-19-07)
Satellites hovering above Egypt have zoomed in on a 1,600-year-old metropolis, archaeologists say.
Images captured from space pinpoint telltale signs of previous habitation in the swatch of land 200 miles south of Cairo, which digging recently confirmed as an ancient settlement dating from about 400 A.D.
Early Europeans Practiced Human Sacrifice
Source: Live Science (6-19-07)
Europe's prehistoric hunter-gatherers may have practiced human sacrifice, a new study claims.
Investigating a collection of graves from the Upper Paleolithic (about 26,000 to 8,000 BC), archaeologists found several that contained pairs or even groups of people with rich burial offerings and decoration. Many of the remains were young or had deformities, such as dwarfism.
Earliest Gunshot Victim in New World Is Reported
Source: NYT (6-19-07)
Archaeologists in Peru have uncovered the human skeleton of what they conclude is the earliest known gunshot victim in the New World.
Digging in an Inca cemetery in the suburbs of Lima, they came on well-preserved remains of an individual with holes less than an inch in diameter in the back and front of the skull. Forensic scientists in Connecticut said the position of the round holes and some minuscule iron particles showed that the person most likely was shot and killed by a Spanish musket ball.
Japanese leaders dispute 'Rape of Nanking' death toll
Source: International Herald Tribune (6-19-07)
A group of about 100 lawmakers from Japan's ruling party claimed Tuesday that after a monthlong review they have determined the number of people killed by Japanese troops during the infamous "Rape of Nanking" has been grossly inflated.
Nariaki Nakayama, head of the group created to study World War II historical issues and education, said documents from the Japanese government's archives indicated some 20,000 people were killed about one-tenth of the more commonly cited figure of from 150,000-200,000 in the 1937 attack. China says as many as 300,000 people were killed.
Museum of the Confederacy shows profit
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch (6-19-07)
For the first time since the early 1990s, the nonprofit will finish this fiscal year, ending June 30, with an operating profit. But the struggling downtown institution still plans on relocating its Civil War collection.
The museum finished last fiscal year with an operating loss of $389,000, forcing cutbacks. Doors were closed on Wednesdays, the magazine was cut from four issues to three, and the annual journal was axed.
But thanks to an emergency fund drive that raised about $1 million, the museum has reopened on Wednesdays, brought back the journal and increased publication of its magazine to four times a year.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Japan voices regrets over US move for sex slave apology
Source: Agence France Presse (6-19-07)
Japan voiced regret Tuesday as the US Congress moved forward with a resolution demanding an unambiguous apology from Tokyo for forcing Asian women into sexual slavery before and during World War II.
Japan voiced regret Tuesday as the US Congress moved forward with a resolution demanding an unambiguous apology from Tokyo for forcing Asian women into sexual slavery before and during World War II.
Rushdie knighting causes diplomatic row
Source: BBC News (6-19-07)
Iran has stepped up its protest over the knighthood awarded by Britain to Salman Rushdie, whose 1988 novel The Satanic Verses outraged many Muslims.
Iran's foreign ministry summoned the UK ambassador in Tehran and said the knighthood was a "provocative act".
Pakistan voiced similar protests, telling the UK envoy in Islamabad the honour showed the British government's "utter lack of sensitivity".
Britain denied that the award was intended to insult Islam.
Roman city wall found by chance
Source: BBC News (6-19-07)
Archaeologists who set out to put up a safety fence at Rochester's medieval castle have unexpectedly uncovered a Roman city wall. The team had "barely taken the turf off when they unearthed a solid mass of stone masonry", Medway Council said.
Castle archaeologist Graham Keevill called it "a very important discovery". He said: "We don't have many Roman city walls surviving in England. To get an unexpected one like this is fantastic. It is also a perfect example."
Pentagon issues playing card focusing on Archaeology
Source: United Press International (6-19-07)
The Pentagon is distributing new playing cards to troops, but this time they don't depict Iraq's most wanted.
The playing cards show pictures of Iraq and Afghanistan's cultural and archaeological sites, along with tips and entreaties to American troops on protecting the sites. The five of clubs, for instance, suggests they drive around rather than over archeological sites; the two of hearts shows the ancient ruins of Samara with the inscription: "99 percent of mankind's history can only be understood through archaeology."
'Signing Statements' Study: Administration Ignored Laws
Source: Washington Post (6-19-07)
President Bush has asserted that he is not necessarily bound by the bills he signs into law, and yesterday a congressional study found multiple examples in which the administration has not complied with the requirements of the new statutes.
Bush has been criticized for his use of "signing statements," in which he invokes presidential authority to challenge provisions of legislation passed by Congress. The president has challenged a federal ban on torture, a request for data on the administration of the USA Patriot Act and numerous other assertions of congressional power. As recently as December, Bush asserted the authority to open U.S. mail without judicial warrants in a signing statement attached to a postal reform bill.
Papers show Isaac Newton's religious side
Source: CNN (6-19-07)
Three-century-old manuscripts by Isaac Newton calculating the exact date of the apocalypse, detailing the precise dimensions of the ancient temple in Jerusalem and interpreting passages of the Bible -- exhibited this week for the first time -- lay bare the little-known religious intensity of a man many consider history's greatest scientist.
Newton, who died 280 years ago, is known for laying much of the groundwork for modern physics, astronomy, math and optics. But in a new Jerusalem exhibit, he appears as a scholar of deep faith who also found time to write on Jewish law -- even penning a few phrases in careful Hebrew letters -- and combing the Old Testament's Book of Daniel for clues about the world's end.
Italians picket ex-Nazi's office
Source: BBC News (6-19-07)
Members of Italy's Jewish community have been protesting outside a lawyer's office in Rome where a former Nazi officer has begun work.
Shouts of "Murderer!" greeted Erich Priebke, 93, as he arrived for his first day on the back of a scooter.
A court ruled last week that Priebke, who is serving a sentence for multiple murders, could work on day release.
Ancient Kush rivaled Egypt, experts say
Source: LA Times (6-19-07)
Archeologists have unearthed a 4,000-year-old gold-processing center along the middle Nile in Sudan that suggests the ancient kingdom of Kush was much larger than scholars previously believed and would have rivaled the domain of the Egyptians to the north.
Kush, which was called Nubia by the Greeks, was the first urban civilization in sub-Saharan Africa. The discovery of the gold center and a related graveyard is providing new information about the relationship between rulers in the capital city, Kerma, and its peripheral subjects, said archeologist Geoff Emberling of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, who is announcing the find today.
Lincoln museum gets collection of items
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer (6-19-07)
A battered old hat, a pair of stained gloves, a child's silly rhyme - hardly the stuff of history. Except that this hat is a stovepipe hat, the gloves are stained with a president's blood and the rhyme was written by a young Abraham Lincoln.
All three items are part of an immense private collection put together by a Lincoln fan over 35 years. Now the collection is about to go public after being purchased for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. The collection contains hundreds of letters and documents, but its strength is the array of personal, everyday items related to the 16th president, his wife and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth.
Toronto opens memorial to Irish victims of Black '47
Source: Toronto Star (6-19-07)
On Thursday, 160 years on, at the official opening of the memorial site to famine victims at Ireland Park at the foot of Bathurst St., near where the fever sheds on the wharves once stood, there will be a remembering of that unspeakable human suffering - and of the failures and the heroism in dealing with it.
The memorial - a stone monument by architect Jonathan Kearns, four life-sized bronze figures by Rowan Gillespie depicting the Irish in all their misery, a wall carved with the names of 600 identified deceased - promises to be both stark and stirring. There is, after all, little more primal than hunger and thirst.
Congress Seeks New Direction for Nuclear Strategy
Source: Washington Post (6-18-07)
Congress is moving to change the direction of the Bush administration's nuclear weapons program by demanding the development of a comprehensive post-Sept. 11, 2001, nuclear strategy before it approves funding a new generation of warheads.
"Currently there exists no convincing rationale for maintaining the large number of existing Cold War nuclear weapons, much less producing additional warheads," the House Appropriations Committee said in its report, released last week, on the fiscal 2008 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill. The full House is expected to vote on the measure this week.
'Feel good history': scholars debate Afrocentrism
Source: Diverse (6-18-07)
One of the more controversial debates now going on in intellectual circles is over Afrocentrism, a movement that argues that traditional history has undervalued the contributions of Black Africa to ancient Greek and Western thought. At the center of the debate are Afrocentrists and those attacking them, most recently Mary Lefkowitz, who wrote "Not Out of Africa."
Recently Lefkowitz's publisher, New Republic Books, sponsored a debate between her and a leading Afrocentrist, Martin Bernal, author of "Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Culture."
Washington -- The crowd began arriving early, nearly an hour before Martin Bernal and Mary Lefkowitz were to take the stage at George Washington University. They came in all colors, ages, backgrounds. Some wore kente and sported dreadlocks, while others came buttoned-down double-breasted, Eddie Bauered, lugging backpacks or brief cases. One quartet spoke German.
Counting the Holocaust's defrauded survivors
Source: International Herald Tribune (6-18-07)
The Holocaust has always been marked by numbers. There was the numbering of arms in death camps and the staggering death toll where the words six million became both a body count and a synonym for an unspeakable crime.
After the Holocaust, Germany performed the necessary long division in paying token reparations to survivors. More recently, Swiss banks and European insurance companies have concealed bank account and policy numbers belonging to dead Jews. Only with the Holocaust have dehumanization and death been as much a moral mystery as a tragic game of arithmetic. And the numbers continue, although now largely in reverse.
After 60 years, Holocaust survivors are inching toward extinction. According to Ira Sheskin, director of the Jewish Demography Project at the University of Miami, fewer than 900,000 remain, residing primarily in the United States, Israel and the former Soviet Union. Most are in their 80s and 90s. Unless immediate measures are taken, many of those who survived the Nazi evil will soon die without a proper measure of dignity.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Geronimo's great-grandson wants bones returned
Source: Boston Globe (6-18-07)
Legend has it that Yale University's ultrasecret Skull and Bones society swiped the remains of American Indian leader Geronimo nearly a century ago from an army outpost in Oklahoma, and now Geronimo's great-grandson wants the remains returned.
Harlyn Geronimo, of Mescalero, N.M., wants to prove the skull and bones that were purported spirited from the Indian leader's burial plot in Fort Sill, Okla., to a stone tomb that serves as the club's headquarters are in fact those of his great-grandfather.
If so, he wants to bury them near Geronimo's birthplace in southern New Mexico's Gila Wilderness...
Cherokee Nation to have first debate in modern history
Source: Tahlequah Daily Press (6-18-07)
In a year riddled with history-making tribal events, the Cherokee Nation added yet another first to its roster: a formal, public debate between candidates for principal and deputy chief.
Candidates included incumbent Principal Chief Chad Smith and Stacy Leeds, and incumbent Deputy Chief Joe Grayson Jr. and Raymond Vann. The event, sponsored by the Cherokee Phoenix, was held at the Tahlequah Armory Municipal Center, with over 300 people in attendance...
Cambodia textbook details horrific past
Source: CNN (6-18-07)
Cambodia offers plenty of Khmer Rouge "killing fields" attractions. There is a grisly genocide museum complete with torture instruments and former mass graves that draw camera-toting tourists.
But for the country's school children, the Khmer Rouge remain off the curriculum, leaving students virtually clueless about how the now-defunct communist group became a killing machine in late 1970s.
Now that knowledge gap may at least be partially filled through the newly released "A History of Democratic Kampuchea," a textbook about the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 rule by Khamboly Dy, a Cambodian genocide researcher.
Macbeth written 400 years before Shakespeare's birth?
Source: Scotsman (6-18-07)
IT IS known by superstitious actors as "the Scottish play", but a pair of historians are now questioning how much William Shakespeare's Macbeth actually belonged to England's most famous playwright.
In a radio programme to be aired today, Scots historian Fiona Watson and literary expert Molly Rourke claim the story of Macbeth was penned by a Scottish monk on St Serf's Island in the middle of Loch Leven 400 years before William Shakespeare even drew breath.
A forgotten Nazi military school discovered
Source: The Guardian (6-18-07)
Experts in Berlin's wartime bunkers have announced the discovery of a forgotten Nazi military school buried under a man-made hill on the western edge of the city.
The army academy, designed by Nazi architect Albert Speer, is encased in the Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain), a 116-metre (380ft)-high mound in Berlin which was constructed from the 26m cubic metres of the capital's wartime rubble.
The unfinished building, for which Nazi leader Adolf Hitler laid the foundation stone in 1937, was meant to become part of Germania, the huge capital of the 1,000-Year Reich. But "war-specific" problems, according to an internal Nazi memorandum, caused building work to be stopped just three years later.
Possible White House violation of the Presidential Records
Source: Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (6-18-07)
The Oversight Committee has been investigating whether White House officials violated the Presidential Records Act by using e-mail accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee and the Bush Cheney ‘04 campaign for official White House communications. This interim staff report provides a summary of the evidence the Committee has received to date, along with recommendations for next steps in the investigation...
FBI probed Ga. governor in '46 lynching
Source: New Jersey Star-Ledger (6-17-07)
Newly released files from the lynching of two black couples more than 60 years ago contain a disturbing revelation: The FBI investigated suspicions that a three-term governor of Georgia sanctioned the murders to sway rural white voters during a tough election campaign.
The 3,725 pages obtained by the Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act do not make conclusions about the still-unsolved killings at Moore's Ford Bridge. But they raise the possibility that Eugene Talmadge's politics may have been a factor when a white mob dragged the four from a car, tied them to a tree and opened fire.
DNA of modern 'tuscii' descendants show Turkish origin
Source: The Guardian (6-17-07)
They gave us the word "person" and invented a symbol of iron rule later adopted by the fascists. Some even argue it was they who really moulded Roman civilisation.
Yet the Etruscans, whose descendants today live in central Italy, have long been among the great enigmas of antiquity. Their language, which has never properly been deciphered, was unlike any other in classical Italy. Their origins have been hotly debated by scholars for centuries.
Genetic research made public at the weekend appears to put the matter beyond doubt, however. It shows the Etruscans came from the area which is now Turkey - and that the nearest genetic relatives of many of today's Tuscans and Umbrians are to be found, not in Italy, but around Izmir.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Jefferson Memorial's Shows Signs of Sinking
Source: Washington Post (6-17-07)
Up on the surface, the signs of the trouble at the Jefferson Memorial are small: A few blacktop patches over uneven seams in some concrete. A cordoned-off section where the sea wall has slipped below the front plaza. The "tilt meter" boxes that visitors can't see unless they know where to look.
Underground, though, the problems may be huge: Slowly, almost imperceptibly, parts of the complex seem to be sinking into the mud.
It's probably not endangering the majestic 32,000-ton domed structure itself, although it's being monitored for movement.
Japan Rejects China WWII Slavery Suit
Source: Washington Post (6-17-07)
Japan's Supreme Court has rejected appeals by dozens of Chinese seeking compensation for being forced into slave labor during World War II, their lawyer said Saturday. It was the second such decision in days by Japan's top court.
The 42 former Chinese laborers had sought $6.89 million in damages from the Japanese government and 10 companies they worked for, including major contractors and mining operators. The lawsuit was originally filed in 1997, and only half the laborers are still alive.
Toru Takahashi, a Japanese lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the court issued "a decision to reject the appeal" on Friday, but had no other details.
57 years later in Cuba a Hemingway founded fishing competition still going strong
Source: BBC News (6-17-07)
Fifty seven years ago, the author Ernest Hemingway inaugurated a big game fishing competition in Cuba. Held almost annually and despite tensions between the US and Cuba, the four-day event is still proving popular.
Like all the best fishing stories, mine began in a bar.
One evening in Havana I was introduced to a man called Stewart, an affable commercial manager in a London building firm.
Roman road found at gas pipeline
Source: BBC News (6-17-07)
A Roman road has been found by workers building a controversial £840m natural gas pipeline across Wales.
The historic roadway was discovered in the Brecon Beacons, on the path of the 190-mile (320km) National Grid pipe from Milford Haven to Gloucestershire.
Irish victims of Stalin uncovered
Source: BBC News (6-17-07)
Vienna-based historian Dr Barry McLoughlin never expected to find an Irish name while researching the fate of Austrians who died in Stalin's purges in the Soviet Union of the 1930s.
But when the name Patrick Breslin appeared in a Moscow News newspaper article in 1989, it was to begin a journey of discovery which would tell the tragic stories of three of Stalin's victims.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Old barrel symbolizes nazi nuke failure
Source: The Montreal Gazette (6-16-07)
You wouldn't think that a rusty old barrel is much of an attraction. But the one that sits near the entrance of the U.S. National Second World War Museum in New Orleans manages to draw crowds. Why? Because it represents the death knell for Nazi Germany's attempt to make a nuclear weapon.
This particular barrel was one of 29 aboard a ferry crossing Lake Tinnsjo in Norway on its way to Germany. The "Hydro" was sunk by Norwegian saboteurs in 1944 and the barrel languished at the bottom of the lake until archeologists brought it to the surface in 2004. What did the barrel contain to warrant such a major salvage operation? Water. But not ordinary water, it was "heavy water"
Our story begins in December 1938 at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. Chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman were following up a piece of intriguing research carried out by Enrico Fermi in Italy. Fermi had bombarded some common elements with neutrons and discovered that they would sometimes be converted into other elements, although these were always close in mass to the originals. But when Hahn and Strassman subjected uranium to neutron bombardment, they found a result they could hardly believe. The reaction mixture contained barium, an element with about half the mass of uranium.
Time Capsule Unveiling Reveals Rusty 1957 Plymouth
Source: Philadelphia Daily News (6-16-07)
TULSA, Okla. - A concrete vault encasing a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere buried a half-century ago may have been built to withstand a nuclear attack but it couldn't beat back the natural onslaught of moisture.
At a Friday ceremony complete with a couple of drum rolls, crews removed a multilayered protective wrapping caked with red mud, revealing a vintage vehicle that was covered in rust and wouldn't crank.
North Carolina Governor's history gets favorable edit
Source: Charlotte Observer (6-16-07)
Most politicians would love a chance to edit their page in the history books. Gov. Mike Easley's staff actually did.
Last year, members of Easley's press office heavily rewrote an entry on him in a book by state-employed historians on North Carolina's governors. Over several drafts, they deleted a reference to a failed U.S. Senate bid, speculation that he dislikes campaigning and a note that he had a boyhood reputation "for making mischief." They added a quote from Easley about patriotism, a line about how he successfully led the state to a "new global economy" and the fact that USA Today once named him one of the country's top drug busters. In the end, more than two-thirds of the final draft came from the governor's office.
Friday, June 15, 2007
US hands back artefacts to Peru
Source: BBC News (6-15-07)
The US has handed over more than 400 Incan and pre-Columbian artefacts to the government of Peru.
The items, which are believed to be worth millions of dollars, had been stolen from several Andean nations.
Remembering French Hero of the American Revolution
Source: NYT (6-15-07)
Being the direct descendant of Rochambeau, known hereabout as the Maréchal, for the title of field marshal that was bestowed on him by Louis XVI on his return from America, would be almost a full-time occupation. But the count has supplemented it with the role of a kind of representative of trans-Atlantic relations, which he and his wife, Madeleine, have taken particularly to heart in recent years, when ties between Washington and Paris have been strained. (Those relations have been getting better. And some hope that the recent election of the moderately pro-American Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France may further improve them.)
Whatever the differences, they are not preventing the count and his family from playing host this summer to a Rochambeau festival to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Maréchal’s death in 1807 — marked by small French and American flags along roads leading to the chateau — with conferences, lectures and 18th-century cultural events, including a production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” in the chateau courtyard.
Arrest Uncovers Divide in Hmong-Americans
Source: NYT (6-15-07)
Year after year, Vang Pao, the most recognized leader of Hmong people in the United States, described his dream when he appeared at Hmong New Year celebrations, ceremonies for new refugees, memorial dedications. Someday, he said, he would carry his people home to a free Laos.
So when he was arrested on June 4, accused of conspiring to overthrow the government in Laos, many older Hmong-Americans said they were stunned — not so much at the accusations but at the American prosecutors for turning their backs on a war hero.
Vang Pao, a military general in Laos, was lauded for leading forces backed by the Central Intelligence Agency in the “secret war” against communists there during the Vietnam War and had, for 30 years since, made no secret of his hopes for a democratic Laos.
An Unexpected Odd Couple: Free Markets and Freedom
Source: NYT (6-15-07)
When President Bush declared last week that political openness naturally accompanied economic openness, his counterparts in Beijing and Moscow were not the only ones to object. Liberal and conservative intellectuals, even once ardent supporters, have backed away from the century-old theory that democracy and capitalism, like Paris Hilton and paparazzi, need each other to survive.
From China, where astounding economic growth persists despite Communist Party rule, to Russia, where President Vladimir V. Putin has squelched opposition, to Venezuela, where dissent is silenced, developments around the world have been tearing jawbreaker-size holes in what has been a remarkably powerful idea, not only in academic circles but also in both Republican and Democratic administrations — that capitalism and democracy are two sides of a coin.
Giuliani Cites Reagan, Not Bush, as Model for Strong Leadership
Source: NYT (6-15-07)
Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has largely steered clear of criticizing President Bush as he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination, took an indirect swipe at the president on Thursday, suggesting that Mr. Bush was failing to provide strong leadership.
“What we’re lacking is strong, aggressive, bold leadership like we had with Ronald Reagan,” Mr. Giuliani told supporters at a Flag Day rally in Wilmington, Del.
German women seized during World War II seek recognition
Source: International Herald Tribune (6-15-07)
[A group of] women, some from western Germany, others from the former communist east, have been meeting...once a month since 1996. They share memories, celebrate birthdays and above all struggle to have their past recognized.
"We are Germany's forgotten wartime prisoners," said Edith Protze, 79.
All of them had been seized at random by Red Army soldiers during the spring of 1945 and transported across Russia to Siberia, where they spent years in labor camps. As they met Wednesday, legislators in the German Parliament, or Bundestag, were putting the final touches to a law that will provide higher pensions for those who were imprisoned for political reasons by the Communist authorities.
Americans shorter on average than Europeans
Source: NYT (6-15-07)
To the casual observer, Europeans -- who often seemed short, even to me (I'm 5-foot-7), when I first began traveling a lot in the 1970s -- now often seem tall by American standards. And that casual observation matches what careful researchers have found.
The data show that Americans, who in the words of a recent paper by the economic historian John Komlos and Benjamin Lauderdale in Social Science Quarterly, were ''tallest in the world between colonial times and the middle of the 20th century,'' have now ''become shorter (and fatter) than Western and Northern Europeans. In fact, the U.S. population is currently at the bottom end of the height distribution in advanced industrial countries.''
WWII MIAs Now Listed In Electronic Database
Source: DefenseLink (6-15-07)
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that an electronic database listing the names of servicemembers still unaccounted for from World War II is now available for family members and researchers.
This new listing will aid researchers and analysts in WWII remains recovery operations. Prior to this three-year effort, no comprehensive list of those missing from WWII has existed.
Navy Pilot Missing From Vietnam War Is Identified
Source: DefenseLink (6-15-07)
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors. He is Lt. Michael T. Newell, U.S. Navy, of Ellenville, N.Y. He will be buried today in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.
On Dec. 14, 1966, Newell was flying an F-8E Crusader aircraft as wingman in a flight of two on a combat air patrol over North Vietnam. During the mission, the flight leader saw a surface-to-air missile explode between the two aircraft. Although Newell initially reported that he had survived the blast, his aircraft gradually lost power and crashed near the border between Nghe An and Thanh Hoa provinces in south central North Vietnam. The flight leader did not see a parachute nor did he hear an emergency beacon signal. He stayed in the area and determined that Newell did not escape from the aircraft prior to the crash.
Chinese find shipwreck laden with Ming porcelain
Source: Reuters (6-14-07)
Chinese archaeologists have found an ancient sunken ship in the South China Sea laden with Ming Dynasty porcelain, the Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.
Divers used satellite navigation equipment to find the vessel, dubbed South China Sea II, which is about 17 to 18 meters (yards) long and lying at a depth of 20 meters.
White supremacists from across the country gather for a trip to the Met.
Source: Village Voice (6-14-07)
According to several Internet sites, white supremacist groups around the country had called for "patriot" get-togethers over the three-day weekend. The one organized for the New York area included a Saturday barbecue and a Sunday visit to "the incomparable Metropolitan Museum of (White) Art." Visiting the preeminent art museum, these patriots believed, would be a terrific way to celebrate white culture.
Shingo, Japan: Where Jesus Spent His Old Age
Source: Time (6-14-07)
"Nanyadoyara! Nanyaonasareno! Nanyadoyara!" the elderly women chant, clapping and spinning in careful circles in their white kimonos with orange sashes. They are performing a bon odori ritual summer festival dance in the farming village of Shingo, northeast of Tokyo. The scene is typical of similar pastoral celebrations throughout the Japanese countryside, as the geriatric audience on the town green pay more attention to the free-flowing sake and the glad-handing candidates trawling for votes in next month's legislative elections. But it's their chant that marks the Shingo dance as unusual.
"Nanyadoyara! Nanyaonasareno! Nanyadoyara!"— there's no translation, because even in Japanese, the words are gibberish. But, if local legend is to be believed, they express a secret that would rock Christianity to its foundations. The locals believe that Jesus wasn't crucified on Golgotha, but instead came to live in Shingo, where his remains are buried. I visited his "tomb," marked by a road sign that says "Tomb of Christ: Next Left."
Climb retracing the steps of Mallory successful
Source: BBC News (6-14-07)
An international team of climbers has scaled Everest by retracing the steps of two British men who disappeared just short of the summit in 1924.
The team says its success shows that George Mallory and Andrew Irvine may have been the first to climb the peak.
They say that it adds weight to the theory that the pair may have made it to the top in 1924, 29 years before Hillary and Tenzing's historic feat. The climbers wore replica 1920s clothes for all but the last part of the climb.
Seale convicted in 1964 deaths of black teens
Source: CNN (6-14-07)
A jury on Thursday convicted reputed Klansman James Ford Seale of kidnapping and conspiracy in the 1964 deaths of two black teenagers in southwest Mississippi, grisly drownings that went unpunished before federal prosecutors re-examined the forgotten case. Seale, 71, faces life in prison in the deaths of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee. The 19-year-olds disappeared from Franklin County on May 2, 1964, and their bodies were found later in the Mississippi River.
Seale sat stone-faced as the verdict was read and showed no emotion as marshals led him out of the courtroom. Seale was taken back to a county jail north of Jackson, where he has been held since he was arrested. A half dozen of his relatives, including his wife, ran out of the courthouse to a waiting Lexus sport utility vehicle, bumping some reporters in the scramble.
Japanese MPs deny sex slavery in WaPo adverstisement
Source: The Age (Australia) (6-15-07)
An advertisement, signed by 44 members of Japan's parliament, appeared in the Washington Post newspaper seeking to share "the truth with the American people" about the 200,000 "comfort women" who were driven into brothels during WWII. The ad was signed by professors, journalists, political commentators and 29 members of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, 13 from the Democratic Party of Japan and two independents.
Justice Dept. shifts from race to religious discrimination
Source: International Herald Tribune (6-14-07)
In recent years, the Bush administration has recast the federal government's role in civil rights by aggressively pursuing religion-oriented cases while significantly diminishing its involvement in the traditional area of race.
Paralleling concerns of many conservative groups, the Justice Department has argued successfully in a number of cases that government agencies, employers or private organizations have improperly suppressed religious expression in situations that the Constitution's drafters did not mean to restrict.
The shift at the Justice Department has significantly altered the government's civil rights mission, said Brian Landsberg, a law professor at the University of the Pacific and former Justice Department lawyer under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
Steps Jesus walked to trial restored to glory
Source: The Telegraph (6-14-07)
One of the Roman Catholic Church's holiest relics, which contains the steps believed to have been climbed by Jesus on his way to trial before Pontius Pilate, has been restored to its former glory.
The Santa Scala, or Holy Stairs, were brought to Rome from Jerusalem in the fourth century AD and placed in the former papal palace opposite the basilica of St John Lateran.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Ancient tower unearthed in Vietnamese central province
Source: Thanhnien News (6-14-07)
Residents of the central Binh Dinh Province have recently unearthed the top of a tower dating back to the Cham Civilization over ten centuries ago, said vice director of a local museum Thursday.
Dr. Dinh Ba Hoa, Vice director of the Binh Dinh Museum, said that while collecting stones on Xuan My Mountain, residents of Phuoc Hiep Commune, Tuy Phuoc District, discovered the top of the tower. The top of the tower is 1.8m-high, made of stones, and decorated with lotus petal-shaped patterns. A document by the French published in the 1930s makes mention of a Cham tower called Xuan My at the site, Hoa said.
Treasure hunt strikes gold at Greek ex-royal estate
Source: Sawf News (6-14-07)
More than 200 ancient items and 300 paintings were found inside sealed containers in a royal stable and in the basement of the main residence at Tatoi, some 25 kilometres (15 miles) northwest of the Greek capital, culture ministry officials said during a media tour of the site on Tuesday.
"It's a real treasure hunt, we are in the process of removing these marvellous items from boxes stacked in disorderly heaps," restoration supervisor Nikos Minos told AFP.
A team of 21 archaeologists and restorers started work at the crumbling, 19th-century estate three months ago as part of a bid to catalogue its contents before restoration work starts to find a new role for the site.
Archaeologists 1st Century BC pleasure gardens
Source: BBC News (6-14-07)
Archaeologists have discovered a series of mosaics they believe formed part of ancient pleasure gardens built in Rome in the 1st Century BC. The mosaics, in turquoise, gold and bright blue tones, were found nine metres (30ft) beneath street level.
Scholars say the images, which include Cupid riding a dolphin, probably lined a large nymphaeum (grotto).
Anger over day release for Nazi
Source: BBC News (6-14-07)
Jewish groups and Italian politicians have expressed anger at the decision to grant day release to a convicted Nazi criminal under house arrest in Rome. Erich Priebke, 93, is serving a life sentence for the murder of 335 people at the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome.
The 1944 massacre was a reprisal ordered by Adolf Hitler after partisans killed a patrol of 33 German soldiers.
Six decades later, families still await WWII pay
Source: MSNBC (6-14-07)
When they were told to get off their western Kentucky farmland in 1941 to make room for a sprawling World War II training camp, hundreds of families were given as little as two weeks to get everything out. Over the years, they say, they were cheated out of an agreement to buy back their land after the war and denied a stake in a government windfall: the discovery of massive deposits of gas and oil.
Now, those same families and their heirs are battling the U.S. government for what they say is their fair share of more than $30 million in profits. A judge's preliminary ruling in their favor raised the prospect of a settlement two years ago, but even a famed mediator — former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor — was unable to resolve the conflict.
Commemorations to mark 25th anniversary Falklands War
Source: BBC News (6-14-07)
The Queen, Tony Blair and Baroness Thatcher joined veterans for a remembrance service in the Falkland Islands Memorial Chapel in Berkshire.
A service in Stanley, attended by 1982 minister Lord Parkinson and Prince Edward, was among the Falklands events. The war came to an end on 14 June 1982, two-and-half-months after the UK territory was invaded by Argentina.
Some 255 British servicemen, more than 650 Argentines and three islanders were killed in the 74-day conflict.
Associated Press, in new book, examines its history
Source: International Herald Tribune (6-14-07)
In a neglected vault buried under New York's Rockefeller Center — a hot and musty space with little space between rows of rusted-shut file cabinets — The Associated Press found pieces of history.
The unearthing of thousands of documents, fragments of the 161-year history of the news cooperative, led to the publication of a new history of the AP — the first since the outbreak of World War II.
"Breaking News: How The Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace and Everything Else" tells the stories behind AP's documentation of world events since 1846, from James K. Polk to George W. Bush, the Civil War to Iraq.
Darwin world heritage bid stopped
Source: BBC News (6-14-07)
The nomination of Charles Darwin's former home in south-east London as a World Heritage Site has been withdrawn. The government took the decision following an evaluation by Unesco advisors, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (Icomos).
It said Icomos had failed to recognise the Bromley property's "significance as a site for the heritage of science". Down House at Downe was Darwin's home for 40 years and where he developed his revolutionary theory of evolution
Kansas High School Student Wins History Channel Award
Source: Broadcast Newsroom (6-14-07)
After months of intensive research, Samuel Huneke from Lawrence High School in Lawrence, Kansas, earned The History Channel(R) Award for "Best Senior Entry for an Individual Documentary" at the National History Day (NHD) ceremonies today for his documentary titled "Democracy in the Heart of Europe: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Czechoslovak Republic."
National History Day, Inc. is a nonprofit education program that presents an annual national history contest. Students present the findings of in-depth historical research in the form of documentaries, performances, exhibits, and papers and are judged by a panel of experts. More than half a million students nationwide participate in National History Day. The national finals are held at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Records bill clears Senate panel
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (6-13-07)
On June 13, 2007, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, by voice vote, approved (H.R. 1255) and a companion bill (S. 886), the “Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007.” The bills are now ready for consideration on the Senate floor. However, we have learned that a temporary hold has been put on the bill to allow concerns expressed by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and some other Republicans to be addressed before proceeding with floor action.
On March 14, 2007, by a vote of 333-93, the U.S. House of Representatives approved H.R. 1255.
Austria wants Waldheim off US Nazi list
Source: Independent (South Africa) (6-14-07)
Austria's foreign minister on Monday asked the United States to remove former president Kurt Waldheim from the "watch list" of people barred from US soil because CIA files opened on April 27 had no proof he was a war criminal who helped persecute Adolf Hitler's victims.
Kurt Waldheim, ex-U.N. chief with dark past, dies
Source: CNN (6-14-07)
Kurt Waldheim, whose legacy as U.N. secretary-general was overshadowed by revelations that he belonged to a German army unit that committed atrocities in the Balkans in World War II, died Thursday. He was 88.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
War and Censorship at Wilton High
Source: Truthdig (6-13-07)
Last Sunday night, as millions of Americans tuned in to the two Tonys—the final episode of “The Sopranos,” to see whether Tony Soprano lived or died, and the Tony Awards, celebrating the best in American theater—actor Stanley Tucci (who played “Nigel” in “The Devil Wears Prada") was in an off-Broadway theater, the Culture Project, watching high school students perform a play about war.
The production, “Voices in Conflict,” moved the audience to tears, ending with a standing ovation for the teenage actors, still reeling from a controversy that had propelled them onto the New York stage. Their high school principal had banned the play.
Bonnie Dickinson has been teaching theater at Wilton High School in Connecticut for 13 years. She and her students developed the idea of a play about Iraq, initially inspired by the Sept. 3, 2006, death of Wilton High graduate Nicholas Madaras from an IED (improvised explosive device) blast in Baqubah, Iraq. The play uses real testimonials from soldiers, from their letters, blogs and taped interviews, and Yvonne Latty’s book “In Conflict,” with the students acting the roles. The voices of Iraqis are also included.
Blasts Destroy Remnants of Samarra Shiite Shrine
Source: Washington Post (6-13-07)
BAGHDAD, June 13 -- Early morning blasts Wednesday destroyed two minarets at the same Shiite shrine in Samarra where an attack last year demolished the mosque's gilded dome and plunged the country into a wave of deadly sectarian violence.
No one was injured in the 9 a.m. explosions at the revered Askariya shrine in Samarra, about 65 miles north of Baghdad. But officials said it was just the sort of event that could spark a spiral of retaliatory attacks and make it harder to reduce the violence that has brought the addition of thousands of extra U.S. troops stationed at high-profile posts on the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere.
Pope lauds Eusebius, model of Christian historian
Source: Catholic World News (6-13-07)
At his weekly public audience on Wednesday, June 13, Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) spoke about Eusebius of Caesarea, the bishop and scholar whose "Christocentric approach to history" enriched his accounts of the early Church.
Speaking to about 30,000 people in St. Peter's Square, the Holy Father said that Eusebius lived in an era of change; his life spanned the time from the last persecutions of Christians by the Roman empire through the Council of Nicea, in which he was an active participant.
Unlikely Bedfellows: The FBI and Higher Ed
Source: Inside Higher Ed (6-13-07)
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and higher education as a whole have enjoyed a decidedly un-cozy relationship since the Vietnam War – a fact that many in academe have found to be just fine with them, thanks.
But if the FBI and higher education still aren’t the best of friends, they appear to be interacting a lot more. Reports this week about a nationwide FBI outreach program in which agents set up meetings with college leaders to discuss strategies for safeguarding academic research from unfriendly foreign interests have fueled growing concerns that the two entities are cozying up in uncomfortable ways these days in the name of national security.
And yet the reports have also raised awareness of the agency’s potential value as a resource as colleges confront the vulnerability inherent in an open system producing reams of research on topics intimately tied to America’s economic and physical security.
Original Presidential Signed Documents Up for Auction
Source: PR Newswire (6-13-07)
On June 28, 2007, Profiles in History lives up to its name and reputation as the nation's leading dealer of guaranteed-authentic original historical documents by presenting for auction two of the most rare and historic documents that have ever been made available for purchase. The first document is a proclamation signed on July 4, 1876 by President Ulysses S. Grant, his entire cabinet, all members of both Houses of Congress along with all members of the United States Supreme Court, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The second document, a proclamation signed on July 21, 1892 by President Benjamin Harrison along with his entire cabinet, all members of both Houses of Congress and the entire United States Supreme Court, celebrates the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America. These are the only documents known to exist in private hands that carry the signature of the leaders of all three branches of the Federal Government and bear the Great Seal of the United States as well as the Seals of the Supreme Court, Senate and House of Representatives. The expected selling price for each is expected to top $60,000-$80,000. The auction begins at 11:00am PT.
Map of historic abbey discovered
Source: BBC News (6-13-07)
The Elizabethan map, dating back to about 1587, was found at the National Archives at Kew in London.
It was drawn by Ralph Treswell, a renowned surveyor and cartographer, who was among the first in England to produce scaled plans of estates.
Lech Walesa publishes the Police files on him on internet
Source: The Independent (6-13-07)
Five hundred pages of files kept by the Polish police on Lech Walesa when he was leader of the striking Gdansk shipyard workers in the early 1980s have just gone up on the internet. Walesa - who went on to become president of Poland - put them there himself to confound those who have spread rumours that he was a police informer in the old days before Communism collapsed in Poland in 1989.
"I got sick and tired of the constant accusations, doubts and insinuations being peddled by these people and decided to publish these materials for all to see," he said. It is the most dramatic move yet in an argument that has been raging in Poland for months, over whether all the old police files should be made public so that everyone who spied on colleagues or neighbours for the secret police can be identified.
Thatcher: Falklands was a war against tyranny
Source: The Telegraph (6-13-07)
Baroness Thatcher drew parallels between the Falklands conflict and British deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan today during an emotional broadcast to mark the 25th anniversary of the conflict.
In the radio message recorded for the British Forces Broadcasting Service, she said the battle to reclaim the Falkland Islands was a "just" cause.
She added that the struggle against "tyranny and violence" continued today, and that serving troops could draw "hope and strength" from previous victories.
Anti-Semitism at 'worst level since 1936'
Source: The Telegraph (6-13-07)
A Jewish peer has warned that anti-Semitism is at its worst level in Britain since he fled here from Germany in 1936. Lord Moser said he was particularly concerned about anti-Jewish feeling in Britain's universities.
Addressing a House of Lords debate on anti-Semitism on university campuses, the crossbench peer said: "It is just over 70 years since I came to this country and I have to say that I've never been more concerned about the rising tide of anti-Semitism throughout Europe, including this country.
The new Bunker Hill Museum opens
Source: The Boston Globe (6-13-07)
It is called the Lodge, and for 105 years it has been the first stop for any school group, tourist, or history buff visiting the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown. Entering the mausoleum-like structure at the base of the famous obelisk, visitors dutifully passed a marble statue of an imposing Revolutionary War general and three dioramas from the 1970s with tiny figurines doing battle on a faux-grass hill. Created as a majestic gateway, the Lodge had become a cramped, overheated choke point, woefully inadequate for 200,000 annual visitors, officials said.
No longer. The National Park Service, after rethinking the way it presents the history of one of America's the most pivotal battles, has culled artifacts from local archives and hired a local muralist. Tomorrow, the result, an airy new Bunker Hill Museum, will open to the public. Across the street from the monument and no longer confined to the stone Lodge, the exhibits sprawl across two floors of a building that until 1970 housed the Charlestown branch of the Boston Public Library.
Tudor gatehouse discovered at the Tower of London
Source: 24 Hour Museum (6-13-07)
Extensive archaeological remains of an old guard house dating to the Tudor and Jacobean periods have been uncovered at the Tower of London.
Staff were relaying a cobblestone path across Tower Green to conform with disability regulations when they found evidence of walls, which turned out to be the remains of a substantial building.
Controversial Stasi conference cancelled in Berlin
Source: Deutsche Welle (6-13-07)
A controversial conference with former top level East German spies has been cancelled in Berlin. Organizer Thomas Wegener Friis said the event was to focus on the so-called HVA, the foreign intelligence branch of the secret police Stasi in the former East Germany (GDR).
Canadian Senate says museum should change display that riled vets
Source: CBC (6-13-07)
Veterans who claim a display at the Canadian War Museum makes them look like war criminals have misinterpreted it, but the panel should be changed anyway, says a Senate subcommittee on veterans affairs.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
American Heritage Suspends Print Edition
Source: American Heritage (6-12-07)
American Heritage, the nation’s preeminent magazine of history and the parent of this website, has stopped publication, at least temporarily, with the April/May 2007 issue, now on newsstands. The website will continue to publish.
American Heritage, a bimonthly, was founded in 1954. It was bought by Forbes Inc. in 1986 and has suffered financially in recent years amid hard times for magazines in general. Forbes put it up for sale earlier this year and has not yet found a buyer.
'86 law looms over immigration fight
Source: NYT (6-12-07)
When President Bush goes to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to push for revival of a comprehensive immigration bill, he will have to wrestle with the ghost of a 1986 law that promised to solve the problem of illegal immigration.
That law prohibited the hiring of illegal immigrants, provided new resources for enforcement along the Mexican border and offered legal status, or amnesty, to several million illegal immigrants. In the current debate, which stalled last week when the latest legislative proposal failed to clear a procedural hurdle, senators of both parties cite the 1986 law as an example of what not to do.
Chinese Minister rails: renovation projects damage similar to cultural revolution
Source: The Guardian (6-12-07)
China has become the land of 1,000 identical cities, a senior government official has warned in an outspoken attack on the country's rush towards modernity.
Qiu Baoxing, the vice-minister of construction, said the damage to the country's heritage was similar to that wrought during the cultural revolution of 1966-76.
In the early stages of that period, Red Guards ransacked temples and burned ancient scripts in the name of revolutionary politics. Today, the damage is more likely to be done by urban developers in the name of economic progress.
US military planned 'gay bomb'
Source: VNUNet (6-12-07)
Newly released documents have shown that the US military was considering the development of a chemical weapon to turn enemy soldiers gay.
Edward Hammond, of Berkeley's Sunshine Project, used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the Air Force's Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio and passed it to CBS 5.
According to the document the Air Force requested $7.5m for the development of such a weapon, but the proposal was rejected.
3500 Japanese WWII era bombs found in China
Source: Hindustan Times (6-12-07)
China on Tuesday claimed to have unearthed a large cache of explosives, abandoned by Japanese troops during World War II, from the base of a hill in Dunhua City in northeast China's Jilin Province.
The 3,500 bombs, still lethal and weighing more than 40 tonnes, were found buried in a rectangular pit at the foot of the hill in Dunhua's Shaheyan Township, which was once the site of a Japanese military airport, police said.
The bombs were discovered by three local farmers from Daqiao Township on June 3 using a metal detector to find scrap iron left by the Japanese troops, which they hoped to sell for money, the police said.
Iran to publish president's speeches
Source: AP (6-12-07)
Iran will publish the speeches and writings of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel's destruction and once wrote President Bush a letter criticizing his handling of the Sept. 11 attacks, newspapers reported Tuesday.
Ahmadinejad reportedly has appointed a 15-member panel—dubbed the Council of Policy-Making and Supervision over Publication of President's Works and Thoughts—and made up of his closest allies, to compile and publish the works.
The move provoked derision from the growing ranks of his critics at home, who dismiss the council as a propaganda machine that will waste public money to promote Ahmadinejad ahead of the 2009 presidential election.
Wartime spies have cover blown by MI5
Source: The Telegraph (6-12-07)
A blunder by MI5 has blown the cover on some of its top wartime agents - 60 years after they carried out secret operations.
The identities of operatives from the intelligence services are normally closely guarded, even after long periods of time have passed since their retirement.
However, an apparently innocuous file released by MI5 to the National Archives earlier this year has allowed a number of agents who operated during World War Two to be identified.
German Fund Ends Payments to Nazi-Era Forced Laborers
Source: Deutsche Welle (6-12-07)
A fund set up by the German government to compensate Nazi-era forced laborers has finished its last payments to victims. The remaining money in the fund will be used for reconciliation projects.
The Remembrance, Responsibility and Future foundation to compensate Nazi-era forced laborers paid 1.7 million people more than 4.4 billion euros ($5.8 billion) in recent years.
70 year-old nuclear reactor instructions revealed
Source: BBC News (6-12-07)
Instructions on how to build a nuclear reactor have been revealed from five sealed envelopes that have lain hidden for almost 70 years.
The documents were sent to the UK's Royal Society for safekeeping by James Chadwick, discoverer of the neutron, during World War II.
He felt their contents, which described cutting-edge science, were far too sensitive to publish at the time. The envelopes were recently discovered in the science academy's archives.
Tablets tell all: ancient athletes flogged for sins
Source: The Age (6-12-07)
AN ANCIENT training manual for Roman athletes — carved in marble almost 2000 years ago — prescribes far worse punishments than a sending off or a week's docked pay if they performed badly in the Colosseum.
The manual recommends a flogging to get them to perform better. And the same went if they drank too much mead or behaved disgracefully with the local maidens.
Researchers seek DNA link to Lost Roanoke Colony
Source: The Virginian-Pilot (6-12-07)
A DNA testing company and a genealogy enthusiast say they're trying to achieve what archaeologists have so far failed to do: find out what happened to the Lost Colony, the 1587 settlement on Roanoke Island that disappeared without a wisp of evidence.
"The Lost Colony story is the biggest unsolved mystery in the history of America," said Roberta Estes, owner of DNA Explain, a private DNA analysis company based in Brighton, Mich. "I don't know what we'll find in the end. Part of the big question for me is, did the Lost Colony survive? Who is their family today? And where did they go?"
Politics Keeps Scholars Out of U.S., Critics Say
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education (6-12-07)
For nine months, Riyadh Lafta, an Iraqi professor of medicine, tried to get a visa to visit the University of Washington, where he had been invited to share his research on the unusually high rates of cancer among children in southern Iraq.
But by last March, with no visa forthcoming, the American institution came up with an alternative plan. Mr. Lafta would deliver his lecture at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, British Columbia, and it would be broadcast by video to a public meeting long planned for the purpose at Washington.
Bush dedicates memorial to communism's victims
Source: Agence France Presse (6-12-07)
A statue modeled on the "Goddess of Democracy" paraded during the bloody Tiananmen Square protests 18 years ago was unveiled Tuesday as a memorial to victims of communism worldwide. The memorial, located near the Capitol Hill site of the US Congress, pays homage to the "more than 100 million people" who have died under communism since Russia's Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
US President George W. Bush Tuesday likened the Cold War to today's struggle against terrorism at the unveiling of a new memorial that mourns the tens of millions killed under communism.
Finkelstein supporter also denied tenure
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education (6-12-07)
Another professor at DePaul University was rejected for tenure at the same time as Norman G. Finkelstein, and she believes her advocacy for the embattled political scientist may have derailed her career.
"There is no good explanation for why I was denied tenure," Mehrene E. Larudee, an assistant professor of international studies, said in an interview on Monday. "So one has to look elsewhere."
Praised as "outstanding" by the dean of her college and recommended unanimously by distinguished faculty peers during the tenure process, Ms. Larudee was 19 days away from becoming director of DePaul's program in international studies when she learned on Friday of the decision against her.
The U.S. recruited Japanese speaking Nisei before Pearl Harbor
Source: The San Francisco Chronicle (6-12-07)
In July 1941, newly drafted Army Pvt. Masaji "Gene" Uratsu received an unusual request during basic training: Report to division headquarters. There, a captain pulled him into a room and asked the farm boy to translate a Japanese textbook and Japanese military field guide. Nervously, Uratsu -- who was born in the United States but had studied in Japan as a child -- stumbled through the translation. He read aloud, feeling like a mouse cornered by a cat. After Uratsu finished, the captain said to tell no one -- or face a court martial.
Months later, Uratsu was told to report to San Francisco's Presidio along with three other Japanese American privates. At the military post, rumors abounded among the dozens of Japanese American rank-and-file soldiers. Organized to fight a suicide mission? Assigned to wash dishes and do menial jobs?
More Clues In the Legend Of Romulus
Source: NYT (6-12-07)
The story of Romulus and Remus is almost as old as Rome. The orphan twins were suckled by a she-wolf in a cave on the banks of the Tiber. Romulus grew up to found Rome in 753 B. C. Historians have long since dismissed the story as a charming legend.
This year, Italian archaeologists reported discovering the long-lost cave under the Palatine Hill that ancient Romans held sacred as the place where the twins were nursed. The grown brothers fought over leadership of the new city, the story goes, and Romulus killed Remus and became the first king.
Chris Moseley Named Senior Vice President for History Chanel
Source: Earth Times (6-12-07)
Award-winning marketing executive Chris Moseley has been appointed Senior Vice President of Marketing for The History Channel. The announcement was made today by Nancy Dubuc, Executive Vice President and General Manager, The History Channel.
In her new role, Moseley will spearhead all marketing, promotional and branding campaigns for The History Channel and its domestic networks including History International, The History Channel en espanol and Military History Channel across all content platforms as well as history.com. She will be responsible for the creative implementation of major marketing strategies, including advertising, on-air consumer marketing and branding. She will report directly to Ms. Dubuc.
Monday, June 11, 2007
African American Seeks to Prove A Genetic Link to James Madison
Source: Washington Post (6-11-07)
Bettye Kearse stepped inside the mansion at Montpelier, former president James Madison's Virginia estate, to find the walls stripped bare. Rooms once opulently adorned have been deconstructed by archaeologists to reveal the slatted wooden frame that held together the home of one of the nation's premier architects.
Kearse, 64, a Massachusetts pediatrician, says she hopes to prove something the mansion's walls have so far kept hidden: that she, an African American, is a direct descendant of the man known as the father of the Constitution.
Studies show enlightenment has no bearing on torture
Source: Washington Post (6-11-07)
Two recent examinations suggest that torture arises not because of individual barbarity and sadism, or even because of the presence or absence of enlightened laws, but because of social and psychological structures. The 20th century provided more avenues for such structures to flourish, these analyses suggest, which is why so much more torture took place in the last 100 years. Sociologist Christopher Einolf recently compiled a history of torture. He limited his study to cases involving conduct that everyone would agree is torture: severe physical pain inflicted by a government official on a prisoner who has not been proved guilty.
From ancient times to the modern era, Einolf found, states have largely used such torture against people "who are not full members of society." This is true whether you look at those ancient times when torture was considered perfectly moral, or modern times when it is considered repugnant. Torture, Einolf found, has been largely reserved for slaves and foreigners, and religious and ethnic minorities -- in a word, outsiders. When it has been used against citizens, torture has usually been used to unearth or punish treason. (Heresy, Einolf argues, was a special kind of treason.)
DePaul Rejects Finkelstein Tenure
Source: Inside Higher Ed (6-11-07)
DePaul University on Friday formally denied tenure to Norman G. Finkelstein, who has taught political science there while attracting an international following — of both fans and critics — for his attacks on Israeli policies and the “Holocaust industry.”
Finkelstein’s tenure bid has attracted an unusual degree of outside attention and his research has been much debated by scholars of the Middle East. In evaluating his record, DePaul faculty panels and administrators praised him as a teacher and acknowledged that he has become a prominent public intellectual, with works published by major presses. But first a dean and now the president of DePaul — in rejecting tenure for Finkelstein — have cited the style of his work and intellectual combat. Finkelstein was criticized for violating the Vincentian norms of the Roman Catholic university with writing and statements that were deemed hurtful, that contained ad hominem attacks and that did not show respect for others.
Former killing grounds become shrine to Stalin's victims
Source: NYT (6-11-07)
BUTOVO, Russia — Barbed wire still lines the perimeter of the secret police compound here on the southern edge of Moscow where more, perhaps far more, than 20,000 people were shot and buried from August 1937 through October 1938, at the height of Stalin’s purges. Now, gradually, Butovsky poligon — literally, the Butovo shooting range — is becoming a shrine to all of the victims of Stalin’s murderous campaigns. Grass-covered mounds holding the victims’ bones crisscross the pastoral field, which is now dotted with flowers and birch trees.
Searing portraits from victims’ case files found in the archives of the secret police are displayed, along with a grim month-by-month chart of executions, in front of a small wooden church in the field.
Romney's run makes Mormons proud, and worried
Source: NYT (6-11-07)
Many Mormons here are rooting for Mr. Romney, a fellow church member whose success in business, Adonis looks and wholesome family tableau seem to them to present the ideal face of Mormonism to the world. Among the Republican front-runners, Mr. Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, recently was the leader in campaign fund-raising; his candidacy is, for many Mormons, a historic moment of arrival.
But even for the many Mormons who support Mr. Romney, the moment is fraught with anxiety because his candidacy is bringing intense scrutiny to their church, and could exacerbate longstanding bigotry.
Unique Thracian Symbol of Royalty Discovered in Bulgaria
Source: Sofia News Agency (6-11-07)
Archaeologists have discovered the most ancient ruler's symbol on Bulgarian territory, what was once the kingdom of the Thracian tribes. The Bulgarian archaeologists Daniela Agre and Deyan Dichev, who are leading the Strandzha expedition, made the announcement for the exceptional finding on the Bulgarian National Radio on Monday.
The artifact was unearthed near the village of Golyam Dervent. Dichev and Agre were researching a dolmen (dolmens were the first Thracian tombs) when they noticed a frieze of intertwined zoomorphic and geometrical elements carved on the entrance of the tomb. The most interesting part of the discovery is the double-axe (labris) - a symbol of power in the Thracian society - placed inside a circle. The labris has lots of additional ornamentation on it, Dichev said. The frieze includes the images of snakes, which were the symbol of the king in the Thracian religious beliefs.
Ancient Rome comes back to life in virtual model
Source: Reuters (6-11-07)
Tourists puzzled by the jumble of buildings in classical and modern Rome can now find their bearings by visiting a virtual model of the imperial capital in what is being billed as the world's biggest computer simulation of an ancient city.
"Rome Reborn" was unveiled on Monday in a first release showing the city at its peak in 320 AD, under the Emperor Constantine when it had grown to a million inhabitants.
Brainchild of the University of Virginia's Bernard Frischer, Rome Reborn (www.romereborn.virginia.edu) will eventually show its evolution from Bronze Age hut settlements to the Sack of Rome in the 5th century AD and the devastating Gothic Wars.
Ethiopia demands remains of prince
Source: The Telegraph (6-11-07)
He was born a prince with a bloodline stretching back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the son of an Ethiopian emperor and heir to the treasures of one of Africa's richest royal dynasties.
But, taken as a boy to Victorian England by British soldiers who ransacked his father's mountain-top palace, Prince Alemayehu died alone aged 18 in Leeds, 128 years ago.
Now the Ethiopians want his body returned to mark their millennium which, according to the Ethiopian calendar, falls on Sept 12 this year.
Senate votes to study treatment of Germans in U.S. during WWII
Source: Racine Journal Times (6-11-07)
In 1943, 17-year-old Eberhard Fuhr was taken out of his high school classroom in Cincinnati, arrested by FBI agents, and sent off to an internment camp for "enemy aliens" in Texas, where he spent the next 4 1/2 years with his family.
The stories of the Germans have gotten little attention so far, but the Senate took a step toward changing that last week, voting to look into the treatment of Germans and other Europeans in the U.S. during World War II.
Napoleon's battle sword up for auction
Source: AP (6-10-07)
After more than 200 years in the family, the gold-encrusted sword Napoleon carried into battle in Italy will be auctioned off Sunday, across the street from one of his imperial castles.
The intricately decorated blade is 32 inches long and curves gently -- an inspiration Napoleon drew from his Egyptian campaign, auctioneer Jean-Pierre Osenat said.
"He noticed that the Arab swords, which were curved, were very effective in cutting off French heads" and ordered an imitation made upon his return, Osenat explained.
The last of Napoleon's swords in private hands, it has an estimated value of at least $1.6 million, according to the Osenat auction house managing the sale.
Thatcher pubicly admits regrets over Hong Kong
Source: The Telegraph (6-10-07)
Lady Thatcher has spoken publicly for the first time of her regret at the "impossible" situation she faced while trying to negotiate the handover of Hong Kong to China.
In her first interview for almost five years, the former prime minister has revealed her disappointment at failing to persuade Deng Xiaoping, the former Chinese premier, to let Britain extend its lease on the colony.
In a rare dropping of her guard, she admits to feeling "sad" when, seven years after she had left office in 1990, Britain's and Hong Kong's 145-year relationship ended, bringing down the final curtain on the British Empire.
Revealed: Titanic was doomed before it set sail
Source: The Telegraph (6-10-07)
The Titanic faced disaster from the moment it set sail, experts now believe.
Research suggests that, even if the ocean liner had not struck an iceberg during its maiden voyage, structural weaknesses made it vulnerable to any stormy sea.
The flaws, uncovered by researchers who found, filmed and analysed previously undiscovered portions of the Titanic's keel, also reduced the length of time the vessel remained afloat after hitting the iceberg on April 14, 1912 - scuppering the chances of rescue boats sent to the scene arriving in time and thus condemning hundreds of passengers and crew stranded on board to death.
50,000 Years of Resilience May Not Save Tribe
Source: Washington Post (6-10-07)
YAEDA VALLEY, Tanzania -- One of the last remaining tribes of hunter-gatherers on the planet is on the verge of vanishing into the modern world.
The transition has been long underway, but members of the dwindling Hadzabe tribe, who now number fewer than 1,500, say it is being unduly hastened by a United Arab Emirates royal family, which plans to use the tribal hunting land as a personal safari playground.
The deal between the Tanzanian government and Tanzania UAE Safaris Ltd. leases nearly 2,500 square miles of this sprawling, yellow-green valley near the storied Serengeti Plain to members of the royal family, who chose it after a helicopter tour.
German WWII sailor dies in Uruguay
Source: The Press Telegram (6-10-07)
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay - Friedrich Adolph, the last surviving sailor in Uruguay from the famed German battleship Admiral Graf Spee that sank off this country's coast at the outset of World War II, has died, his family said. He was 89.
Adolph died Friday and had been "very sick," according to his grandson, Tobias Friedrich AdolphThe Graf Spee was considered one of the most sophisticated battleships of its time.
The battleship prowled the South Atlantic, sinking as many as nine allied merchant ships before warships from Britain and New Zealand tracked it down and damaged it during the "Battle of the River Plate" that began on Dec. 13, 1939.The damaged Graf Spee limped into Montevideo harbor where injured and dead sailors were taken ashore. To prevent it from falling into enemy hands, the Graf Spree's German captain later dynamited it and sank it a few miles from Montevideo
Couple retrace John Muir's 1868 route into Yosemite
Source: ESPN (6-10-07)
Millions of people have marveled at the view of Bridalveil Fall since John Muir first spotted it from a mile away when he entered Yosemite Valley in the spring of 1868. Not nearly as many see the "dainty little fall'' quite the way Muir did.
Now, a Santa Cruz, Calif., couple are hoping to restore some popularity to one of the classic early views of Yosemite, reopening a 19th-century door on what Muir came to regard as a holy vista — the "sanctum sanctorum of the Sierra.''
Donna and Peter Thomas, a husband-and-wife team of artists who spend most of their time producing hand-bound fine-press books, have rewalked a long-forgotten trail from San Francisco to Yosemite that Muir took, also mostly on foot, for his first Sierra visit in 1868.
Mildred Loving reflects on breaking the color barrier
Source: AP (6-10-07)
Born Mildred Jeter, she's known mostly by the name she took when she--a black woman living in segregated Virginia--dared break the rules by marrying a white man named Richard Loving.
The union landed the Lovings in jail, and then before the U.S. Supreme Court, and finally in the history books; 40 years ago Tuesday, the court ruled in favor of the couple, overturning laws prohibiting interracial unions and changing the face of America.
Mildred Loving is a matriarch to thousands of mixed couples now sprinkled in every city. But she hardly considers herself a hero _ just a girl who once fell in love with a boy.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Israelis Ask, What Have We Gained Since the '67 War?
Source: NYT (6-9-07)
In the months before the 1967 Middle East war, Israel was in a spiral of self-doubt, the 19-year experiment of an independent Jewish state looking shaky.
There were existential worries about destruction by Arab armies, fierce denunciations of the political leadership and deep anxiety about a sinking economy.
Forty years later, Israel is rich and its army one of the best in the world, yet the public mood is oddly similar. There is a quiet panic about a potentially nuclear Iran, condemnations of the leadership as weak, indecisive and corrupt, and deep concerns about “two Israels” — religious versus secular, settler versus beachgoer, Jerusalem versus Tel Aviv, Jew versus Arab.
Friday, June 8, 2007
The Virtually Untrammeled Power of Presidential Pardons
Source: NYT (6-7-07)
When it comes to high-profile presidential pardons, the big one, of course, was President Gerald R. Ford’s pardon of Richard M. Nixon.
Ford issued the pardon on Sept. 8, 1974, pre-empting the possibility of a trial for Nixon, who had resigned on Aug. 9 because of the Watergate scandal without being charged with any crimes.
Explaining his decision, Ford described the Nixon family’s situation as “an American tragedy in which we all have played a part.”
“It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it,” he said. “I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must.”...
Plessy decision cited in major gay marriage case
Source: NYT Editorial (6-7-07)
Appearing last month before the state’s highest court, a lawyer representing eight same-sex couples led a spirited attack on Connecticut’s refusal to grant gay couples the freedom to marry. He also challenged the notion that civil union laws — like those enacted in Connecticut, New Jersey, Vermont, and most recently New Hampshire — are a constitutionally adequate alternative.
The plaintiffs’ argument was laced with references to Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court’s notorious 1896 decision which justified racial segregation under a deplorable standard of “separate but equal.” Although startling, the analogy is apt. In establishing civil unions two years ago, Connecticut lawmakers created a separate and inherently inferior institution that continues to deny gay couples the equality they seek and deserve.
Teaching American History Grants Spared Budget Ax
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH) (6-8-07)
On June 7, the House Appropriations’ Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education cleared its fiscal year (FY) 2008 budget for the programs under its jurisdiction.
The subcommittee approved $120 million for the Teaching American History grants program at the U.S. Department of Education. While this reflects level funding from FY 2007, the subcommittee rejected the Bush administration’s request that the program be cut by nearly 60 percent, to a level of $50 million.
Gerald R. Ford Prize Awarded for Expose of Bush's signing statements
Source: Romensko (6-8-07)
Charlie Savage, Washington correspondent for The Boston Globe has won the twentieth annual Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency. The $5,000 award recognizes journalists whose high standards for accuracy and substance help foster a better public understanding of the Presidency. This year, the award will be presented by Jack Ford, son of President Ford and chairman of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, at a National Press Club luncheon on June 11th.
In selecting Charlie Savage for the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency in 2006, the judges issued the following statement.
"As White House reporter for The Boston Globe, Charlie Savage exposed a persistent and unprecedented expansion of Presidential authority that infringed on the separation of powers imbedded in the Constitution. Compiling the record of President Bush's actions on new legislation, Savage recognized and reported a clear pattern: In public ceremonies the President would sign bills passed by Congress, then quietly add signing statements asserting the right to ignore provisions with which he disagreed. In six years as President, Savage reported, President Bush challenged some 750 statutes, far more than all previous Presidents combined. Broadening the impact of his articles, Savage quoted legal scholars on how the President's practice of approving bills only to defy them diminished the rule of law. Members of Congress, alerted by Savage's reporting, moved to counter the President's reach for greater power by demanding that the President execute all statutes duly debated and legislated into law.
Lenin's great-grandmother burnt at the stake as a witch
Source: http://www.interfax (6-8-07)
German psychologist Gunter Kruse, who in recent years has been engaged in drawing up Lenin's family tree, maintains that one of the world proletariat leader's great-grandmothers was burnt at the stake as a witch.
"I went as far back as the middle ages and discovered one of Lenin's ancestor who lived in the 13th century", Kruse reported after spending several years in archives, drawing up the Western European branch of Lenin's family tree.
According to Kruse, the witch who was burnt at the stake by the Inquisition is the most intriguing member of the Ulyanovs family, though almost no information about her has survived.
State's first concrete road becomes history (Miss.)
Source: http://www.djournal.com/ (6-8-07)
A strip of the past runs not far from the southern corporate limits of this northern Lee County city.
The 300 feet or so left of the first concrete road built in Mississippi, stands as a reminder of the work that has pushed Lee County forward in so many ways.
Bobby Smith, District 2 supervisor, knew that when he had to pave most of what is now known as County Road 681. But he left the strip for posterity, notified the state Department of Archives and History and wants to see the patch of roadway marked with a sign that will give itss history and significance. Smith has yet to hear from the state.
"Obviously, saving a piece of our history is important," he said, "from the standpoint of our children, when they grow up, can ask questions and understand the history of Saltillo, the history of this area."
[It's the oldest concrete road in the state and second oldest in the South.]
With donation Computer History Museum buys archive of old machines
Source: http://www.sys-con.com (6-7-07)
SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and the Computer History Museum (CHM), based in Silicon Valley, today announced that the museum has acquired a new collection of rare computers and related items, made possible by a $250,000 donation from SAP. Determined to be of high quality and historical importance, this collection was found in a remote warehouse in northwestern Germany and was scheduled for destruction before CHM intervened. The donation, managed by the Corporate Social Responsibility team within SAP Global Communications, funded the shipping, logistical support and storage required to move the collection from Germany to CHM's facility in Mountain View, California. The announcement was made during SAP's Silicon Valley Week, being held in Palo Alto, California, June 6-8....
Tallahassee branch of the NAACP moving to historic black town
Source: http://www.tallahassee.com (6-6-07)
It was appropriate that the NAACP's 29th annual Freedom Fund & Awards Banquet include a talk about Frenchtown.
Local historian Ann Roberts spoke of the history of the community that started in the 1700s as a 6-by-6-mile stretch of land that developed into a prominent black enclave, full of thriving business up until the end of segregation.
Later, the area became a magnet for crime, drugs and prostitution.
But don't despair, Roberts said. “The best is yet to come."
Frenchtown is the future home for the headquarters of the Tallahassee branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Publishers get clever with anniversary issues of books on 1857 Mutiny
Source: http://in.news.yahoo.com (6-7-07)
Publishing houses cannot afford to forget anniversaries. Their dates with history are marked by glossy, sepia-tinted hardbounds and gala launches. The year 2007-that marks the 150th anniversary of the 1857 Uprising and the 60th year of independent India- is just the right time to package nationalism and sell history.
Reunion to offer DNA, oral history to link slave descendants
Source: AP (6-6-07)
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - About 100 descendants of slaves from Montpelier and other Orange County plantations plan to share their stories and collect DNA samples this week that may piece together their history.
President James Madison's Montpelier and the Orange County African American Historical Society are hosting the reunion Friday through Sunday at the central Virginia estate in Montpelier Station. It it meant to educate and celebrate the cultural history of the descendant community.
The reunion is 1 of a series of events commemorating the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. It also comes in the midst of a $23 million renovation to restore the home that Madison shared with his wife, Dolley, in the 1800s.
History through puppets
Source: http://www.thepresstribune.com (Roseville, CA) (6-8-07)
A Cirby School third-grade teacher is proving books and documentaries aren't the only ways to learn about the history of Roseville.
Students in Lisa Wegsteen's class last week staged several performances of an original play shedding light on the city's history. But in a unique twist, students' hands did all the acting.
Using specially decorated hand puppets, actors played a group of contemporary Cirby School students who want to learn more about their area's past.
So they jump inside a magic tree house that takes them back in time.
Saving the Spacesuit for History
Source: NYT (6-8-07)
The history of the American spacesuit may be missing a chapter if NASA doesn’t change its plans.
While all the previous iterations of the suit — from John Glenn’s to Gene Cernan’s — are on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, the model used in the most recent spacewalks is not for a number of reasons, according to CollectSpace, a website about preserving the history of space exploration.
Encyclopedia to chart KY history from black perspective
Source: http://www.state-journal.com (6-6-07)
Helen Fairfax Holmes was a fire cat.
That's how Eastern Kentucky University visiting scholar and Frankfort resident Karen McDaniel describes her late friend.
Once, when the two were getting out of a car at Holmes' house, McDaniel tried to help the feeble woman to the door.
"She smacked my arm and said, "I don't need no help,'" McDaniel said. "I never tried to help her again like that. She was independent."
Holmes, former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Frankfort chapter, helped organize the 1964 March on Frankfort in support of civil rights legislation before the Kentucky General Assembly. The march drew 10,000 protesters and appearances by Martin Luther King Jr., Jackie Robinson and musical group Peter, Paul and Mary.
She also organized a boycott of taxi stations, organized sit-ins at Kentucky State University where she was an English professor, and got students involved in equal rights demonstrations during the civil rights era.
"She was at there in the forefront," McDaniel said. "She was just amazing in all the things she was involved with and all the things she did."
That's why McDaniel is including her friend as one of the hundreds of entries in the Kentucky African-American Encyclopedia she is working on.
Effort to fix birth date on Vallejo's tomb
Source: http://www.sonomanews.com (6-8-07)
For those with a keen knowledge of Sonoma history, Gen. Mariano Vallejo's tombstone in Mountain Cemetery has been a long-standing point of contention. The reason: The general's birth date is incorrect on the large slab of marble.
Now a collection of interested citizens is working with the living descendants of Vallejo to attempt to get this error fixed.
"We can actually set the date straight," said Martha McGettigan, great-great-granddaughter of Vallejo. "I think it's an honor to be the ones to correct it."
By most accounts, the error was first publicized in 1959, when J.N. Bowman, a historian with the California State Archives, looked up Vallejo's baptismal record from the Archives of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Monterey, where the general was born.
The record clearly stated he was born July 4, 1807, not July 7, 1808, as the tombstone reads. Bowman released his findings in an article published in 1959 titled "Vallejo's Birth Date."
"The family, for years now, has tried to correct it," said Paula Vinson, who's aiding in the effort to correct the tombstone.
History bus
Source: http://miningjournal.net (6-6-07)
More than 140 people came to learn about a forgotten time in history Tuesday at the Peter White Public Library in Marquette — leaving many in the audience astounded at the stories they heard and read.
“Vanished: German-American Civilian Internment, 1941-48,” put on by the Traces Museum in St. Paul, Minn., told the story of 15,000 German-Americans who were forced into internment camps.
The exhibits were displayed in one of the museum’s two converted buses, called a “BUS-eum.” The BUS-eum includes exhibits in half of it and a 25-person seating area that shows two videos. A “Dateline NBC” documentary tells the story of more than 5,000 Latin American Germans and Japanese being forced into internment camps; a second film was from 1945 about the internment camps.
40 years later, survivors of Liberty spy ship seek answers
Source: http://www.dailypress.com (6-8-07)
NORFOLK, Va. -- Their lightly armed spy ship was cruising the Mediterranean off the coast of Egypt, watching and eavesdropping during the Six-Day War in 1967 between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
The sky was clear and the sea calm. Suddenly, Israeli war planes swooped down and ships approached, firing at the deck as sailors aboard the Liberty struggled to save the Norfolk-based ship.
Albright-Knox to get $25.5 million from sale of sculpture
Source: Buffalo News (6-8-07)
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s sale of the prized bronze statue “Artemis and the Stag” earned $25.5 million Thursday at Sotheby’s auction house in New York City, setting records as the most expensive sculpture and antiquity sold through auctions.
Final sales from Thursday’s auction of 25 antiquities from the gallery’s permanent collection totaled $35.8 million, bringing profits from the gallery’s recent series of auctions to more than $64 million, not including Sotheby’s commission.
Indians shot in back in Utah, remains show
Source: KUTV News (SLC) (6-7-07)
The remains of seven American Indians unearthed by a home builder show several were shot point-blank in the head by Mormon settlers seeking revenge during a period of pitched violence in 1853, say scientists who plan to release their findings on Friday.
The bones were discovered by contractors digging in Nephi, about 70 miles south of Salt Lake City, last summer for a house that now stands over the site.
The victims, all males about 13 to 35 years old, are believed to have been Goshute Indians who were unwitting casualties of the Walker War, a nearly yearlong clash between Mormons and other Indian tribes under the leadership of Ute Chief Walkara.
Chinese war heroine nursed secret of lost love
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-8-07)
She was a beautiful young Chinese nurse, fresh from a Hong Kong training college. He was the epitome of glamour in war-wracked China, an American "Flying Tiger", one of the select group of fighter pilots who defended the supply chain across the Himalayas for the troops fighting the Japanese.
Amid the carnage, they fell in love, and the pilot - known to this day only by his nickname, Panny - promised to return after the war was over to find her.
It took 60 years, and the arrival of a package containing his long-lost love letters, before Rita Wong learned how he had tried, but failed, to keep his promise.
The letters had reached a cousin but when he tried to forward them to her deep inside Communist China, they were ''returned to sender''. Now, after her death on Tuesday at the age of 95, her son has spoken of the love his mother won and lost in war and in China's post-war chaos.
Former Killing Ground Becomes Shrine to Stalin’s Victims
Source: NYT (6-8-07)
BUTOVO, Russia — Barbed wire still lines the perimeter of the secret police compound here on the southern edge of Moscow where more, perhaps far more, than 20,000 people were shot and buried from August 1937 through October 1938, at the height of Stalin’s purges.
Now, gradually, Butovsky poligon — literally, the Butovo shooting range — is becoming a shrine to all of the victims of Stalin’s murderous campaigns. Grass-covered mounds holding the victims’ bones crisscross the pastoral field, which is now dotted with flowers and birch trees.
Searing portraits from victims’ case files found in the archives of the secret police are displayed, along with a grim month-by-month chart of executions, in front of a small wooden church in the field.
Claim by insider: LBJ covered-up truth about Israel's attack in '67 on USS Liberty
Source: HNN Staff (6-8-07)
The chief counsel to the Navy's Court of Inquiry into Israel's attack on the U.S. Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty in 1967 repeats in today's edition of the San Diego Union a charge he first made in 2004 that Lyndon Johnson ordered a cover-up of the truth.
The Liberty was attacked on June 8, 1967 during the Six-Day War. 34 died and 171 were injured. Israel claimed it was an accident. But in an op ed today Ward Boston Jr. says "I know from personal conversations with the late Adm. Isaac C. Kidd – president of the Court of Inquiry – that President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of 'mistaken identity.' "
NYT blasts Cherokee for excluding blacks
Source: NYT Editorial (6-8-07)
Many members of Congress were rightly outraged by the Cherokee Nation’s decision earlier this year to revoke the tribal citizenship of about 2,800 descendants of slaves once owned by the tribe. The tribe’s leaders have since tried to avoid any punishment by restoring partial rights to some black members. Congress should disregard that ruse and move ahead with legislation that would force the Cherokee to comply with their treaty obligations and court decisions that guarantee black members full citizenship rights, including the right to vote and hold tribal office.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Acropolis, Chichen Itza lead New 7 Wonders contest
Source: Reuters (6-7-07)
The Acropolis in Athens and Mexico's Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza are among the leaders in a competition, ending in one month, to choose the New Seven Wonders of the World, the organizers said on Thursday.
The winners will be chosen through a global online and phone vote, organizers of the New 7 Wonders of the World (www.new7wonders.com) competition said, a far cry from the methods used by the Greeks who chose the original Seven Wonders more than 2,000 years ago.
Some 50 million people have voted so far in the competition designed to produce a 21st century list of the world's greatest man-made heritage sites, but Tia Viering, a spokeswoman for the organization, said the result is wide open.
Opposition growing to boycott of Israel
Source: Inside Higher Ed (Click on SOURCE for embedded links.) (6-7-07)
Opposition — much of it in the United States — is growing to the vote last week by Britain’s main faculty union, the University and College Union, to encourage a boycott of Israeli academics. An online petition by Wednesday had more than 1,300 scholars from around the world — including several Nobel laureates — pledging that as long as the boycott call remains in effect, they will consider themselves to be like Israeli academics and will refuse to attend any meeting from which Israeli professors are excluded. The American Association for the Advancement of Science issued a statement urging the British union to reject the boycott. “Free scientific inquiry and associated international collaborations should not be compromised in order to advance a political agenda unrelated to scientific and scholarly matters,” the statement said. The American Association of University Professors’ Committee A on Academic Freedom adopted a statement reiterating its opposition to academic boycotts. And the British prime minister, Tony Blair, said in Parliament that the boycott was “misguided” and “undermines academic freedoms,” The Guardian reported.
2 models for digitizing collections
Source: Inside Higher Ed (6-7-07)
Google’s Library Project, which is in the process of digitizing millions of books at top university libraries around the world, announced a major expansion Wednesday: The 12 universities that make up the Committee on Institutional Cooperation have agreed to let Google digitize up to 10 million of their collective volumes — generally those from the most distinctive parts of their collections.
The announcement brings to 25 the number of universities involved in the Google project, which is being hailed by some scholars for the way it will assure online access to volumes that have been largely available only in a few locations and that are in danger of decomposition. The project will involve both books in the public domain and copyrighted materials — and the latter have been controversial. Groups of authors and publishers are suing Google over the Library Project, charging that it is infringing on copyrights, and those suing indicated that they would expect any eventual settlement in the case (should Google lose) to be applied to the additional works being added under the new agreement.
On the same day Google and the 12 universities made their announcement, Emory University announced a plan to digitize major portions of its collection — independent of Google and using an intentionally different model.
Slave Passage Found at Washington House
Source: AP (6-7-07)
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Archaeologists unearthing the remains of George Washington's presidential home have discovered a hidden passageway used by his nine slaves, raising questions about whether the ruins should be incorporated into a new exhibit at the site.
The underground passageway is just steps from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. It was designed so Washington's guests would not see slaves as they slipped in and out of the main house.
"As you enter the heaven of liberty, you literally have to cross the hell of slavery," said Michael Coard, a Philadelphia attorney who leads a group that worked to have slavery recognized at the site. "That's the contrast, that's the contradiction, that's the hypocrisy. But that's also the truth."
James Madison's Montpelier slave descendants to reunite
Source: Las Vegas Sun (6-7-07)
Every time Bettye Kearse steps foot on former President James Madison's plantation, she feels like she's coming home. She has spent much of her adult life wondering about her family's saying, one passed down for generations: "Remember your name is Madison."
Kearse, a pediatrician, plans to join about 100 other descendants of Madison's slaves at Montpelier this weekend to share their stories and collect DNA samples that may piece together their history.
Note by Lincoln Found by National Archives
Source: WaPo (6-7-07)
The National Archives announced today that it has uncovered in its stacks a hand-written note sent by Abraham Lincoln to one of his top generals four days after the battle of Gettysburg, at the height of the Civil War.
The note, dated July 7, 1863, was sent to Gen. Henry W. Halleck urging that the defeated Confederate Army commanded by Gen. Robert E. Lee be pursued in the hopes of quickly ending the war....
The contents of the note had been known to historians, archives officials said at a morning news conference. The text had been forwarded by Halleck to Meade in a telegram that was preserved in official government war records. But the hand-written note itself was discovered May 21 in the archives' downtown building by an archivist doing research for a film crew.
National Archives uncovers original Lincoln document
Source: Guardian (UK) (6-7-07)
The National Archives on Thursday unveiled a handwritten note by Abraham Lincoln exhorting his generals to pursue Robert E. Lee's army after the battle of Gettysburg, underscoring one of the great missed opportunities for an early end to the Civil War.
The Onion features Interview with GW on Iraq
Source: The Onion is a satirical magazine with a wide audience (6-6-07)
WASHINGTON, DC—Breaking a 211-year media silence, retired Army Gen. George Washington appeared on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday to speak out against many aspects of the way the Iraq war has been waged.
Washington, whose appearance marked the first time the military leader and statesman had spoken publicly since his 1796 farewell address in Philadelphia, is the latest in a string of retired generals stepping forward to criticize the Iraq war.
"This entire military venture has been foolhardy and of ill design," said Washington, dressed in his customary breeches and frilly cravat. "The manifold mistakes committed by this president in Iraq carry grave consequences, and he who holds the position of commander in chief has the responsibility to right those wrongs."...
Families search Pakistan for lost PoWs
Source: BBC (6-5-07)
Suman Purohit has an uphill struggle, and so do her 13 other companions who are searching Pakistani jails for their relatives, missing since 1971.
"I had been married 18 months, and my son, Vipul, was three months old when the India-Pakistan war of 1971 began," she recalls.
Her husband, Flt Lt Manohar Purohit of the Indian Air Force, flew a number of sorties into Bangladesh, which was then called East Pakistan, and came home a couple of times for brief intervals.
Archaeologists help Andersonville dig up history
Source: http://www.henryherald.com (6-6-07)
ANDERSONVILLE, Ga. — Archaeologists, Boy Scouts and volunteers have descended on Andersonville National Historic Site, intent upon gathering details of what life was like both inside and outside of the walls of the infamous Civil War prison.
Andersonville Prison, located north of Americus, was one of the largest Confederate military prisons established during the Civil War. It was built in 1864, and during its 14 months of existence confined more than 45,000 Union soldiers within its 26 acres of walled grounds. While incarcerated at the prison, nearly 13,000 Union soldiers died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition and exposure to the elements.
John Cornelison, an archaeologist with the NPS’ Southeast Archeological Center, is leading the team of researchers as they search for evidence of “she-bangs,” makeshift structures that Union prisoners dug into the ground to escape the heat of the beating sun within the walls of the prison.
Ruins of Ancient Pompeii Yield Secrets of Roman Households
Source: Fox News (6-1-07)
Residents of Pompeii ate their meals on the run, just like many Americans do today, according to a new archaeological study of how households functioned in the ancient Roman city buried by volcanic ash.
Completely destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., Pompeii is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world.
Israel Museum Puts Medieval Hebrew Manuscript on Display
Source: Fox News (6-5-07)
A rare Old Testament manuscript some 1,300 years old is finally on display for the first time, after making its way from a secret room in a Cairo synagogue to the hands of an American collector.
The manuscript, containing the "Song of the Sea" section of the Old Testament's Book of Exodus and dating to around the 7th century A.D., comes from what scholars call the "silent era" — a span of 600 years between the third and eighth centuries from which almost no Hebrew manuscripts survive.
Satellites Spot Lost Egyptian Cities From Space
Source: Fox News (6-7-07)
Satellites hovering above Egypt have zoomed in on a 1,600-year-old metropolis, archaeologists say.
Images captured from space pinpoint telltale signs of previous habitation in the swatch of land 200 miles south of Cairo, which digging recently confirmed as an ancient settlement dating from about 400 A.D.
The find is part of a larger project aiming to map as much of ancient Egypt's archaeological sites, or "tells," as possible before they are destroyed or covered by modern development.
[Click on SOURCE to see picture.]
Auction of war diaries of a member of the King's Scottish Borders
Source: BBC (6-7-07)
The war diaries of a member of the King's Own Scottish Borders have been sold for 30,000 pounds to a mystery buyer.
Peter White's collection of drawings and notes was put together on the battlefields of World War II - a practice prohibited at the time.
A spokesman for auctioneer's Christie's said the material in the diaries was "very, very moving".
When Pardons Turn Political
Source: NYT (6-7-07)
President Bush has pardoned 113 people during his presidency, including a Tennessee bootlegger and a Mississippi odometer cheat.
But none has drawn the public scrutiny, nor posed the same political challenge, as the candidate that many conservatives hope will be Bush presidential pardon No. 114: I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, who was convicted of lying to investigators in the C.I.A. leak case and sentenced Tuesday to 30 months in prison....
Recalling D-Day, Gates Urges a Stronger Alliance
Source: NYT (6-7-07)
COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France, June 6 — Beside a churning sea and an ocean of white marble crosses, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday that the United States and its European allies should honor the thousands of Americans buried here by strengthening the alliance that they died defending.
As light rain descended from a gray Normandy sky, Mr. Gates said that the allied invasion on D-Day was founded on “the belief that that blood of free men could wash away the stains of tyranny.” But America’s ties to Europe are now threatened, he said, by those who “believe that the foundations of the alliance forged in places like this have collapsed or outlived their usefulness.”
At one point, directly addressing his French counterpart, Minister of Defense Hervé Morin, Mr. Gates said that disagreements between the United States and France that made for an often stormy relationship should not overshadow what the two nations had in common.
British and Irish sites join global danger list
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-7-07)
Six sites in Britain and Ireland were added to a list of the world's 100 most endangered monuments yesterday.
One of them, Tara Hill, which is considered the ceremonial and mythical capital of Ireland and is threatened by a motorway for Dublin commuters, was described as "the biggest advocacy challenge" on the World Monuments Fund's watch list for 2008.
It is alongside buildings ruined by the conflict in Iraq, the Peruvian Inca city of Machu Picchu, which is threatened by tourism, and New Orleans, Louisiana, which was hit by Hurricane Katrina and faces even stronger storms.
Spain traps US ships in row over treasure
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-7-07)
A Spanish court has issued a warrant for the capture and search of two American exploration ships suspected of removing sunken treasure from Spanish waters.
The ships, belonging to Odyssey Marine Exploration, which is based in Florida, are docked in Gibraltar and cannot leave because Spain controls the waters surrounding the British enclave.
A Spanish Culture Ministry spokeswoman said investigations by the Civil Guard, the Defence Ministry and Spanish prosecutors produced sufficient evidence to suspect that the vessels were operating illegally in the Alboran Sea, the western-most part of the Mediterranean Sea.
Cromwell miniature sells, warts and all
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-7-07)
He is credited with having coined the phrase "warts and all" while sitting for a portrait.
But yesterday, Oliver Cromwell's pimples did not seem to worry anyone as a four-by-three inch picture of him sold for £535,200.
It makes the Harcourt Miniature, which dates from 1657, the year before Cromwell died, one of the most expensive paintings of its type ever sold at auction.
The oval picture, by Samuel Cooper, Cromwell's favourite artist, is believed to be the image from which all later portrayals of the man who overthrew the monarchy were derived.
Copy of JFK Death Certificate for Sale
Source: Fox News (6-6-07)
A document said to be the flawed original version of President John F. Kennedy's death certificate is up for sale, 43 years after a typo helped make it void.
Don McElroy, a funeral home worker who helped load Kennedy's casket into the hearse at Dallas Parkland Hospital, believes he has the first death certificate from the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination.
The document mistakenly lists Kennedy's address as "600 Pennsylvania Ave." _ not 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., better known as the White House. The certificate also omits Kennedy's Social Security number, another error that forced the certificate to be amended.
McElroy says he kept the flawed certificate after his boss tried throwing it out, and auctioneers now trying to sell the document put its worth between $80,000 and $120,000.
Vatican says it tried to save Jews from Nazis
Source: Reuters (6-5-07)
The Vatican tried to enroll Roman Jewish men in its security forces in 1943 in order to save them from the Nazis, the Vatican’s second in command said on Tuesday, rejecting charges that wartime Pope Pius XII was anti-Semitic.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, who ranks second only to the Pope in the Holy See hierarchy, made his comments at the presentation of a new book about Pius by Italian author Andrea Tornielli.
Bertone called accusations that Pius turned a blind eye to the Holocaust “a black legend” and re-stated the Vatican’s position that he worked behind the scenes to help save Jews.
Ad saluting Tiananmen slips into Chinese paper
Source: MSNBC (6-6-07)
A young clerk with no knowledge of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown allowed a tribute to victims slip into the classified ads page of a newspaper in southwest China, a Hong Kong daily reported on Wednesday.
Officials at the Chengdu Evening News refused to answer questions about an advertisement it ran saluting the mothers of those killed in a bloody military crackdown on democracy activists at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
The one-line ad on Monday night read: “Paying tribute to the strong mothers of June 4 victims.” It appeared on page 14 of the paper on Monday, the 18th anniversary of the violent end to a seven-week pro-democracy movement.
Goldman Sachs Endows King Chair
Source: Bloomberg News (6-6-07)
Goldman Sachs Group donated $2 million to endow a chair at Morehouse College in Atlanta that will oversee the collected writings of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The chair will supervise the compilation of 10,000 pieces of Dr. King’s writings and manuscripts, Goldman Sachs said. Dr. King was a 1948 graduate of the all-male, historically black college. A group of civic leaders, businesses and philanthropists based in Atlanta bought the collection, which includes a draft of Dr. King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, last year after it was to be auctioned by Sotheby’s for more than $30 million
Jim Clark, Sheriff Who Enforced Segregation, Dies at 84
Source: NYT (6-7-07)
Jim Clark, the former sheriff in Selma, Ala., whose violent, highly public attempts to maintain the status quo there in the Jim Crow era are widely believed to have contributed, however inadvertently, to the success of the voting rights movement, died Monday in Elba, Ala. He was 84 and had been living in a nursing home there.
The death was confirmed by the Hayes Funeral Home in Elba.
From 1955 to 1966, Mr. Clark was the sheriff of Dallas County, Ala., which includes Selma. His tenure was characterized by widespread violence against civil rights demonstrators, in particular black citizens trying to register to vote.
On Mr. Clark’s authority, protesters were routinely beaten and tear-gassed and on one occasion were led on a forced march. He was sometimes assisted in his work by a group of mounted volunteers, armed with whips and clubs, who came to be known as “the sheriff’s posse.”
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
50 greatest moments in the Puerto Rican Parade (NYC)
Source: New York Post (6-6-07)
FROM beauty queens who marched in heels to politicians who sported fake smiles to win some votes, to the controversial "Seinfeld" episode, the Puerto Rican Parade has made Big Apple history for over half a century.
March 1958 - Leaders from the Puerto Rican community decide to break away from the Hispanic Day Parade and create the Puerto Rican Day Parade. According to an editorial in "El Diario," the main objective of the Hispanic Day Parade, which was mainly run by Puerto Ricans, is to unite all peoples of the Spanish language. The Puerto Rican Day Parade is founded by Victor Lopez, the march's first president; coordinator Jose "Chuito" Caballero; Peter Ortiz; Luisa Quintero; Luis Amando Feliciano; Vicente Hernández; Angel M. Arroyo; Atanacio Rivera Feliciano; and Amalio Maisanave Ríos.
Napoleon plans to conquer seat (Australia)
Source: Australian (6-6-07)
Two hundred years ago, his ancestor Napolean Bonaparte laid siege to Europe, shaping modern history with one of the greatest military conquests of all time.
But for Charles Napoleon, who spent last weekend on the campaign stump, handing out leaflets at a market in the imperial city of Fontainebleau, a seat in the next French parliament would do just fine.
The 56-year-old is Napoleon's great-great-great-grandnephew. As head of the only branch of the Bonaparte family directly descended through the male line, he also claims the title of prince of the imperial house of France.
Ultimate D-Day hero recalls cliffs of Normandy
Source: Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey) (6-6-07)
Of all the stories of the Allied invasion at Normandy in World War II, perhaps none leaps off the pages of history like that of Leonard Lomell.
The 87-year-old Toms River resident was a staff sergeant and platoon leader with the elite 2nd Ranger Battalion, whose soldiers scaled a 100-foot seaside cliff during the invasion and destroyed five giant German guns to clear the way for allied troops.
Remembering D-Day
Source: AHA Blog (6-6-07)
At 3:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944, Peter Fantacone was feeling queasy. He and his fellow sailors had spent the last few hours crossing the dark, choppy waters of the English Channel on a cramped landing craft, trying hard not to think about the grave danger that lay ahead. What the 18-year-old navy radioman saw next did little to settle his stomach. Two LCIs (Landing Craft for Infantry) that had been flanking his vessel were hit by German artillery fire, pitching bodies into the surf and staining the ships’ decks with blood. Concussive thuds thundered in the distance and the sky above was filled with explosions and screaming projectiles. These days Fantacone, now 81, remembers the scene as a “thousand Fourth of Julys rolled into one.”
Today we honor his bravery and the sacrifices made by the thousands of other American, British, and Canadian troops who took part in Operation Overlord, the Allied offensive which liberated northern France from Nazi rule and set the stage for the final push on Berlin. More than 70,000 soldiers, including 30,000 Germans, lost their lives during the two-month campaign, which began 63 years ago today. The idea for an invasion of western Europe had been discussed by the British as early as 1940, but pressure to act was ratcheted up a notch in 1942 by Josef Stalin, who wanted a second front opened against Hitler in order to relieve his bleeding and beleaguered Soviet armies.
Elie Wiesel and other Jewish Leaders to Confront U.S. Jewish Leaders' Holocaust Record
Source: Press Release--David Wyman Institute (6-6-07)
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel will deliver the keynote address at the fifth national conference of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, "Jewish Activists Who Shook the World: The Bergson Group, American Jewry, and the Holocaust."
Some Publishers Warm to Google Book Search
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (6-6-07)
Publishing houses initially viewed Google’s Book Search, as the project is called, as a serious threat to their economic well-being. Many publishers, it should be said, stick by that assessment. But others have come to appreciate Google’s method for dealing with books under copyright: The search engine typically displays small sections of those books alongside links to sites where the complete texts can be purchased.
This has been so effective, says a representative of Oxford University Press, that “321,000 times in the last two years, people have clicked on an Oxford book saying ‘I want to buy this.’ We spent nothing to do that. That’s why we’re a big fan of this program.”
Judge throws out efforts to keep Chief
Source: http://www.news-gazette.com (6-5-07)
A Champaign County judge this morning threw out two lawsuits filed as efforts to get the University of Illinois to retain Chief Illiniwek as its honored symbol.
"I would be telling the university to 'deal with it.' I would be subjecting the UI to many potential consequences and very clearly controlling the actions of the state. This is something that falls within their (the trustees') authority," Judge Michael Jones said. "The relief requested would have this court controlling the actions, the conduct and the liability of the UI. This I am not entrusted to do."
Churchill hearse being used by WW II vets
Source: BBC (6-6-07)
The hearse used to carry wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill is being offered to the families of veterans of WWII free of charge for funeral services.
The hearse carried the former Prime Minister's coffin to his final resting place in Bladon, Oxon in 1965.
Bristol-based MW Funeral Directors is beginning the new service on Wednesday as a mark of appreciation for the veterans' wartime contribution.
The gesture marks 63 years since the D-day landings.
Prehistoric iceman "Otzi" died from arrow wound
Source: Reuters (6-6-07)
Italy's prehistoric iceman "Otzi" died from a shoulder wound inflicted by an arrow, according to research into his perfectly preserved 5,000-year old body.
Otzi, the oldest mummy unearthed, was found in the Italian Alps in 1991 wearing clothing made from leather and grasses and carrying a copper axe, a bow and arrows.
Though Otzi's body underwent several scientific tests to study life in the prehistoric age, it had so far been unclear whether he died from an arrow wound, a bad fall or severe freezing while climbing the high mountains.
St. Augustine historical sites to be taken over by school
Source: http://www.gainesville.com (6-6-07)
Deteriorating historical sites in St. Augustine will get some much-needed relief while providing students with a hands-on learning experience when management of the properties is handed over to the University of Florida.
"It's an incredible opportunity for the whole university," said Roy Eugene Graham, director of Historic Preservation Programs at UF. "I can't tell you how excited we all are."
Egyptian pilot: We felt humiliated (1967)
Source: BBC (6-6-07)
Israel wiped out much of the Egyptian Air Force on the morning of June 5, 1967, the first day of the war. Egyptian pilot Mustafa Hafez was stationed at one of the 11 Egyptian air bases that were targeted.
He told military historian and BBC website reader, David Nicolle, what happened that day:
In the build-up to war, I was sent to a squadron based at Kabrit, flying MiG-17Fs and MiG-17PF night fighters.
We didn't really think that there would be a war, and if there was one, I was confident that Egypt would win.
I was then a Flight Lieutenant and I was 26. Our confidence was not based on anything specific, but our morale was high.
On the first day of the war, 5 June, at about 8.20am I was in the mess, since I was due to fly later that day. No particular aircraft had been allocated to me. This was normal in our air force; we flew what was available....
UK conservative leader says history should celebrate success
Source: Daily Mail (UK) (6-6-07)
History should be taught properly in schools as a way of teaching immigrants what it means to be British, David Cameron claimed yesterday.
The Tory leader warned that national identity had been deliberately weakened by constant attacks on the nation's culture.
He entered the debate about Britishness with an impassioned plea for a return to positive attitudes about the role of a citizen of the United Kingdom.
"You do not earn respect by constantly denigrating and repudiating your own culture," he said.
He used a keynote speech to a high-level seminar on Islam in Britain to map out how he would approach the issue of national identity if he brings the Tories back to power.
Vestige of British Rule in Hong Kong About to Vanish
Source: NYT (6-6-07)
Queen’s Pier is a simple building, a few short columns and a low roof next to Hong Kong’s harbor, designed and built after World War II for official events like the arrival and departure of colonial governors.
The government’s Antiquities and Monuments Office classified the pier this spring in the highest category of historic buildings, as the scene of important events in the city’s colonial history. But the government planning office and an important legislative committee agreed on May 23 that the pier should be dismantled to make room for a harborside highway and a shopping mall.
As Hong Kong prepares for the 10th anniversary on July 1 of its return to Chinese rule, Queen’s Pier has emerged as one of several symbols of Britain’s disappearing influence here.
The time is 1-2-3-4-5-6-7
Source: Advertiser (Australia) (6-5-07)
IT'S a once in a century event - but blink and you'll miss it. At 12.34pm today, a sequential phenomenon will eventuate.
For that lonely 60 seconds in history, it will be 12.34pm on the fifth day of the sixth month in the year 2007.
Under the Australian standard time and date format, this means it will be 12.34pm on 5/6/07.
The 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 time and date sequence is rare and happens just once every 100 years.
Mathematically, it is a one-in-100 million chance.
Egypt: No to Ancient Pyramids on Stamp
Source: AP (6-4-07)
Egypt has refused to allow Portugal to feature its ancient Pyramids of Giza on postage stamps the European country wants to issue coinciding with a global contest to name the seven new wonders of the world.
Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the pyramids, which date back more than 4,000 years, would not be shown on any stamps.
"The council totally rejects any attempt to put the pyramids, the wonder of world wonders and the only wonder which still exists, on a postage stamp or to be included in a commercial competition which is not subject to scientific criteria," Hawass was quoted as saying Sunday by the official Middle East News Agency.
Telegraph's D-Day dispatches go on show
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-6-07)
Original copies of the dramatic dispatches sent by the Daily Telegraph correspondent who witnessed the Allied invasion of France go on display this week as the centre-piece of an exhibition at the D-Day Museum in Portsmouth.
F.W. (Freddie) Perfect was this newspaper's Special Naval Correspondent sent to cover the landings, reporting initially from on board the operations ship Largs, then from the beaches as the Allies forged into occupied France.
He went on to witness the surrender of the German fleet before taking a more sedate role as House of Lords Correspondent in a long and illustrious Fleet Street career with the Telegraph.
The Deep South revisited at KKK trial
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-6-07)
Forty three years after Ku Klux Klansmen allegedly abducted, beat and drowned two young black men, two of the gang stared at each other across a courtroom yesterday as one broke the Klan's most precious oath and gave evidence against the other.
United not only by their past but also by their need to wear court-supplied hearing aids, James Ford Seale and Charles Edwards both affected a studied nonchalance to their alleged crimes as the latter recounted how they pounced on two local 19-year-olds on the slimmest of pretexts after hearing that black radicals were smuggling guns into Mississippi.
What happened to Hitler's master race? (video)
Source: HNN Staff (6-5-07)
NBC News tonight broadcast a story about the abandoned children conceived by Norwegian women and Nazi soldiers during World War II at Hitler's direction.
It was a dread dark secret. The offspring were often shunned and abandoned even by their own mothers after the Nazis fled Norway.
Today the children, now in their sixties, are demanding an accounting by Norway of their ordeal.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Tokyo's 2,001-Foot Tower Will Be Tallest Freestanding Antenna
Source: Wired (5-22-07)
It doesn't have a name yet, but when it's completed in 2011, the 2,001-foot-tall concrete-and-steel tower in the Sumida River region of Tokyo will be the tallest free-standing antenna in the world. Ostensibly, its purpose is to host all of the city's digital radio and television signals, plus a mobile TV network. But the massive transmitter will also broadcast Japan's global cultural significance.
It's no coincidence that the new structure resembles the old 1,092-foot-high Tokyo Tower, which for 50 years stood as a symbol of the nation's postwar economic independence. Project organizers hope that the superspike — designed with the help of sculptor Kiichi Sumikawa and architect Tadao Ando — will reaffirm Japan's prowess. Because it will dominate the relatively low-rise landscape, the point will be hard to miss.
Vatican tried to enlist Jews as guards during WWII
Source: Reuters (6-5-07)
The Vatican tried to enroll Roman Jewish men in its security forces in 1943 in order to save them from the Nazis, the Vatican's second in command said on Tuesday, rejecting charges that wartime Pope Pius XII was anti-Semitic.
In Camden, Campbell Co. Says It May Go if Sears Building Stays
Source: NYT (6-5-07)
[A]mid an effort to revive a city mired in a crippling cycle of crime and unemployment, the Campbell Soup Company, Camden’s longtime and most prominent corporate resident, has proposed expanding its presence and transforming the area where the empty store sits into an office park.
The soup company is prepared to spend $72 million to improve its headquarters, and has also promised to help lure developers to an adjacent office park with the help of $26 million in state funds. But the company’s pledge comes with one nagging caveat: The Sears building, which is listed on state and national historic registries, must come down. If not, Campbell Soup, which has been an enormous presence in the city since 1869, may abandon Camden and go elsewhere.
82,000 year old jewellery found
Source: Oxford Mail (6-4-07)
Archaeologists from Oxford have discovered what are thought to be the oldest examples of human decorations in the world.
The international team of archaeologists, led by Oxford University's Institute of Archaeology, have found shell beads believed to be 82,000 years old from a limestone cave in Morocco.
Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found Americas Before Columbus
Source: LiveScience (6-4-07)
Which came first–the chicken or the European?
Popular history, and a familiar rhyme about Christopher Columbus, holds that Europeans made contact with the Americas in 1492, with some arguing that the explorer and his crew were the first outsiders to reach the New World.
But chicken bones recently unearthed on the coast of Chile—dating prior to Columbus’ “discovery” of America and resembling the DNA of a fowl species native to Polynesia—may challenge that notion, researchers say.
“Chickens could not have gotten to South America on their own—they had to be taken by humans,” said anthropologist Lisa Matisoo-Smith from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Polynesians made contact with the west coast of South America as much as a century before any Spanish conquistadors, her findings imply.
WWII Jewish mass grave uncovered
Source: CNN (6-5-07)
A mass grave believed to contain the remains of thousands of Jews killed by the Nazis has been found in southern Ukraine, a Jewish community representative says.
The grave was found by chance last month when workers were digging to lay gas pipelines in the village of Gvozdavka-1, near Odessa, Roman Shvartsman, a spokesman for the regional Jewish community, said Tuesday.
The Nazis established two ghettos during World War II near the village and brought Jews there from what is now the nearby nation of Moldova as well as Ukrainian regions including Odessa, Shvartsman said. In November 1941, they set up a concentration camp in the area and killed about 5,000 Jews there, he said.
Group says plane is no 'Nazi tribute'
Source: http://www.thetimesonline.com (6-4-07)
A plane with swastikas on its tail, based at the Gary/Chicago International Airport, won't land a home at Lansing Municipal Airport anytime soon.
Recent rumors about the German Junker Ju 52 moving to the village have been unfounded, said John Kowal, the volunteer public information officer for the Great Lakes Wing of the Commemorative Air Force.
Kowal, who said the Junker Ju 52 is used for historical re-enactments and education, is concerned about recent confusion about his group after an unsigned letter was sent to Lansing Village Trustee Bob Ryan and sparked discussion at a Lansing Village Board meeting May 15.
The letter said the "Nazi tribute airplane" was offensive to people of Jewish and Dutch descent and World War II veterans.
The Commemorative Air Force, founded by World War II veterans, has "absolutely no politics other than U.S. patriotism," Kowal said. Rather, it's a nonprofit museum organization and brings the planes "to the people" rather than hanging them in a room in a museum, he said.
Berlin Will Build Memorial to Gay Victims of Nazi Regime
Source: Deutsche Welle (6-5-07)
The German government announced plans Monday to erect a memorial in Berlin dedicated homosexuals persecuted and killed by the Nazis. The sculpture should be completed this year.
The memorial, to be located in Tiergarten Park, will stand adjacent to the Holocaust Memorial built to honor the lives of the 6 million jews killed under the Nazi regime.
Danish-born Michael Elmgreen and Norwegian Ingar Dragset were selected last year to design the memorial. Their design consists of a large concrete structure with a square opening inside which a film projection will be visible.
Norwegian Nazi who served in SS found in Marbella
Source: Independent (UK) (6-5-07)
A Norwegian Nazi who served in the SS and was awarded the Gold Cross by Hitler has been discovered living in Marbella on the Costa del Sol in Spain
Fredrik Jensen, 93, served in a number of SS units during the Second World War, including the SS Panzer-Grenadier der Fuhrer, SS-Panzer-Division -Das Reich, the Panzer-Grenadier Regiment 9 Germania and the Panzer-Division Wiking.
He fought on the front line, which earned him the rare accolade of being one of the few foreigners to receive the highest decoration granted by Hitler to SS troops, the Gold Medal.
Romans and Jews once lived in Palestinian neighborhood
Source: NYT (6-5-07)
JERUSALEM, June 4 — Dig nearly anywhere in this city, and you hit the remains of an earlier civilization. One of the latest such finds is a narrow strip of antiquity that runs down the middle of a main road through what is now Shuafat, a Palestinian neighborhood in north Jerusalem.
Soon, it will be covered by tracks for a light railway, part of a new mass transit system for the city. Both the history being unearthed and the planning under way are filled with the kind of controversy that seems to be a Jerusalem specialty.
The urban community being uncovered existed for about 60 years, from A.D. 70 to 130, the period between two anti-Roman Jewish revolts, coins found at the site reveal.
“It’s an archaeological feast,” said Rachel Bar-Nathan, the Israel Antiquities Authority director of the dig.
One surprise is that the nameless community appears to have housed a mixed population of Romans and Jews. Several of the excavated private dwellings contained a mikvah, or Jewish ritual bath.
Defense Officials Tried to Reverse China Policy, Says Powell Aide
Source: Congressional Quarterly (6-1-07)
The same top Bush administration neoconservatives who leap-frogged Washington’s foreign policy establishment to topple Saddam Hussein nearly pulled off a similar coup in U.S.-China relations—creating the potential of a nuclear war over Taiwan, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says.
Lawrence B. Wilkerson, the U.S. Army colonel who was Powell’s chief of staff through two administrations, said in little-noted remarks early last month that “neocons” in the top rungs of the administration quietly encouraged Taiwanese politicians to move toward a declaration of independence from mainland China — an act that the communist regime has repeatedly warned would provoke a military strike.
The top U.S. diplomat in Taiwan at the time, Douglas Paal, backs up Wilkerson’s account, which is being hotly disputed by key former defense officials....
Documents indicate Israel wasn't the underdog in '67
Source: Sandy Tolan at Salon (6-3-07)
Little-noticed details in declassified documents from the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, indicate that top officials in the Johnson administration -- including Johnson's most pro-Israeli Cabinet members -- did not believe war between Israel and its neighbors was necessary or inevitable, at least until the final hour. In these documents, Israel emerges as a vastly superior military power, its opponents far weaker than the menacing threat Israel portrayed, and war itself something that Nasser, for all his saber-rattling, tried to avoid until the moment his air force went up in smoke. In particular, the diplomatic role of Nasser's vice president, who was poised to travel to Washington in an effort to resolve the crisis, has received little attention from historians. The documents sharpen a recurring theme in the history of the Israeli-Arab wars, and especially of their telling in the West: From the war of 1948 to the 2007 conflict in Gaza, Israel is often miscast as the vulnerable David in a hostile sea of Arab Goliaths.
Klan suspect faces justice after 43 years
Source: The Australian (6-5-07)
Sitting in court today before a Yale-educated black judge, James Ford Seale, 71, was a long way from the banks of the Mississippi where, 43 years ago, he is alleged to have tortured and drowned two black teenagers.
Monday, June 4, 2007
Aboriginal war heroes whose only reward was discrimination and prejudice
Source: Telegraph (6-2-07)
A rare ceremony to honour Aboriginal war veterans was held in Sydney yesterday, reviving memories of how shabbily they were treated after they had fought for their country.
About 500 Aborigines volunteered for the First World War - a substantial number, given that the black population was just 80,000, and it was only in 1917 that "half-castes" were allowed to enlist. Up to 5,000 indigenous Australians joined up for the Second World War.
They included four brothers who fought in both world wars - and who were from a family recently recognised as having a service record probably unrivalled throughout the Commonwealth. In all, 20 members of the Lovett family, from Victoria, have served Australia - in Japan, Korea, Vietnam and East Timor, as well as in both world wars.
Search fails for Australia's first sub
Source: http://www.theage.com.au (5-30-07)
Searchers have failed to solve the mystery of what happened to Australia's first submarine, lost off Papua New Guinea in 1914.
Navy search teams had hoped an object on the seabed off PNG would be the submarine AE1, lost at the start of World War I.
Instead it turned out to be a submarine-shaped rock formation, Veterans Affairs Minister Bruce Billson said.
Civil War started in 1856?
Source: Lawrence Journal-World & News (6-3-07)
Here’s an interesting bit of American Civil War trivia: What many consider the first battle in the bloodiest war in the nation’s history — the Battle of Black Jack near Baldwin City — didn’t claim a single life.
That battle, a small skirmish between bands of pro- and anti-slavery men, occurred about five years before what many textbooks and historians refer to as the first official event in the Civil War at Fort Sumter in South Carolina in 1861.
But for a group of interested observers, local residents and a growing number of historians, the Civil War started on June 2, 1856, on a small patch of land 3 miles east of Baldwin City.
“This is where the Civil War started, as far as I’m concerned,” said Kerry Altenbernd, a tour guide at the battleground site on the battle’s 151st anniversary Saturday. “It is an important site ... you’re standing on sacred ground.”
New book details Hitler plot to kidnap pope, foiled by Nazi general
Source: Catholic News Service (6-1-07)
An SS general close to Adolf Hitler foiled a plot to kidnap Pope Pius XII during World War II and to put the Vatican and its treasures under Nazi control, according to a new book.
The book, "A Special Mission" by Dan Kurzman, refutes arguments that Pope Pius XII maintained a public silence about Nazi actions during World War II because he was anti-Semitic or because he was sympathetic toward Hitler.
"They were bitter, bitter enemies. They despised each other," said Kurzman of the pontiff and the fuhrer in a May 31 telephone interview with Catholic News Service. The pope hated Hitler "not only for his inhumanity but because he threatened the whole church structure."
Hitler, for his part, "saw the pope as his greatest enemy" and as someone with whom he was "competing for the minds and souls that he wanted to control," the author added.
Germany plans entry fee for concentration camps
Source: Sydney Morning Herald (5-31-07)
GERMANY may be poised to break a long-standing taboo by charging an entrance fee to concentration camp memorial sites.
Peter Dietz de Loos, president of the International Dachau Committee — named after the first concentration camp of the Nazi regime near Munich — said the camps desperately needed the money for renovations, staff and daily upkeep.
Jewish groups, politicians and former prisoners of the Nazis have spoken out against the plan, calling it shameless.
They point out that concentration camps, where millions were murdered, are also cemeteries and as such should be free to everyone.
Medic's Western Front diaries for sale
Source: Telegraph (6-5-07)
A soldier's account of life during the Battle of the Somme will be put up for auction this month after his diaries surfaced in a descendant's basement.
The unpublished journals of Sgt Hubert Harding, of the Royal Army Medical Corps, run through the First World War from April 1915 until 1919 and describe how he risked his life on an almost daily basis at Loos, the Somme, Passchendaele, Vimy Ridge and Cambrai.
On the first day of the Somme offensive, July 1, 1916 - a day on which Army losses exceeded battle casualties in the Crimean, Boer and Korean wars - Harding, believed to be from the Brighton area, wrote optimistically: "Lovely morning. Many aeroplanes about. Great offensive starts... very heavy shelling... Very good results obtained so far."
But by the following day - his birthday, probably his 19th or 20th - his mood had changed. "Commence collecting [casualties] at 6am. Very busy morning with bad stretcher cases. Find out that 8th Div very badly cut up yesterday. Snatch a brief rest during afternoon.
How one filing cabinet held 500 years of history
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-4-07)
ONE OF the greatest collections of historical letters ever amassed has been found in a laundry room.
Susannah Morris was called in to examine the hoard after the death of the secretive collector and was astonished to be led not into a library or a safe room but to the basement.
In the laundry room, wedged between a washing machine and a tumble dryer, was a plain metal filing cabinet. Miss Morris, who works for the auction house Christie's, opened it and could not believe her eyes.
Inside was the most remarkable collection of letters she had seen outside a national institution: a love letter by Napoleon; a diplomatic note to the king of France in the hand of Elizabeth I; a letter of condolence by John Donne; a tragic account written in 1545 by John Calvin, the theologian of the Reformation, about the suicide of a friend; and a withering letter by Charlotte Brontë on male shortcomings.
Young girl's Holocaust diary emerges
Source: Australian (6-5-07)
A POLISH woman who for 60 years had been holding onto the diary of a young Jewish girl killed by the Nazis in 1943, presented the journal to Israel's Holocaust memorial overnight.
"I have a feeling that I'm writing for the last time. There is a (round-up) in town. I'm not allowed to go out and I'm going crazy, imprisoned in my own house," 14-year-old Rutka Laskier wrote while living in a Jewish ghetto in Bedzin, Poland on February 20, 1943.
Laskier hid her diary under the floorboards of her house before her family was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp.
It was later found by Stanislawa Sapinska, a Bedzin native, who lived in the house before the German occupation and had befriended Laskier.
"She wanted the journal to survive, even if she didn't, so the world would see how the Jews suffered," said Mrs Sapinska, 82, at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
In Senate personal histories shape immigration views
Source: USA Today (6-4-07)
The immigration debate in the Senate has at times been intensely personal, with senators taking the floor to tell stories of their own immigrant roots. Children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Italy, Ireland, Ukraine, Lithuania and Cuba rose to describe how their families became American.
"Immigration always has been an issue that goes to the root of what America is all about," said Betty Koed, a Senate historian who wrote her dissertation on the passage of the 1965 immigration act.
In some cases, senators have used their family histories to buttress their positions, as Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., did when he argued against a merit-based point system that would give preference to immigrants with job skills rather than family ties. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., cited his mother's experience as an unwitting illegal immigrant in explaining why he's willing to support the bill.
NYT says Bernstein book on Hillary has few revelations
Source: NYT (6-5-07)
Given all the sobering things that have happened since the turn of the millennium — from the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to the war in Iraq to the Bush administration’s efforts to expand executive power and curtail civil liberties — the sex and real estate follies of the Clinton White House now feel as if they belong to an era long ago and far, far away. Indeed, Carl Bernstein’s new biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton often feels like a very long, very slow acid flashback to the 1990s, rehashing and reexamining, in minute detail, matters like Monica, Whitewater, bimbo eruptions and the state of the Clintons’ marriage.
Mr. Bernstein has written a serious, energetically researched and largely fluent book, but there is little new in this volume: its disclosures amount mainly to embroiderings on already well-known aspects of the Clintons’ lives.
Chinese Commemorate 18th Anniversary of Tiananmen Crackdown
Source: NYT (6-4-07)
HONG KONG — A candlelight vigil here this evening to mark the 18th anniversary of the military crackdown on the Tiananmen Square demonstrations drew an unusually large crowd, apparently in response to the recent assertion by the leader of Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing party that no massacre took place in 1989.
By contrast, Tiananmen Square itself, in Beijing, remained quiet under tight security through a humid, sunny day, with the usual tour groups and pedestrians milling about. State security agents had already placed several well-known dissidents under house arrest or close watch, though some of those detained described the harassment as more passive than in years past....
British historian's mistake led to sale of valuable tapestry
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-4-07)
One of the greatest tapestries made in Elizabethan England has been rediscovered in America after it disappeared almost a century ago following a blunder by a prominent British art historian.
The giant hanging, measuring 15 ft by 6ft and made in the 1580s, with an idealised image of country life shows that wealthy Tudors had much the same aspirations to own a beautiful part of the countryside as their counterparts today.
Russians can't get enough English history
Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-6-07)
On summer weekends across the country, [Russian youngsters in love with English history] swap their jeans for Regency breeches, their belts for Tudor codpieces and their shirts for medieval breastplates depending on the era that they have chosen to embrace.
It is serious stuff. At a recent meeting of the Hastings Club, which despite its name seeks to recreate the Wars of the Roses, not a sign of modernity was in evidence.
Their camp in the forest near the village of Ivanovka, 40 miles north of Moscow, prided itself on its authenticity. Followers drank mead from enormous clay mugs, the women prepared food according to period recipes and they all slept in cloth tents they had stitched together themselves.
The attraction for many adherents, explained Yelena Nosova, the secretary of the Alliance of Living History's medieval chapter, is partly the exoticism of Britain and western Europe's past.
A leap back in time shows Czechs ate frogs' legs first
Source: Independent (UK) (6-4-07)
Frogs' legs, a delicacy most closely associated with the French, is in fact, a Czech dish, according to archaeologists. Although the edible amphibians are closely associated with Gallic cuisine - so much so that English people refer to the French by the derogatory nickname "the frogs" - ancient Czechs were eating them more than 5,000 years ago.
New research by archaeologists has uncovered the kitchen remains of hundreds of frogs' legs in a hill fort east of Prague. Most of the 900 bones found in a pit are hind legs (the part which has the most meat and which is traditionally eaten), and came from males. This suggests they were deliberately caught in the spring during their mating season.
Blackbeard's wreck found?
Source: http://www.news-record.com (Greensboro, NC) (6-3-07)
Blackbeard didn’t leave any fingerprints. No DNA. No signed confession.
Just a shipwreck. And a mystery.
The wreck, if found, likely would contain a mound of cannons, hand grenades, lead shot, trade beads, slave shackles, a syringe for treating syphilis and some flakes of gold.
As for the mystery, that’s been playing out for 10 years, far longer than anyone expected.
For the past decade, scores of historians, scientists and archaeologists have sifted through just such a cache of artifacts, found in the murky, turbulent waters of Beaufort Inlet.
That’s where Blackbeard’s ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge, hit the sand 289 years ago next week.
The researchers hope to discover a definitive link between the objects — described as the richest collection of artifacts ever unearthed in North Carolina waters — and Blackbeard, the most fearsome and famous of pirates.
"We haven’t found ... the smoking blunderbuss," said Jeffrey Crow, a deputy secretary of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources. "It’s like a crime-scene investigation, just like 'CSI,’ just like 'Law & Order.’ "
But those working on the project think they’ve solved the mystery.
MP's fury over Stonehenge funding
Source: BBC (6-3-07)
A former Transport and Heritage minister is calling for Stonehenge to be removed from the list of World Heritage sites.
Salisbury's Conservative MP Robert Key says a failure to deliver long overdue improvements means Stonehenge no longer deserves the listing.
He claims money for improvements is being diverted to the Olympics.
He is writing to the UNESCO committee asking for the British government to be called to account.
Colombia fights U.S. diver for treasure
Source: AP (6-3-07)
BOGOTA, Colombia - The Spanish galleon San Jose was trying to outrun a fleet of British warships off Colombia's coast on June 8, 1708, when a mysterious explosion sent it to the bottom of the sea with gold, silver and emeralds now valued at more than $2 billion.
Three centuries later, a bitter legal and political dispute over the San Jose is still raging, with the Colombian Supreme Court expected to rule this week on rival claims by the government and a group of U.S. investors to what is reputed to be the world's richest shipwreck.
Anxiously awaiting the decision is Jack Harbeston, managing director of the Cayman Islands-registered commercial salvage company Sea Search Armada, who has taken on seven Colombian administrations over two decades in a legal fight to claim half the sunken hulk's riches.
What happened to London after Roman rule?
Source: BBC (6-4-07)
Two very different finds, dug up close to each other by Trafalgar Square, shine new light on the greatest puzzle of London archaeology - the "silent" centuries after Roman rule.
Plenty happened in London in the 450 years following the end of Roman rule in 410. It became the seat of an English bishopric. Bede in the 730s called it "a mart of many nations".
The Anglo-Saxon town (Lundenwic) was west of the Roman Londinium
So why could archaeologists find almost no evidence that London was inhabited at that time?
It was not until the 1980s that they realised they had been looking in the wrong place.
The Anglo-Saxon London, Lundenwic, was not on the site of Roman London - what is now the City - but in the West End, around Aldwych, the Strand and Trafalgar Square. Then objects and traces of buildings which had already been found in these places began to make sense.
A Maryland black history museum?
Source: http://www.fredericknewspost.com (Frederick, Maryland) (6-4-07)
Teresa Felton Barrett laughed as she shared a tip someone gave her years ago, when she started exploring her family history.
"Don't totally discredit rumors, even if they seem far-fetched," the Middletown resident said.
Growing up in Florida, Barrett heard whispered stories about a man who killed his boss in a rage and then terrorized neighboring plantations. These out to be tales about a distant ancestor on her father's side, she said.
In July, Barrett will teach Frederick County residents how to uncover the scandals, adventures and accomplishments in their family trees to help generate interest in building a local black history museum.
Showcasing the long and rich history of black residents in Frederick County was the dream of the late William O. Lee Jr., an unofficial historian of local black life in the 20th century.
Heiligendamm has seen best, worst of German history
Source: Reuters (6-4-07)
The elegant Baltic seaside resort of Heiligendamm has seen the best and the worst of German history since it was founded in 1793 as an exclusive summer spa for European nobility.
Proud to be Germany's first seaside resort, Heiligendamm -- this week hosting a summit of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations -- is less happy about of its Nazi past.
In 1932 it became the first town in Germany to name a street after Adolf Hitler and to make its infamous summer visitor an honorary citizen -- a title formally revoked in April to avoid anyone making an issue of it at the summit.
Heiligendamm, near Rostock in the former East Germany with Sweden across the sea to the north, was used as a naval training station during World War Two.
Seattle's Pike Place Market is 100 years old
Source: Seattle Times (6-4-07)
Let's get on with The Show.
The curtain is raised at 7:30 in the morning, revealing the Manzo Brothers produce stall, which has been a top performer for half of Pike Place Market's 100-year history.
The choreography begins — green beans lined up individually in an interconnected pattern, creating the visual effect of a blanket woven on a loom.
A small fake lizard guards a sign placed on top of the beans: "Don't even think about disturbing the display," followed by the requisite "Thanks."
On a stage rich with color and eccentricity, Pike Place Market is Seattle's longest-running production, its story unraveling through many cultures and generations of Seattle families.
How 1967 defined the Middle East
Source: BBC (6-4-07)
To understand what is happening between Israel and the Palestinians now, you have to understand what happened in the Middle East war of 1967.
It took only six days for Israel to smash the armed forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria but over the last 40 years, the legacy of the war has shaped the conflict into what it is today.
The war made 250,000 more Palestinians - and more than 100,000 Syrians - into refugees. No peace is possible in the Middle East without solving their problems.
Israel became an occupier.
Student visitors to Philly reenact gay protest of 1965
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer (6-4-07)
A university class from the Midwest passed through Philadelphia yesterday on a two-week tour of historic sites in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender equal-rights movement.
When their red-and-white bus, adorned with the University of Wisconsin badger mascot, pulled up in front of Independence Hall, Mark Segal, publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News, had a surprise for them.
He passed out hand-drawn picket signs, and asked the class to reenact the nation's first gay-rights protest, which was staged on that site in 1965.
With a news photographer taking pictures, Segal declared: "The only people here taking pictures in 1965 were the police and the FBI." The early protests were ignored by the media, he said.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Replace Underground Railroad site with parking lot?
Source: http://www.courierlife.net (6-2-07)
A key [Brooklyn] city historian offered his views last week on the Duffield Street abolitionist houses and appears to have landed on the side of preservationists.
Christopher Moore, a curator at Harlem’s Schomburg Center, and regarded as one of the city’s foremost African-American historians, is also a member of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC).
His name reportedly came up at the May 1 City Council hearing regarding the city’s plans to condemn and demolish the Duffield Houses and replace it with 1.5-acres of open space and underground parking for 750 cars.
Oregon paper posts online history of Japanese internment
Source: Salem Statesman Journal (6-1-07)
The Statesman Journal's three-part series, "Beyond Barbed Wire: Japanese Internment through Salem Eyes," follows Japanese immigrants through a riveting period in Northwest and U.S. history.
Japanese immigrants had established themselves in Oregon communities, but the tenor of the times changed dramatically with the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to send families of Japanese heritage to internment camps.
New emphasis on black history in Virginia
Source: http://www.dailypress.com (6-3-07)
JAMESTOWN -- Alexander Hamilton remembered the pesky part of his long-ago fourth-grade class trip to Jamestown. But until recently, he didn't necessarily remember all the history.
He suspects that it was the same for many African-American families who came to Jamestown Settlement on Saturday for African Imprint Day, created to highlight the role of Africans in Virginia's early history.
"They remembered the flies," Hamilton joked about what memories remained of so many grade-school field trips.
"But they didn't know about all this."
The "all this" that Hamilton, president of the Virginia African-American Forum, referred to was the expanded galleries and story at Jamestown Settlement.
They now include greater emphasis on the story of the first 20 or so Africans taken to Virginia and those who came after.
History explains why TB case caused alarm
Source: http://www.signonsandiego.com (6-3-07)
There's a reason why reports of a rare strain of tuberculosis attracted worldwide attention: a history perhaps as deadly as the plague.
More than 4,000 years ago, tuberculosis killed an Egyptian whose mummified remains were dug up; the case was first described in 1910. Hippocrates called it consumption in 460 B.C.
Pathologist Thomas Dormandy of London, author of “The White Death: The History of Tuberculosis,” said TB may have killed more than the plague. Outbreaks of the Black Death were shorter, less frequent. The lack of credible records makes it impossible to say.
A Nation's Lost Holocaust History, Now on Display
Source: NYT (6-2-07)
When Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, or Jewish Community Vienna, decided to sell a vacant building in the summer of 2000, two employees were sent to look for any archival material that might have been left behind.
What they found exceeded any historian’s dream: Stacked floor to ceiling in two rooms of one apartment sat some 800 dusty boxes containing, among other things, about half a million pages of detailed records of the community during the Holocaust — archives not known to have survived.
UK Pub row over which one is the oldest
Source: http://www.thisisbucks.co.uk (6-1-07)
A dispute has broken out over which watering hole has been serving ale the longest in south Bucks after a historian raised doubts about how old The Royal Standard of England is.
The pub in Brindle Lane claims to have served ale since the 11th century and is said to have housed both King Charles I and II through its history.
But these claims have been questioned by historian Miles Green, who believes the first evidence of it as a drinking venue is from as recently as 1830.
According to records held at the county records office in Aylesbury, the first drinking establishment in the Penn Parish was in fact either The Crown or The Red Lion, both in Penn, which were the only two ale houses found on record in 1577.
Gingrich discusses history, future during Maui visit
Source: http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com (6-1-07)
Now retired, the nine-term Republican congressman from Georgia was on Maui to promote his historical novel, "Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th."
"History is actually lived forward – it's studied backwards, but it's lived forward," Gingrich said. "There's no finer place to teach former lessons that relate to today than Pearl Harbor."
Written by Gingrich and historian William R. Forstchen, the book is the pair's ninth collaboration and the first in a series chronicling the war in the Pacific. More than just documenting the Dec. 7 attack, the authors alter the history books, speculating on the effect that a third wave of Japanese bombers might have had on the course of the war.
Philly wonders what to do with dig at President's House
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer (6-3-07)
It was a last-minute addition, almost an afterthought.
But against virtually all expectations, the archaeological excavation of the President's House, now more than two months running, has uncovered powerful physical evidence evoking presidents and slaves, eliciting excitement and deep interest from the thousands who have packed the public observation platform to view the site at Sixth and Market Streets.
In response, the city and Independence National Historical Park have extended the dig through July Fourth. It had been expected to wrap up about now.
200 Fire Trucks and a Dream
Source: NYT (6-3-07)
First, in late 2002, came a red 1959 Seagrave from Elmwood Place, Ohio, a 12-cylinder quint — meaning it had a pump, an aerial ladder, a ground ladder, a booster tank and a hose. He bought it on eBay for $7,300. He’d collected antique all-wheel-drive dump trucks from the same company before. Why not try one of their fire engines?
Next came a cream-colored 1959 Pirsch ladder truck from Bergen County that was sitting by the road in Elizabeth, N.J., with a for-sale sign because the owner had lost its storage space. He thought, why not?...
And then, around his 15th acquisition, he began thinking there had to be a way to let people see them. Which is why Andrew B. Leider, 55, was wending his way through a three-acre abandoned industrial building, surrounded by 150 vintage fire trucks from the 1920s to the 1980s — about 120 owned by him and 30 by five others.
With Korea as Model, Bush Team Ponders Long Support Role in Iraq
Source: David Sanger in the NYT (6-3-07)
For the first time, the Bush administration is beginning publicly to discuss basing American troops in Iraq for years, even decades to come, a subject so fraught with political landmines that officials are tiptoeing around the inevitable questions about what the United States’ long-term mission would be there.
President Bush has long talked about the need to maintain an American military presence in the region, without saying exactly where. Several visitors to the White House say that in private, he has sounded intrigued by what he calls the “Korea model,” a reference to the large American presence in South Korea for the 54 years since the armistice that ended open hostilities between North and South....
Soviet-Style 'Torture' Becomes 'Interrogation'
Source: NYT (6-3-07)
HOW did the United States, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, come to adopt interrogation techniques copied from the Soviet Union and other cold war adversaries?
Investigators for the Senate Armed Services Committee are examining how the methods, long used to train Americans for what they may face as prisoners of war, became the basis for American interrogations.
Iraq's Curse: A Thirst for Final, Crushing Victory
Source: NYT (6-3-07)
PERHAPS no fact is more revealing about Iraq’s history than this: The Iraqis have a word that means to utterly defeat and humiliate someone by dragging his corpse through the streets.
The word is “sahel,” and it helps explain much of what I have seen in three and a half years of covering the war.
It is a word unique to Iraq, my friend Razzaq explained over tea one afternoon on my final tour. Throughout Iraq’s history, he said, power has changed hands only through extreme violence, when a leader was vanquished absolutely, and his destruction was put on display for all to see.
Less Notice When Hinckley Leaves Hospital
Source: NYT (6-2-07)
A federal judge gave doctors for John W. Hinckley Jr., who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981, more flexibility to help Mr. Hinckley rejoin society. Officials at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, where Mr. Hinckley is under treatment, sought to loosen restrictions on how far in advance they must alert the Secret Service when they take Mr. Hinckley into the community to attend baseball games, the theater and other events. Hospital officials were required to alert the Secret Service of any outings two weeks in advance, but the judge, Paul L. Friedman of Federal District Court, said the hospital need only give four days’ notice.
Friday, June 1, 2007
Forty years later, the myth of Jerusalem is splintering
Source: Newsweek (6-4-07)
Four decades after the battle [for Jerusalem in 1967], Israeli leaders still refer glowingly to Jerusalem as the "eternal, undivided capital" of the Jewish state. But the mantra is accurate only as myth. Even as they celebrate the 40th anniversary of the war this week, a growing number of Israeli voices are saying the once unthinkable: that Jerusalem may never truly be united. The city is now Israel's poorest metropolis; ambitious young people prefer making their living in the country's high-tech corridor along the Mediterranean coast. A vastly disparate standard of living divides Jerusalem's Arabs and Jews, who only rarely mix. A concrete barrier cuts through the city, locking more than 50,000 East Jerusalemites outside the wall. Not a single foreign nation keeps its embassy there anymore. "The story of Jerusalem is a story of decay and deterioration," says historian Tom Segev. "All these dreams of 1967 were actually illusions."
Did Libya try to kill Reagan?
Source: MSNBC (6-1-07)
Muammar Kaddafi has become something of a poster child in the administration's fight against terror. But back in 1981, he was said to be behind a hit squad bound for Washington, Ronald Reagan recalls in his newly published diaries. Just how serious was the Libyan threat?...
A former Reagan administration official, who asked for anonymity when talking about details that may still be sensitive, told NEWSWEEK that intelligence reporting at the time suggested a complex plot. The Libyans' alleged plan was to infiltrate a team of assassins into the United States from either Canada or Mexico, the former official said. Once in the U.S., the hit men were supposed to link up with Libyan students already inside the country. These students would help the men stage the murder, then help them flee. The intercepted information was not clear as to whether Reagan or one of his top aides were intended to be the principal target.
Bernstein on Hillary Clinton's ambition
Source: MSNBC (6-1-07)
Who is Hillary Rodham Clinton? In his new biography, “A Woman in Charge,” Carl Bernstein, who shared a Pulitzer Prize with Bob Woodward for their coverage of Watergate for The Washington Post, tries to answer that question. He follows her life from her childhood in the Midwest to her college days at Wellesley to Yale Law School, where she meets Bill Clinton, to Arkansas to the White House and to New York as a U.S. Senator. With Hillary Clinton running for president, Bernstein gives readers another perspective on her personal and public life. In Chapter One, he writes about her family.
Amazing Maps Made by John Smith
Source: LiveScience (5-30-07)
Maybe Pocahontas had a thing for men with superior mapping skills.
Captain John Smith, the famous founder of America's first settlement, at Jamestown, Virginia, traced the Chesapeake Bay river system with remarkable precision from his primitive sailboat, geographers have discovered.
Using a sophisticated "remapping" system that merges old maps with the modern lay of the land, the team from Maryland's Salisbury University found that Smith's 1608 exploratory charting of the Chesapeake was well ahead of its time considering the tools he had to work with.
Coney Island's past to be preserved
Source: Newsday (6-1-07)
The Coney Island History Project, an organization launched in 2004 to begin an oral history archive for the iconic area, opened the doors yesterday to its first home. Its exhibition space is located underneath the Cyclone roller coaster in a building that has sold souvenirs, ice cream and hot dogs over the years.
"It's absolutely incredible because not only is it great because the memories of Coney Island will be preserved for future generations, but the location couldn't be better," said Joe Carella, spokesman for the Coney Island History Project.
New Texas Museum Celebrates Hispanic Culture
Source: NewsHour (PBS) (5-30-07)
In collaboration with the Smithsonian Institute, the Museo Alameda, which opened in San Antonio, Texas, in April, showcases Hispanic influence in American art and music.
Poll: Over 25% of Israeli Arabs deny Holocaust
Source: http://www.haaretz.com (3-18-07)
More than a quarter of Israel's Arab citizens believe the Holocaust never happened, and nearly two thirds of Israeli Jews avoid entering Arab towns, a poll by a University of Haifa sociologist showed Sunday.
The poll, conducted by Sami Smoocha, a prominent sociologist at the University of Haifa, showed a wide gap of mistrust, anger and fear between Israel's majority Jews and its Arab citizens, who make up a fifth of Israel's citizens.
In its most dramatic finding, the poll showed that 28 percent of Israeli Arabs did not believe the Holocaust happened, and that among high school and college graduates the figure was even higher - 33 percent.
Iran warns academics
Source: Guardian (5-31-07)
Iran's powerful intelligence ministry has stepped up its war of nerves with the west by telling the country's academics they will be suspected of spying if they maintain contact with foreign institutions or travel abroad to international conferences.
The blunt warning has been issued by the ministry's counter-espionage director in an atmosphere of rising suspicion and paranoia as Iran claims to have cracked a CIA-backed spy ring and has charged three American citizens with spying.
In a briefing with Iranian journalists, the official - whose identity was not disclosed - accused western intelligence agencies of using academic contacts to lure scholars into an espionage network against Iran. He said seminars inside and outside the country were used.
Lost documents shed light on Black Death
Source: Times (UK) (6-1-07)
For centuries, rats and fleas have been fingered as the culprits responsible for the Black Death, the medieval plague that killed as many as two thirds of Europe’s population.
But historians studying 14th-century court records from Dorset believe they may have uncovered evidence that exonerates them. The parchment records, contained in a recently-discovered archive, reveal that an estimated 50 per cent of the 2,000 people living in Gillingham died within four months of the Black Death reaching the town in October 1348.
Pakistan minister defends history textbooks
Source: http://www.thestatesman.net (5-31-07)
Pakistan’s Education Min-ister has defended the inclusion in school textbooks of chapters dealing with Hindu monarchs in the subcontinent, saying history deals with historical events and not religious incidents.
The Islamic alliance Muthahida Majlis Amal (MMA) had objected to inclusion of the Ashok and Chandra Gupta Maurya period in history textbooks, whose curriculum is otherwise confined to Islamic periods and its rulers.
Rochester still upset with mayor's plan to get rid of city historian
Source: Mark Hare, columnist, in the democratandchronicle.com (5-31-07)
When I read that Mayor Robert Duffy's proposed city budget would downsize and outsource the position of city historian to save about $58,500 a year, I recalled that more than 20 years ago, the trustees at the George Eastman House secretly discussed giving away the museum's collection of films and photos.
Kodak had grown weary of the annual expense of a growing collection, and the trustees had approached the Smithsonian Institution about taking them all — lock, stock and Ansel Adams. The community rose up to object, and the board finally relented. Kodak made a new financial commitment; matching funds were raised; the museum was expanded and improved. The facility today is the finest of its kind.
The lesson: We must not give away who we are.
Argentina uncovers Eichmann pass
Source: BBC (5-29-07)
A student has found the passport used by Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann to enter Argentina in 1950.
The passport was issued by the Red Cross, in the Italian city of Genoa, under the name of Ricardo Klement.
The student found the passport among court documents while investigating Eichmann's capture in 1960 by the Israeli secret service.
He was tried and sentenced to death in Israel in 1962 for his role in mass killings of Jews during World War II.
Chinese protest Japan war crimes
Source: BBC (5-31-07)
Several dozen people have taken part in a rare public protest in the Chinese capital Beijing, against what they see as Japanese crimes during World War II.
About 30 people marched to the Japanese embassy with banners and slogans.
Such protests are rare in China, although the government has sanctioned a number of rallies against the Japanese wartime treatment of Chinese.
However the number of these demonstrations has fallen in recent years.
Early humans 'learnt to walk in the trees'
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-1-07)
Human ancestors developed the ability to walk upright while living in trees rather than on open land as previously believed, scientists say.
The traditional view that our ancient relatives developed the ability to manage on two feet only when they moved out of the forests to live on the open savannahs of east Africa is mistaken, according to ground-breaking new research.
British scientists, who spent a year in Indonesian rainforests observing orang-utans, believe the common ancestors of all great apes - including humans - developed the ability to move upright so they could reach fruit on small branches and move between trees.
Ex-Presidents at Billy Graham Library Opening
Source: AP (6-1-07)
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Visitors to the new, presidential-style museum honoring evangelist Billy Graham enter and exit the building through crosses as tall as 40 feet high, a design meant to emphasize that the $27-million complex is an extension of the minister's work.
''My hope is there will be thousands of people who come here every year and accept Jesus Christ as their savior,'' said the Rev. Franklin Graham, son and successor to his father, the world's most widely heard preacher.
On Thursday, former Presidents Carter, Clinton and George H.W. Bush met with the Graham family before the formal dedication of the Billy Graham Library, expected to draw 1,500 well-wishers.
U.S. Data Show Rapid Minority Growth in School Rolls
Source: NYT (6-1-07)
Driven mainly by an extraordinary influx of Hispanics, the nation’s population of minority students has surged to 42 percent of public school enrollment, up from 22 percent three decades ago, according to an annual report issued yesterday by the government.
The report, a statistical survey of the nation’s educational system, portrays sweeping ethnic shifts that have transformed the schools. The changes, with important implications for educators and policy makers, have been most striking in the West, where, the survey says, Hispanic, black and Asian students together have outnumbered whites since 2003. But all regions have seen growth in minority student enrollment, particularly by Hispanics, who accounted for one of five public school students in 2005, the last year for which data were available.
Alabama: Governor Signs Slavery Apology
Source: AP (6-1-07)
Gov. Bob Riley signed a resolution expressing “profound regret” for Alabama’s role in slavery and apologizing for slavery’s wrongs and lingering effects. “Slavery was evil and is a part of American history,” said Mr. Riley, a Republican. “I believe all Alabamians are proud of the tremendous progress we have made and continue to make.” The Democrat-controlled Legislature approved the resolution last week.
Spain goes to court in fight over treasure
Source: Telegraph (UK) (5-31-07)
The Spanish government is to take legal action in the US courts to force an exploration company to reveal whether 17 tons of gold and silver coins, worth an estimated £250 million, were recovered from a wreck off the British coast.
Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration has refused to say where the treasure was found, but it is widely believed to have come from the British sailing ship Merchant Royal, which sank off the Isles of Scilly in 1641 carrying Spanish cargo.
Covington and Burling, a law firm that has offices in London and Washington, has been instructed by Spain to require disclosure as the first step in a legal action that could lead to the bounty being declared Spanish property.
Low Lake Okeechobee water uncovers ancient site
Source: Miami Herald (5-31-07)
The lake kept its secret as long as the rain fell.
The remains rested in the soft, black muck for hundreds of years -- buried beneath the water of Lake Okeechobee.
But the drought tore open the ancient grave, and a local man happened upon it. The bodies have been discovered.
But the mystery is just beginning.
''It's a mixed blessing,'' State Archaeologist Ryan Wheeler said. ``The lower lake levels give us a chance to learn . . . but the site was probably better-protected under water.''
Little is known about this uncovered archaeological site of boats and bodie
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