This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Mail Tribune
10-28-09
Democracy springs from the deepest precept of diverse religions — that all are created equal before God — and is destined to prevail throughout the world but in its own good time, according to history professor William Cook, who will give a presentation tonight at Southern Oregon University.
Cook, who has taught at the State University of New York at Geneseo since 1970, will speak tonight and Friday on democracy and French author Alexis de Tocqueville as part of a campuswide convers
Source: AHA Blog
10-5-09
The AHA’s Annual Report for 2008 is now available online. It contains a preface from former AHA president Gabrielle M. Spiegel, reports from Council, lists of members (25-year, honorary, and life), and donors to the association. You’ll also find
Source: Rapid City Journal
10-25-09
A jewel of United States history quietly resides in the bowels of a nondescript building at the University of South Dakota.
The South Dakota Oral History Center isn't widely known outside of academia, but the center, located in a basement, contains eyewitness accounts of history that, in many cases, have remained undisturbed for decades.
"We sit on a very valuable collection here _ probably one of the most valuable in North America," said Edward Valandra, chai
Source: newsleader.com
10-25-09
Willis Carter lived in Staunton more than a hundred years ago.
Researchers from around the state and country have spent four years looking for information about the man — a former slave and, later, Staunton educator and newspaper editor — but after 1902, his historical paper trail fell blank until a recent find is helping the team lay the mystery of Carter's life to rest.
New York-based historian Deborah Harding has led research on Carter's life with the help of Virgini
Source: The Massachusetts Historical Society
10-15-09
Approximately 100 guests were in attendance on the evening of 14 October as Prof. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich was honored as the 10th recipient of the John F. Kennedy Medal of the Massachusetts Historical Society at the Harvard Club of Boston. Ulrich, a Corresponding Fellow of the MHS since 1991 and 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard University, was presented with the medal as part of the Society’s 60th Annual Dinner. She addressed the Fellows and Members of the nation’s oldest histori
Source: NYT
10-24-09
MAISONCELLE, France — The heavy clay-laced mud behind the cattle pen on Antoine Renault’s farm looks as treacherous as it must have been nearly 600 years ago, when King Henry V rode from a spot near here to lead a sodden and exhausted English Army against a French force that was said to outnumber his by as much as five to one.
No one can ever take away the shocking victory by Henry and his “band of brothers,” as Shakespeare would famously call them, on St. Crispin’s Day, Oct. 25, 14
Source: The Local
10-27-09
Sweden should consider joining its Nordic neighbours in forming a five-country federation in order to increase the region’s weight on the international stage, a Swedish historian proposes.
A union between the five Nordic countries – Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland – would give them a seat at big international gatherings, writes social scientist, historian, and author Gunnar Wetterberg in an opinion article in the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper.
In proposing
Source: Telegraph (UK)
10-27-09
Official figures show that in 131 state schools, not a single pupil sat GCSE history last year.
That is 4.1 percent of all 3,159 maintained mainstream secondary schools whose results are published by the Department of Children, Schools and Families.
Separate figure suggest that the move away from history has been greatest among poorer children.
Around 75,000 children in each year group are eligible for free school meals. Another parliamentary answer reveal
Source: Haaretz
10-27-09
In a defeated tone and in sharp contrast to the fanfare that heralded its beginnings, the era of the new historians, or what is known as the post-Zionist era, has come to an end.
The historical debate between Zionists and anti-Zionists hasn't changed, but it is no longer possible to hide behind claims of a Zionist conspiracy to expel Israel's Arabs and ethnic cleansing of the area west of the Jordan River.
It seems that a group of historians, who actually did not offer
Source: EurekaAlert
10-26-09
At the time of his death in 1885, Ulysses S. Grant was easily the most famous man in the United States — if not the world — and his funeral attracted the largest crowd up to that time, as 1.5 million mourners poured onto the streets of New York City.
Yet, if Americans today remember this Civil War general and two-term U.S. president, they tend to think of a drunken, cigar-smoking military butcher who lacked integrity when he moved into the White House.
But if one UCLA h
Source: LA Times
10-26-09
We always imagined how this might end: GeoCities would finally take down all of the animated "under construction" signs, and we'd hear one last Midi file to the tune of horns playing taps.
Instead, GeoCities will probably go down with a whimper today.
Time is up for Yahoo Inc.'s scheduled closing of perhaps the most significant virtual museum in recent history. Years ago a central meeting place for a massive chunk of American Web surfers, GeoCities will lock i
Source: RockyMountainTelegram.com
10-25-09
RALEIGH, N.C. — The state's history office is taking the last steps on a long road toward writing a 600,000-word essay on North Carolina — at about 400 words a clip.
Each segment chronicles a stop on the agency's state's roadside marker program, which has history at more than 1,500 locations to as little as five lines of text.
For nearly 75 years, the signs have been a dollop of history sufficient for most motorists, some who like to spend a leisurely afternoon driving
Source: Ryan Forman, HNN intern.
10-25-09
The controversial Watergate author Len Colodny has a new book out that is drawing the support of at least one mainstream historian. Colodny, co-author of the 1990s book, Silent Coup: The Removal of a President, alleged that that the Watergate break-in was orchestrated by John Dean. Few historians in the profession believed the book was credible. Colodny himself has backed off the charge that Nixon was an innocent victim of John Dean's manipulations. But Colodny's new book has won
Source: NYT
10-24-09
MAISONCELLE, France — The heavy clay-laced mud behind the cattle pen on Antoine Renault’s farm looks as treacherous as it must have been nearly 600 years ago, when King Henry V rode from a spot near here to lead a sodden and exhausted English Army against a French force that was said to outnumber his by as much as five to one.
No one can ever take away the shocking victory by Henry and his “band of brothers,” as Shakespeare would famously call them, on St. Crispin’s Day, Oct. 25, 1
Source: Evansville Courier and Press
10-23-09
EVANSVILLE — Were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki justified?
Writer and historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa knows his World War II endgame subject matter doesn't sit well with some Americans.
"They don't want to hear that maybe America made a mistake," said Hasegawa, a professor of history at the University of California and Santa Barbara and the author of "Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and Japan's Surrender in the Pacific War."
Source: The Washington Post
10-23-09
The historian largely responsible for summing up Washington, D.C., for millions of Wikipedia readers digs for facts from his tiny bedroom in Dupont Circle. He sits on a chair borrowed from his four-piece dinette set at a desk he bought from Target, footnoting away on an old Dell computer. He is 24 years old. Sometimes he makes his bed.
His name is Adam Lewis -- a fact sure to surprise his closest friends and even his parents, who are unaware that, for a year or so, Lewis has been st
Source: Smithsonian
10-15-09
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has contributed $10 million to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, expected to open in late 2015 on the National Mall in Washington. The purpose of the grant is to support the capital campaign of the new museum, which is raising funds for the design and construction of its building.
The building, to be built on a five-acre tract adjacent to the Washington Monument, will be designed by Freelon Adjaye Bond/
Source: The Washington Institute For Near East Policy
10-17-09
(LEESBURG, VA) -- A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel,Allis and Ronald Radosh's suspenseful, meticulously documented account of Truman's controversial decision to recognize the new state of Israel, has won the Gold Prize -- including a cash award of $30,000 -- in The Washington Institute's 2009 Book Prize competition, the research institution announced today.
The Book Prize, established to highlight new nonfiction books on the Middle East, is among the world's m
Source: Times of India
10-24-09
Syphilis killed Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin and not a stroke, believes a
British historian.
To find the evidence, Helen Rappaport delved deep into books and obscure journals. Rappaport thinks the Soviets tried hard to cover up the real reasons for Lenin's erratic, manic behaviour, bouts of rage and untimely death at 53, seven years after the revolution of 1917.
In a bid to reach the conclusion, Rappaport unearthed comments from Professor Ivan Pavlov. Pa
Source: Reuters
10-23-09
LONDON (Reuters Life!) - As Britain prepares to put the clocks back this weekend, one of its leading historians has called for the UK to join the same time zone as the rest of Europe -- and leave Scotland in the dark.
On Sunday the clocks go back one hour to GMT to provide more daylight in the morning, a tradition Alistair Horne called "absolutely crazy."
"The Scots do have a problem because, being that much nearer the North Pole, they do have a very sho
