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: Telegraph
September 4, 2008
Polish prosecutors say they want access to classified British documents
after they launched an investigation into the death of Poland's wartime
leader General Wladsylaw Sikorski.
Investigators at Poland's Institute for National Remembrance, the body
charged with probing crimes committed during the war, want to determine
whether the general, who was also Polish prime minister, died in accident
or was assassinated.
General Sikorski died in July 1943 when his RAF Liberator bomb
Source: AFP
September 3, 2008
Russian archaeologists said Wednesday they had found the
long-lost capital of the Khazar kingdom in southern Russia, a breakthrough
for research on the ancient Jewish state.
"This is a hugely important discovery," expedition organiser Dmitry
Vasilyev told AFP by telephone from Astrakhan State University after
returning from excavations near the village of Samosdelka, just north of
the Caspian Sea.
"We can now shed light on one of the most intriguing mysteries of that
period -- how
Source: Robert Schlesinger at his US News blog
September 4, 2008
One sign of a historic figure's greatness is the quotations that are incorrectly attributed to him. Take Abraham Lincoln. Speaking to the Republican National Convention this evening, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee attributed to Lincoln the sentiment that a government big enough to give you anything you want is also big enough to take everything you have.
It's a great quote...but I'm pretty sure it's not Lincoln's.
This much I know as a certainty: Gerald Ford said it
Source: NYT
September 3, 2008
Perched on a wind-swept bluff above Lake Champlain, Fort Ticonderoga has a timeless presence. Its thick stone walls appear impenetrable, more than two centuries after being contested, variously, by French, British and American troops.
This summer, the national historic landmark — called Fort Ti for short — began its 100th season as an attraction open to the public with two causes for celebration: the unveiling of a splashy new education center, and an increase in visitors, reversin
Source: NYT
September 4, 2008
How do you vet a veep? Carefully, very carefully. Or so Senator John McCain may have learned. Disclosures about his hastily selected running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, seem to have caught his Republican campaign for the White House off-guard.
Whether or not Mr. McCain did his due diligence remains to be seen — is there a news organization or Democratic opposition researcher not rummaging through Ms. Palin’s life? — but the perils of a cursory background check for the White Ho
Source: NYT
September 4, 2008
Senator John McCain’s Republican primary campaign looked all but hopeless. He had risked the wrath of his party to push for an immigration overhaul and now, just months before the Iowa caucuses, his grand compromise was falling apart on the Senate floor as well.
“Lindsey, my boy, this may bring us down,” Mr. McCain said, turning to his friend Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “But wasn’t it fun?”
By this spring, when Mr. McCain had astounded politica
Source: Tehran Times
September 4, 2008
Archaeologists have recently resumed excavation at the 7000-year-old site at Shoghali Tepe in Pishva.
This is the third season the mound, located near the city of Varamin in southeastern Tehran Province, is being excavated by an archaeological team led by Moteza Hesari, the Persian service of CHN reported on Wednesday.
The team was scheduled to begin the season of excavation in early August, but it was postponed and Hesari declined to explain the reasons behind the del
Source: BBC
September 4, 2008
A team of Australian investigators is preparing an expedition to the arduous Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea, after a hiker spotted what is believed to be the body of a World War II airman hanging from a tree. The BBC's Becky Branford found out more.
History is alive on the densely forested slopes north of Port Moresby, the Papua New Guinea capital.
The hillsides around what is known as the Kokoda Trail are littered with rusting guns, grenades and mortars - reminders
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
September 3, 2008
A novel canceled by Random House Inc. in May, after warnings from a University of Texas at Austin historian, has found a new publisher in Britain.
London-based Gibson Square Books announced today that it had agreed to publish The Jewel of Medina, which tells of A’isha, the child bride of the Prophet Muhammad.
Random House terminated its contract with the book’s author, Sherry Jones, after Denise Spellberg, an associate professor of history at Texas, warned that the book
Source: HNN Staff
September 3, 2008
Several days ago The Art Newspaper reported that"The leading archaeologist in Iraq says that sites are no longer being targeted by professional looters." The paper cited statements made in the course of an interview with Dr. Abbas al-Husseini, the successor to Donny George as the head of Iraq's state board of antiquities. Abbas later was fired.
This week Donny George used the IraqCrisis list to blast his successor:
Source: Telegraph
September 3, 2008
Researchers found that people who live in lands conquered by the Roman army have less protection against HIV than those in countries they never reached
They say a gene which helps make people less susceptible to HIV occurs in greater frequency in areas of Europe that the Roman Empire did not stretch to.
The gene lacks certain DNA elements, which means HIV cannot bind to it as easily and is less able to infect cells.
People with the mutation have some resistance to HIV
Source: Don Frederick at the LAT blog
September 2, 2008
Newt Gingrich, even as he joined the chorus of Republican conservative leaders lauding John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate, still must have been somewhat rattled by the pick. At least, that's the only way we can explain an uncharacteristic lapse in the history department. Gingrich is known for his command of history (anyone doubting that should just ask him).
Gingrich, a trained historian who taught the subject at the University of West Georgia before taking the
Source: Politico.com
September 3, 2008
Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) Said That Governor Palin Was A Supporter Of Pat Buchanan Who He Called A 'Nazi Sympathizer.' 'Here's Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida: John McCain's decision to select a vice presidential running mate that endorsed Pat Buchanan for President in 2000 is a direct affront to all Jewish Americans. Pat Buchanan is a Nazi sympathizer with a uniquely atrocious record on Israel, even going as far as to denounce bringing former Nazi soldiers to justice and praising Adolf Hilter f
Source: Telegraph
September 2, 2008
Figurines shaped like phalluses have emerged from excavations in the north of Israel, surprising archaeologists because of their thrusting, macho nature.
While fertility symbols during this period are often associated with female imagery, at the site in Kfar HaHoresh only phallic figurines have been found to date, including one placed in the foundation.
The team from the Hebrew University has found the fertility symbols in a prehistoric walled enclosure, some 10 by 20 m
Source: lifesitenews.com (conservative pro-life website)
September 2, 2008
[HNN Editor: The headline above refers to stories like the one below published by lifesitenews.com which are circulating on the Internet.]
Marie Stopes, the notorious early 20th century contraception campaigner, eugenicist and anti-Semite, did for Britain what Margaret Sanger did for the US: preached the doctrines of eugenics and promoted contraception and sterilisation to achieve "racial hygiene." So successful was she at altering British society in favour of her eugenics do
Source: AP
September 2, 2008
Hundreds of former Canadian soldiers will receive
compensation for being assigned to participate in atomic bomb test
explosions by the U.S. and British militaries in the 1960s, the Defense
Ministry said Tuesday.
Defense Minister Peter MacKay said the soldiers were involved in
operations in the United States, Australia and the South Pacific from the
end of World War II until the international treaty banning atmospheric
test explosions was signed in 1963.
Canada's government wi
Source: Yale Daily News
September 3, 2008
Yale and Peru inched closer to court this summer, as a nearly century-old
controversy over Inca artifacts grew even more complex in a few short
months.
Just under a year ago, on Sept. 14, 2007, the University and the
government of Peru claimed to have found consensus regarding the rightful
ownership of artifacts excavated from Machu Picchu in the early 20th
century by Yale explorer Hiram Bingham III. But whatever progress was made
last fall seemed squandered when Peru threatened lit
Source: http://www.china.org.cn
September 3, 2008
Yesterday the archaeology department of China's Chongqing Municipality
announced a remarkable discovery: a Qing Dynasty tomb of an almost unique
style, made out of more than 2,000 qing hua ci (blue and white porcelain)
bowls.
The Chongqing Economic Times quoted archaeologists as saying that this
kind of tomb is very rare and had probably been constructed by migrants to
the area.
The tomb was discovered on the morning of August 24, the final day of the
Beijing Olympics, by a
Source: Telegraph
September 3, 2008
Iraq has said it plans to rebuild the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, complete with a museum portraying the crimes of Saddam Hussein.
The jail, which is situated 15 miles west of Baghdad, has been closed since September 2006 after the US military handed it over to the Iraqi authorities in the wake of a prisoner abuse scandal.
The Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal erupted in early 2004 when photos appeared in the media of naked and hooded Iraqi prisoners being beaten and ma
Source: Telegraph
September 3, 2008
A wedding ring that belonged to a British sailor who drowned in World War I has been found on the seabed and reunited with the family of the man who lost it.
Peter Brady thought he had picked up a small piece of metal from HMS Opal during a dive in Orkney last year.
But he discovered when he surfaced that it was a wedding ring bearing the inscription: "To Stanley from Flo, March 1916."
Mr Brady, 51, from Liverpool, found the ring by chance while
