Mapping the Days of Our Lives

Matteo Ricci (1552-1610 CE) was born in the Papal States, but spent his mature years in China. Tohoku University has digitized his huge 1602 map of the world. By placing the Americas on the right, rather than the left, Ricci puts China at the center of the world. You can click down to focus on particular parts of the map, where he writes commentaries. Of the British isles, he says:"England has no poisonous snakes or insects. Even if you bring some in from elsewhere they lose their poison on arriving in the country." Thanks to Rachel at a historian's craft for the tip.

A. O. Scott,"History, Bloody History," NY Times, 16 March, reviews Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley, which won the top prize at Cannes last year and premiered in New York yesterday. The film is set amidst the Irish rebellion in the 1920s. Here are some clips from it.

"FBI File Links Kennedy to Monroe's Death," Sydney Morning Herald, 17 March, is the breaking story of the day. You can read the FBI file documents here. Still, there's reason to be skeptical.

Two different anti-war alliances and a group supportive of the war in Iraq will be demonstrating in Washington, DC, this weekend. Last night, an alliance of Christian groups marched from the National Cathedral to Lafayette Park. Taylor Branch, the prize-winning historian of the civil rights movement and a Presbyterian elder, was among the marchers who volunteered to be arrested.

After accepting an appointment as chair and professor of African American Studies at Ohio University, Thelma Wills Foote has withdrawn her acceptance of the position. The appointment was already announced, when the chairman of OU's history department raised questions about Foote's claim to have co-authored Sally Hemings: An American Scandal, The Struggle to Tell the Controversial True Story with Tina Andrews, a former star in the daytime soap opera, The Days of our Lives. With a Harvard doctorate (1991), service as associate professor of history at University of California, Irvine, and a well regarded monograph, Black and White Manhattan: The History of Racial Formation in New York City (Oxford, 2004), Foote may have damaged her career by a) falsely claiming co-authorship of the book; and b) suggesting that it had anything to do with scholarship. OU requires two scholarly books for tenure. Thanks to Margaret Soltan at University Diaries for the tip.