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SOURCE: The Atlantic
9-26-2013
Just How Much of Musical History Has Been Lost to History?
Valuable original recordings and rare tapes have vanished over the years—a process that Jack White and the National Recording Preservation Foundation are looking to stop...
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SOURCE: Spiegel International
9-20-13
Secret Code: Music Score May Lead to Nazi Gold
After some initial digs, a Dutch filmmaker believes he may found the sight of buried Nazi treasure long rumored to exist.
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SOURCE: AP
9-21-13
Declassified document: US narrowly escaped nuclear blast in 1961 H-bomb accident
A U.S. hydrogen bomb nearly detonated on the nation’s east coast, with a single switch averting a blast which would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that flattened Hiroshima, a newly published book says.
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PUP
Test
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Review of Erik J. Chaput's "The People's Martyr"
by J. Stanley Lemons
Was Rhode Island's revolutionary democrat all that democratic?
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SOURCE: Christian Science Monitor
9-3-13
America – and Obama – Must Be Ready to Act Alone
by Jonathan Zimmerman
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SOURCE: NYT
9-1-13
JFK nostalgia tour
After all the ceremonies for M.L.K., there’s now J.F.K.
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Review of Brett Martin's "Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad"
by Jim Cullen
How TV supplanted the movies as the auteur medium of choice -- and why that may be changing.
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SOURCE: Special to HNN
8-10-13
Jim Cullen: Review of Niall Ferguson's "The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die" (Penguin, 2013)
In The Great Degeneration, Niall Ferguson offers a précis of his libertarian brand of thinking with an expansive view of Anglo-American society -- and why it's falling apart. It rests on a key insight, and a questionable prescription.
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SOURCE: Special to HNN
6-30-13
Luther Spoehr: Review of Erik Christiansen’s “Channeling the Past: Politicizing History in Postwar America” (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013)
For many decades now, survey after survey has shown that American students learn little American history in their classrooms. So disappointed historians should be glad that, at least since World War II, popular history has been, well, popular. But, no. Instead, most academic historians who pay any attention to popular history at all spend much of their time lamenting its inaccuracy, its blandness, its frequent failure to conform to scholarly standards and to academics’ own particular interpretations.
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11-11-12
Who Made Velcro?
In 1941, a Swiss engineer named George de Mestral returned from a hunting trip with burs clinging to his pants and tangled in his dog’s coat. When de Mestral examined the seedpods under a microscope, he marveled at how they bristled with hooks ingeniously shaped to grasp at animal fur. “Most people stop at the ‘Oh, that’s cool, that’s what nature does,’ ” says Janine Benyus, a pioneer in the field of biomimicry, the science of studying natural models — anthills and lizard feet, say — to solve human problems. “He probably had to go back a lot of times,” she adds, “and really look” at those hooks. A bur, of course, can clamp onto wool socks with surprising force, and — even more amazing — once you pry it off, it can stick again and again, like glue that never wears out. But how to imitate this trick with human-made stuff? Eventually de Mestral learned to mold nylon into a fabric studded with tiny hooks or loops that acted like artificial burs.When Velcro first arrived in America, it caused a sensation. In 1958, a syndicated financial columnist named Sylvia Porter announced that “a new fastening device” had so bewitched her that she spent days playing with it. “It’s on my desk as I type this,” she wrote.
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Constitution Day: Lesson Plan
by Zografia Polemikos
Goal: Students will understand the key principles that form the basis of the Constitution.
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Constitution Day: Backgrounder
Though the thirteen colonies declared independence from Great Britain in 1776 and the Revolutionary War ended in American victory in 1783, the Constitution was not drafted until 1787, ratified until 1788, and George Washington did not become the first president of the United States until 1789. So how was the U.S. Governed between 1776 and 1787?
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Did Hitler Really Have Only One Testicle?
by HNN Staff
Did Adolf Hitler, widely considered to be one of the most evil, despicable people who ever lived, really have only one testicle?Maybe.Fans of the 1957 Bridge over the River Kwai no doubt remember the jaunty tune whistled by the British POWs as they marched into captivity:But film buffs may not be aware that the WWI-era tune, “Colonel Bogey’s March,” developed an alternate set of lyrics in WWII:There are a seemingly infinite number of variations, but the most popular goes like this:Hitler has only got one ball, Göring has two but very small, Himmler is somewhat sim'lar, But poor Goebbels has no balls at all.
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Interviews with Historians
Following is a list of interviews and profiles found on the Internet.
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Historians as Activists
Historians don't always confine their activities to the library and classroom. Here's a list of organizations historians have used to have a direct impact on events.
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Great History Websites
Have fun surfing these websites that feature exciting history content.
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Factoids
Have fun with these factoids related to history. Feel free to add your own in the comments section.
News
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- Hawley's Use of Fake Patrick Henry Quote a Revealing Error
- Health Researchers Show Segregation 100 Years Ago Harmed Black Health, and Effects Continue Today
- Nelson Lichtenstein on a Half Century of Labor History
- Can America Handle a 250th Anniversary?
- New Research Shows British Industrialization Drew Ironworking Methods from Colonized and Enslaved Jamaicans
- The American Revolution Remains a Hotly Contested Symbolic Field
- Untangling Fact and Fiction in the Story of a Nazi-Era Brothel