History News
President's Day Lesser Known Presidential Keepsakes: Slide Show
The tea cup from which Lincoln drank before leaving for Ford's theater.
Washington's dress cutlass. Jefferson's copy machine. Grant's personal memoirs. This Discovery slide show shows many unusual possessions and artifacts of our nation's leaders. Happy President;s Day! .Slide Show
Ice Age Britons Dined On Each Other, Drank From Skulls.
And You though Manchester United was tough. The 14,700 year old remains of three humans - one a child of three - reveal that th
ey were ritually killed, butchered and eaten. The gruesome discovery made in England's Cheddar Gorge suggest that cannibalism of the bodies of enemies was an accepted practice among nomadic groups of Cro-Magnon cavemen. The site also shows the oldest examples in the world of skulls carved into cups. MORE
Your Professor: Critical Thinker, Or Tribal Moralist?
According to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, the American professorate displays a "statistically impossible lack of diversity" and is overwhelmingly liberal in its political orientation. As a result, rather than being sanctuaries for astute critical thinking, campuses are homes of "'tribal-moral communities' united by "sacred values" that hinder research and damage their credibility" – and force conservatives among them to stay "in the closet." Has he got a point, or is this just more mindless right wing cant? >More
Thanks to Halley Woodward for Forwarding This Article.
Mississippi License Plate May Honor KKK Leader
Some folks in Mississippi want to commemorate the Civil War Sesquicentenial by creating a special license plate to honor a brilliant Confederate general who later became a leader of the KuKuxKlan. The Mississippi Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans wants to sponsor a
series of state-issued license plates to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. The group proposes to Honor Nathan Bedford Forrest in 2014. More
Thanks to Alan Marcus for this story
Genghis Khan, the First Green Emperor? (He Killed So Many People, Carbon Levels Plummeted)
So what's the environmental consequence of killing forty million people while building an empire? In the case of the Mongol Emperor Genghis Khan, it was such significant reforestation that 700 million tons of carbon were removed from the atmosphere.
According to Julia Pongratz, who conducted the study on Khan's environmental impact for the Carnegie Institututions Department of Global Ecology, human actions signficantly affected the environment as early as the 13th and 14th centuries. More
Rembrandt's Recipe For Success
One way the seventeenth century Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn made his paints look
thicker and more transparentt was by adding wheat starch to them. This new finding surprised experts, who expected their analysis only to confirm what previous analyses had shown about Rembrandt's paints. More
Accused Lincoln Document Changer Claims He Was Forced to Confess.
78 Year old Virginia historian Thomas Lowry, who last year signed a document sayying he had altered the date on a pardon issued by Abraham Lincoln to make it seem more significant, now says he is innocent, and was was bullied into confessing by officials from the National Archives. More
Thanks to Marie Hall for the Follow Up Story.
Philadelphia Tour Guides Sue For Right to Make-Up History
After hearing tour guides tell visitors that Washington and Lincoln dined together in fashionable Society Hill, and that Benjamin Franklin wrote the first amendment to the Constitution five centuries ago, the Philadelphia City Council moved to require tour guides to pass a basic history test and pay a modest licensing fee. Incensed, the tour guides went to federal court, claiming infringement of their right to free speech. More
Thanks to Alicia Wayland of Lebanon for forwarding this story.
England's Other Hot Ticket for 2011: Hadrian's Wall
Just in case you lose your invitation to the Royal Wedding reception this April, you might want to spend the afternoon touring the new disc
overies along the nearly 2000 year old Hadrian's Wall, the Roman Empire's gateway to the North. With new sites,exhibitions, and a major film to be released in spring, the wall is making quite a comeback. More
Significant Lincoln Document Found Altered by Forger
It's every archive researcher's dream: to find a document that will ch
ange history. In 1998, Thomas Lowry took a pen and made his dream come true. (Thanks to State Archivist Mark Jones for forwarding this story.) More .
If You Thought Power Dressing Began With Gucci, Think Again.
It doesn't take an encounter with one of Henry VIII's ornately burnished and "embellished" codpieces to realize that power dressing has a long and time-honored history. More
9400 Years Ago, Man's Best Friend Was Also Lunch
The recently found bone fragment of the oldest domesticated dog found in the Americas shows that it had passed through a human's digestive tract. Researcher Samuel Belknap II from the University of Maine in Orono found the bone fragment while examining waste matter at a cave in southwest Texas . . . More .
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore?" Poe's Graveside Admirer Fails to Show Again
The unknown visitor who left roses and a half-full bottle of cognac at Edgar Allan Poe's grave on the writer's birthday every year for 60 years, has failed to show for the second year in a row. More
The King James Version of the Bible Turns 400, & It Still Powerfully Shapes How We Speak..
"God forbid" that the "powers that be" should forget how phrases from this text - produced by a committee of 54 - "take root" in our language. Apart from it's religious impact, the King James version contributed 257 idioms to our language. That's 157 more than Shakespeare. More
115 Year Old Whiskey, Abandoned in the Antarctic, Returned to Scotland.
When Sir Ernest Shackleton gave up his attempt to reach the South Pole in 1907, he left behind a hut full of provisions including two bottle of whiskey that remained chilled in minus 30 degree Celsius temperatures for over a century. More
Tennessee Tea Party Demands Revised History Curriculum
They said it, and they apparently mean it. “Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.” More
The Wooly Mammoth Could be "reborn in four years"
A professor at Kyoto University is heading
to Siberia next summer to retrieve the DNA which he believes will lead to the rebirth of the extinct wooly mammoth within four years. More
Putting Your Heritage on the Auction Block . . . or Worse
It was bad enough when the library auctioned off the 13 star flag and the invitation to Abraham Lincoln's inaugural, but when trustees started taking artifacts home without signing them out, Marietta Phillips decided she'd had enough . . .
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History Channel Decides Not to Air Kennedy Series
Director Jon Cesar believes pressure from the Kennedy family is behind the History Channel's decision not to air the eight part mini-series THE KENNEDYS, which it commissioned in partnership with a Canadian television network. The channel just calls it a "dramatic interepretation" not in keeping with History Channel fare. More



, hundreds of Alabamans participated in a parade in Montgomery Saturday reenacting the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as the first President of the Confederacy 