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: Time
1/8/20
While New Year’s resolutions in general are thought to date back to the ancient Babylonians, the New Year’s resolution to get in shape is part of a much more recent trend.
Source: NY Times
1/8/20
In “Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America,” Marcia Chatelain has written a smart and capacious history suggesting that McDonald’s should summon all of those thoughts, and then some.
Source: HistoryExtra
Accessed 1/9/20
by Ali M Ansari
From the US assassination of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani to the ongoing case of the jailed mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Iran has scarcely been out of the headlines in recent months. But how far back does the history of Iran stretch?
Source: Telegraph
1/7/20
The National Archives claimed the move was designed to increase efficiency - but faced an immediate backlash from historians who complained their work could become untenable.
Source: Washington Post
1/6/20
The United States for decades helped shape what some believed to be a new consensus on the destruction of cultural heritage: that this form of war and destruction is not only a crime against another warring party but also a crime against humanity that endangers civilian lives and dignity.
Source: NY Times
1/5/20
Military attacks against cultural sites are against international law, and the United States has condemned the Islamic State and Taliban for similar destruction.
Source: BBC News
1/6/20
When US President George HW Bush craved "a smoking gun" in 1992 to politically kneecap his White House challenger Bill Clinton, the British government delved into its files for damaging information.
Source: Time
1/7/20
by Peter Andreas
As Norman Ohler shows in Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany, while other drugs were banned or discouraged, methamphetamine was touted as a miracle product when it appeared on the market in the late 1930s.
Source: Washington Post
1/5/20
While non-binary identities have grown in visibility in recent years, some historians point to characters like the Public Universal Friend as evidence that gender-nonconforming people have always been a part of American society, long before the language existed to recognize them.
Source: BBC News
1/5/20
Once a bastion of English and History departments, the British studies discipline is waning as American students increasingly put career goals over their love of Charles Dickens, writes James Jeffrey.
Source: NPR
1/4/20
NPR's Michel Martin speaks with Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, about how tensions between the United States and Iran got to where they are.
Source: The Conversation
1/3/20
by Tiffany Mitchell Patterson
Here are some suggestions for educators and others interested in learning more about that time period.
Source: History Today
1/2/20
by Laura Aitken-Burt
The earliest graffiti of a person’s name on a monument has been identified by the historian Lionel Casson in a cave at Wadi Hammamat in Egypt – the name of Hena, an official under Menutuhotep III in 2000 BC, is chiselled into the sandstone alongside a list of his achievements.
Source: Washington Post
1/6/20
On Monday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani invoked history right back in response to Trump’s threat.
Source: Washington Post
12/31/19
Several black legislators have called the effort disingenuous and said it undermines the purpose of Black History Month: to highlight the accomplishments of African Americans so often overlooked in classrooms and history books.
Source: NY Times
12/29/19
The fateful decision in 1979 to admit Mohammed Reza Pahlavi prompted the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran and helped doom the Carter presidency.
Source: Time
12/27/19
In the African-American community, New Year’s Day used to be widely known as “Hiring Day” — or “Heartbreak Day,” as the African-American abolitionist journalist William Cooper Nell described it — because enslaved people spent New Year’s Eve waiting, wondering if their owners were going to rent them out to someone else, thus potentially splitting up their families.
Source: BBC History Extra
12/30/19
Today, we associate New Year’s Eve with raucous and optimistic parties, followed the next day by hungover resolutions to change our ways in the months ahead. But New Year celebrations haven’t always been so.
Source: Popular Mechanics
12/27/19
Once upon a time, we all thought the world was going to end on January 1, 2000. Two decades after the panic of the century, it’s time to finally hear from the people who spent years—and billions of dollars—making sure it didn’t.
Source: The Conversation
12/27/19
by Erin Elizabeth Bramwell
The promotion of diet, detox, and laxative products has been around for centuries.
