Breaking News

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.

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• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/18/20
  

  A farm boy became a fearsome warrior at Iwo Jima. And he did it with a flamethrower.

  The Japanese soldiers came out of their concrete “pill box” with bayonets fixed, determined to get the Marine who had been killing them all afternoon with a flamethrower.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/18/20
  

  Plymouth Rock vandalized with red graffiti ahead of 400th anniversary of Mayflower landing

  “The defacement of these symbols of Plymouth’s history, or any public property for that matter, is unfathomable and unconscionable,” Town Manager Melissa Arrighi said in a statement posted to Facebook.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/17/20
  

  The enslaved people who built and staffed the White House: An afterthought no more

  A new online exhibit by the White House Historical Association, a private nonprofit that sits across the street from the White House, explores that untold history.

• 
• SOURCE: LA Times
  2/17/20
  

  Truman and Coolidge go up, Jefferson and Jackson go down. How history remembers presidents

  Rating presidents has long been an American obsession. 

• 
• SOURCE: Haaretz
  2/18/20
  

  George Steiner: The Last Viennese Jew

  by Arie M. Dubnov

  The Holocaust was an impulsive rebellion by 'polytheistic instincts' against the 'noble tyranny' of Jewish monotheism, claimed Jewish American essayist and literary critic George Steiner, who passed away this month, aged 90.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/16/20
  

  George Washington gets romanticized by male biographers. Now a woman has taken him on.

  Alexis Coe argues in “You Never Forget Your First” that the male gaze has distorted our impressions of the first president.

• 
• SOURCE: National Interest
  2/15/20
  

  Can Donald Trump Avoid a War with Iran? History Tells Us To Worry.

  by Lawrence J. Korb

  The last thing our military personnel and the country needs is another Vietnam or another unwinnable war in the Middle East. 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  2/14/20
  

  Who Owns History? Connecticut Woman Sues Harvard for Family Photos

  Featuring historian and professor from Georgetown University, Marcia Chatelain, about how American universities are confronting their legacies of slavery. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/14/20
  

  In 1933, two rebellious women bought a home in Virginia’s woods. Then the CIA moved in.

  In the late 1950s, the CIA took over the land in Langley, Va., to build a headquarters that could accommodate its fast-growing operations. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  2/13/20
  

  Historic Iwo Jima footage shows individual Marines amid the larger battle

  by Greg Wilsbacher

  When most Americans think of the World War II battle for Iwo Jima – if they think of it at all, 75 years later – they think of one image: Marines raising the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi, the island’s highest point.

• 
• SOURCE: Undark
  2/17/20
  

  Coronavirus spurs prejudice. History suggests that’s no surprise.

  As anti-Asian sentiment surges amid the growing coronavirus crisis, experts point to history & warn of consequences.

• 
• SOURCE: NY Times
  2/13/20
  

  How Dresden Looked After a World War II Firestorm 75 Years Ago

  Mourning all of the war’s victims has been central to Germany’s remembrance efforts since reunification in 1990.

• 
• SOURCE: The Jerusalem Report
  2/11/20
  

  Poland’s forgotten civil strife and the struggle for Jewish statehood

  by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez

  Israel and the Russian-Polish War of Narratives: How the contest for control of post-WWII Poland intersected with the struggle for Jewish statehood as two early arenas of the Cold War.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/13/20
  

  Socialists were winning U.S. elections long before Bernie Sanders and AOC

  The “Pledge of Allegiance” was written by a Christian socialist in 1892. Eugene V. Debs ran for president on a socialist ticket five times; in 1912, he got nearly a million votes.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/12/20
  

  The House just passed a bill to create a women’s history museum. Only one congresswoman voted against it.

  The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to approve the creation of a national women’s history museum as part of the Smithsonian Institution’s network of museums in Washington.

• 
• SOURCE: NY Times
  2/12/20
  

  For hundreds of years, enslaved people were bought and sold in America. Today most of the sites of this trade are forgotten.

  by Anne C. Bailey and Dannielle Bowman

  A powerful photoessay that is the latest article from the 1619 Project. 

• 
• SOURCE: NY Times
  2/11/20
  

  2 New Books Examine the the History of Black Travel

  The New York Times reviews OVERGROUND RAILROAD: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America by Candacy Taylor and DRIVING WHILE BLACK: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights by Gretchen Sorin.

• 
• SOURCE: Time
  2/12/20
  

  Bernie Sanders’ New Hampshire Victory Is a Big Deal for Socialism in America. Here's What to Know About the History of the Idea

  Sanders’ success in both Iowa and New Hampshire may signal that a version of American socialism is again on the rise.

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  2/13/20
  

  On the 100th anniversary of the Negro Leagues, a look back at what was lost

  by Rob Ruck

  After World War II, Jackie Robinson hurdled baseball’s racial divide. But while integration – baseball’s great experiment – was a resounding success on the field, at the gates and in changing racial attitudes, Negro League teams soon lost all of their stars and struggled to retain fans. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  2/13/20
  

  America’s postwar fling with romance comics

  by Michael C. Weisenburg

  Grounded in artistic and narrative realism, romance comics were remarkably different from their superhero and sci-fi peers. While the post-war popularity of romance comics only lasted a few years, these love stories ended up actually having a strong influence on other genres.