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Obama Writes Himself Into Presidents' Bios

Kevin Spak — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:48:38 CDT

History is written by the winners, and in this case by the winner of the 2008 presidential election: Take a gander at almost any presidential biography on WhiteHouse.gov from Calvin Coolidge on up, and you'll find a "Did You Know?" section that somehow, some way, links their achievements to...

Santorum: Calif. Schools Don't Teach US History

Neal Colgrass — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:55:05 CDT

Rick Santorum continued his verbal assault on higher education today by accusing California universities of failing to "even teach an American history course." The GOP candidate slammed UC universities during a speech in Wisconsin, Mediaite reports, saying that "I think it's seven or eight" schools that neglect US history: "Just...

How This Woman Changed Physics

Matt Cantor — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:02:21 CDT

Her work may be the "backbone" of all modern physics; her key theorem could be as important as the theory of relativity; yet hardly anyone knows who Emmy Noether is. Celebrating her 130th birthday this month, Noether has suffered what the New York Times calls "chronic neglect"—including in the...

Forget 8 Hours of Sleep: Try 4 Hours, Twice

Matt Cantor — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:51:20 CST

Eight hours of sleep—doctor's orders, right? Perhaps not. A number of recent studies have pointed to a human tendency to sleep in two sessions of about four hours each, with an hour or two between, the BBC reports. A researcher in the 1990s put subjects in darkness 14 hours...

Romans' Beasts of Burden: Camels?

Matt Cantor — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:57:02 CST

The Roman Empire may have brought camels a long way from home to serve as its beasts of burden, archaeologists say. Researchers have found Roman-age camel bones at 22 sites across northern Europe, USA Today reports. What's more, "antique literature and iconographical sources inform us about the uses of camels...

Gingrich More 'Nutty Professor' Than Historian

Kevin Spak — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:59:55 CST

Newt Gingrich's attacks linking President Obama to Saul Alinsky delighted Harvard law professor Noah Feldman. "What excites me is not the preposterousness of the statement," though indeed, it was preposterous, he writes for Bloomberg . "What I love was the absurdity of Newt Gingrich apparently believing that the name Saul Alinsky...

O'Reilly: Lincoln Book Has Just 4 Errors, 2 Typos

Kevin Spak — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 07:19:12 CST

Bill O’Reilly vigorously defended his book, Killing Lincoln , yesterday, after the National Park Service lambasted it for historical inaccuracies . “Our enemies are full of rage at our success,” he said on his show. He said the book contained "four minor misstatements, all of which have been corrected" along with "two...

O'Reilly's Lincoln Book Slammed for Historical Boo-Boos

Neal Colgrass — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 17:29:00 CST

Bill O'Reilly's book, Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever , has sold nearly a million copies and currently sits at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list . Only problem is, it's riddled with errors, according to a scathing review from the National Park Service bookstore at Ford’s...

Researchers to Build Computer Designed in 1830s

Kevin Spak — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:30:32 CST

Quick when was the first programmable computer designed? If you said the early 19th century … well, you probably looked at the headline. But you might be right, and researchers in Britain are currently planning to test that theory. They’re about to spend 10 years and millions of dollars trying...