Factoids & impressions from breast cancer awareness ads

By Gayle Sulik
One might assume that anything involving breast cancer awareness would be based on the best available evidence. Unfortunately, this assumption would be wrong. I’ve evaluated hundreds of campaigns, advertisements, websites, educational brochures, and other sundry materials related to breast cancer awareness only to find information that is inaccurate, incomplete, irrelevant, or out of context. We could spend the whole year analyzing them. For now, consider a print advertisement for mammograms by CENTRA Mammography Services.

Nobody wants to be called a bigot

By Anatoly Liberman

Nobody wants to be called a bigot, but accusations of bigotry are hurled at political opponents with great regularity, because (obviously) everyone who disagrees with us is a bigot, and it is to the popularity of this ignominious word that I ascribe the frequency with which I am asked about its origin. Rather long ago I wrote about bigot in the “gleanings,” but answers in the “gleanings” tend to be lost, while a separate essay will pop up in the Internet every time someone will ask: “Where did bigot come from?”

Margaret Sanger arrested

This Day in World History – Birth-control champion Margaret Sanger and two other women were arrested on October 26, 1916, when police entered the Brooklyn, New York, birth-control clinic that Sanger had started. Sanger began working as an obstetric nurse in New York’s poverty-ridden Lower East Side early in the 1900s. There, she became aware of the connection between poverty, high fertility, and high death rates for infants and mothers. Convinced that something needed to be done, Sanger became a crusader for birth control—and the coiner of that term.

198 methods of nonviolent action

In light of the growing momentum of Occupy Wall Street and the international riots this summer, we’ve decided to share the following excerpt from Sharp’s Dictionary of Power and Struggle: Language of Civil Resistance in Conflicts. These 198 methods of nonviolent action have all been used in historical instances of nonviolent struggle. Without doubt, a large number of additional methods have already been used but have not been classified

Does Obama lead when he does not speak?

By Elvin Lim
When the dust settles on the history of the Obama presidency, a major theme historians will have to consider and explain, is the startling contrast in his record in domestic policy versus his successes in foreign policy, which now include the assassination of Bin Laden and the toppling of Qaddafi. To put the matter in another way: if 2012 were 2004, and Obama would be judged purely on his foreign policy alone, he wouldn’t have to be doing any bus tours in the battleground states now.

The League of Nations

We usually think of international organizations as a twentieth-century phenomenon that started with the establishment of the League of Nations in 1919. This is, for the most part, true. However, in the late nineteenth century nations had already established international organizations for dealing with specific issues. The foremost among them were the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), founded in 1865 (originally called the International Telegraph Union), and the Universal Postal Union, which dates back to 1874. Today, both of these organizations are part of the UN system. The International Peace Conference held in The Hague in 1899 established the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which started its work in 1902.

World created (according to Bishop Ussher)

This Day in World History – Ever wonder when the universe began? Bishop James Ussher, a seventeenth-century Anglican cleric and biblical scholar had the answer. God created the world, he said in a 1658 chronology titled The Annals of the World, on October 23, 4004 BCE.

The missing link in human evolution?

By John Reader
A blaze of media attention recently greeted the claim that a newly discovered hominid species, , marked the transition between an older ape-like ancestor, such as Australopithecus afarensis, and a more recent representative of the human line, Homo erectus. As well as extensive TV, radio and front-page coverage, the fossils found by Lee Berger and his team at a site near Pretoria in South Africa featured prominently in National Geographic, with an illustration of the three species striding manfully across the page. In the middle, Au. sediba was marked with twelve points of similarity: six linking it to Au. afarensis on the left and six to H. erectus on the right. Though Berger did not explicitly describe Au. sediba as a link between the two species, the inference was clear and not discouraged. The Missing Link was in the news again.

Everything you ever wanted to know about Prohibition

Prohibition, or “the Noble Experiment,” refers to the period between 1919 and 1933 when the sale, manufacture, and distribution of alcohol were illegal in the United States. Although it may have lasted only 14 years, Prohibition was the culmination of decades of protest and lobbying and has ramifications that are still felt today. It remains the focal point of the ongoing debate surrounding the potential dangers and benefits of alcohol and people’s right to drink as they please.

Abina and the Important Men: A Graphic History

By Trevor Getz

By Trevor Getz

Abina and the Important Men is an interpretation of the testimony of a young, enslaved woman who won her way to freedom in late nineteenth century West Africa and then prosecuted her former master for illegally enslaving her. October 21 marks the 155^th anniversary of the date that she forced a British magistrate and a jury of eleven affluent and powerful men to hear the charges she was making against an influential male land-owner.

Apple announces iPod

This Week in World History – After weeks of speculation about what, exactly, Apple had up its sleeve, Steve Jobs made an appearance on October 23, 2001, that ended the mystery. Jobs announced Apple’s newest product, a portable digital music player that would, he said, put “1,000 songs in your pocket.” The iPod was born.

Egypt’s anti-Christian violence: How things got so bad

By Steven A. Cook
If February 11, 2011 demonstrated the very best of Egypt, then October 9, 2011 demonstrated the very worst of Egypt. The only way to describe what unfolded in front of the state television building (and subsequently Tahrir Square), where Copts were protesting over not-so-subtle official efforts to stoke sectarian tension over a church being constructed in Aswan, was an anti-Christian pogrom. The death toll stands at 25 with 300 injured. There have been scattered reports of soldiers and policemen injured, but by far the Copts took the brunt of the violence.

Sydney Opera House opens

This Day in World History – One of the twentieth century’s most recognizable buildings, the Sydney Opera House, officially opened on October 20, 1973. The Opera House, situated on the shores of Sydney Harbor and with a striking roof line, has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with the comment that the building “brings together multiple strands of creativity and innovation in both architectural form and structural design.”

17 October 1961: Fifty years on

By Martin Evans
On 17 October 1961 at 5.30 am 30,000 unarmed Algerians converged on the centre of Paris in the light rain, flooding in from the surrounding shanty towns and poor suburbs – Nanterre, Colombe and Gennevilliers. Mostly made up of young men and women, but also a scattering of older people and some mothers with young children, the demonstration was organised by the National Liberation Front (FLN) which had been engaged in war for Algerian national independence against France since November 1954.

What Occupy Wall Street learned from the tea party

By David S. Meyer
The Occupy Wall Street movement, several weeks strong and gaining momentum, reminds us that tea partyers aren’t the only people unhappy with the state of the nation.
The two groups are angry about some of the same things, too, especially the government bailouts for big banks — a similarity that Vice President Biden observed in remarks. They’ve taken different tacks for expressing their anger. The Occupiers camp out in New York’s Financial District, while

Notes and Queries: jubilees and jubilation

By Anatoly Liberman
During five and a half years of its existence, this blog has featured the periodical Notes and Queries twice. Why I am turning to this subject again (now probably for the last time) will become clear at the end of the post. Notes and Queries appeared on November 3, 1849. In a series of short notes (naturally, notes) spread over the years 1876-1877, its first editor William John Thoms (1803-1885) told the world how the periodical had become a reality and how almost overnight