Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

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Today’s “Must Read” Stories

40 interesting facts about the 2014 Election

Celebrated Holocaust archivist Robert Wolfe dies at age 93

The U.S. and Cuba: A brief history of a complicated relationship

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Current and Former Intelligence Officers Have Been Playing Americans for Chumps by John Prados The CIA gave access to secret documents to former employees that it denied to the public, so they could trash the Senate report.

Why All of Latin America Is Cheering the Re-establishment of Relations with Cuba by John Dickson This was one small historic step for the U.S. and Cuba, but a larger historic step in the hemisphere.

The Secret History of Cannabis in Japan by Jon Mitchell Until the US occupied Japan, marijuana was legal and part of Japanese tradition.

A Merry Christmas in Italy, 1940s, Courtesy of William Shakespeare by Bruce Chadwick The Shakespeare Theatre has done a wondrous job of moving Shakespeare’s play forward 340 some years and, at the same time, placing it in the Christmas season.

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Stay Up to Date!  You can now receive a daily digest of news headlines posted on HNN by email. It's simple:  Go Here!  What follows is a streamlined list of stories.  To see the full list:  Go Here!

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Turns 75 Although firmly entrenched as a Christmas icon, the tale of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is a piece of relatively modern folklore penned in 1939 by a department store adman enduring a time of great personal tragedy.

Did Civil War Soldiers Have PTSD? One hundred and fifty years later, historians are discovering some of the earliest known cases of post-traumatic stress disorder

40 Interesting Facts about the 2014 Election The votes have been tallied and all recounts completed.

The U.S. And Cuba: A Brief History Of A Complicated Relationship It's been a stalemate that has outlasted 10 U.S. presidents, a failed invasion, a nuclear crisis and countless boatloads of Cuban asylum seekers. Meanwhile, the Castro brothers have kept running Cuba for more than a half-century.

What Christmas carols are really celebrating Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” means something different than you think it does.

Collapse of Maya Civilisation Explained The ancient city of Tikal, located in modern-day Guatemala, was once a major Maya population centre.

Cinematic Treasures Named to National Film Registry “Saving Private Ryan,” “Luxo Jr.” and “Rosemary’s Baby” Among Film Additions

The story of Costa Rica's forgotten World War II internment camp La Tribuna, a Costa Rican newspaper, captured the surreal situation in an article dated Dec. 11, 1941 trumpeting the speedy construction of a “concentration camp” to be built in San José and designed to hold 400 men of German, Italian or Japanese descent.

The My Lai Massacre Inspires an Opera One of the most horrific episodes of the Vietnam War is being made into a government-funded opera.

Jacob Lawrence’s Great Migration Series Returns to MoMA Jacob Lawrence’s 60 panels portraying the Great Migration of blacks from the South will be brought together in a show at MoMA next year.

Historians in the News

What follows is a streamlined list of stories.  To see the full list:  Go Here!

Celebrated Holocaust archivist Robert Wolfe dies at age 93 He helped numerous historians gain access to archives people and companies (like IBM) wanted to keep secret.

New Churchill Museum director shares vision James Williams, formerly the director of the Albert Gore Research Center in Tennessee, was recently appointed as the director of the National Churchill Museum.

Judith Kelleher Schafer, 72, a historian of slavery and prostitution, dies Dr. Schafer, who earned a doctorate in history at Tulane, described what she did as "street history," said Margaret Keenan, a Tulane colleague. "She was looking at people that historians haven't always looked at -- slaves, prostitutes -- but who left records."

Northwestern celebrates Garry Wills with a book in his honor Nation and World, Church and God gathers original critical reflections by leading writers and scholars on Garry Wills’s life work.

Conservatives go after UCLA's historian James Gelvin They’re upset he assigned a book on Israel by Alan Dershowitz and then asked students to critique it

Laura Hillenbrand writes her masterpieces despite suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome The author of "Unbroken" and "Seabiscuit" is profiled in a long New York Times Magazine profile.

New PBS DVD From Henry Louis Gates Jr. Explores African Influence on the Caribbean Just as the U.S. has announced a resumption of diplomatic relations with Cuba, there will now be a way for Americans to learn more about the history of Afro-Cubans and other descendants of Africa across the Caribbean and Latin America.

So Historians Are Surprised by What DNA Can Tell Us? Pearl Duncan discloses how a search of DNA records surprised her.

Historian: Christianity heads back to its roots "Christianity is a religion that was born in Africa and Asia and, in our lifetimes, has decided to go home.” — Baylor University’s Philip Jenkins.

Historian seeks to clear embassy of Pearl Harbor 'sneak attack' infamy Takeo Iguchi, a professor emeritus at Shobi University, has devoted his research to reversing a prevalent view in Japan that the embassy was to blame. It was the military.