Latest news with #history
CBS News
5 hours ago
- Business
- CBS News
Pittsburgh Planning Commission approves Heinz History Center expansion
The Heinz History Center is set to get bigger after the Pittsburgh Planning Commission on Tuesday approved an expansion plan. "People will have to pardon our dust, but expand we must," Heinz History Center president Andy Masich said. The plan is to convert a space of buildings along Penn Avenue, currently being demolished, into a new six-story wing. "The expansion will add another 92,000 square feet," Masich said. There will be a ground-floor plaza among the additions. "[It will include] Pittsburgh's official welcome center," Masich said. "A new café, classrooms, new gallery spaces and a 150-seat auditorium." A fourth-floor terrace will also be added. "The addition will allow us to do some outdoor activities as well," Masich said. It's the first major expansion here since 2004. "That was shortly after we affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution," Masich said. Masich says this expansion has been in the works for years. "History is more important today than ever before," he said. He says when all the work is finished, the center will be a "destination attraction." "We think that Pittsburgh deserves a world-class museum, and that's what we're after," Masich said. Masich didn't give KDKA-TV any specifics on how much the expansion will cost. He did say, however, that the expectation is for everything to be done by 2028.
CBC
9 hours ago
- Politics
- CBC
Search for B.C.'s Best Symbol: Round 1 — Coastal
When you look at all the symbols that define British Columbia, there may not be one with more meanings to different people over the last 200 years than the totem pole. "They both symbolize, I think, what's the best and the worst of British Columbia history, all wrapped in that one symbol," said John Lutz, a University of Victoria historian who wrote the chapter on totem poles in the book, Symbols of Canada. From their origins in pre-colonial British Columbia as visual representations of family histories, to their 20th-century use as an appropriated tourist symbol across Canada, to the modern campaign of returning them to home communities, totem poles have served as different symbols of identity, power and community. There are many reasons for that, but symbols often derive meaning from their visual impression on people — and as Lutz points out, totems make quite an impression. "They were refined in this very monumental, I want to say, showy style," he said. "For the family [that carved it], it was essentially a statement of history. But for the casual observer, this was a piece of magnificent, magnificent art that was unlike anything else anywhere in the world." 64 Symbols, 1 Winner In the Search for B.C.'s Best Symbol, the totem pole is one of 16 symbols associated with coastal British Columbia in its own section of the bracket, along with other symbols of transportation (Ferries and SkyTrains), fashion (yoga pants and Gore-Tex jackets), food (Nanaimo bars and pirate packs), and much more. Voting will take place over several weeks. A series of one-on-one matchups will narrow the number of symbols from 64 to 32, 32 to 16, and eventually down to one champion: Animals (voting takes place on Mondays). Nature (voting takes place on Tuesdays). Coastal (voting takes place on Wednesdays). Provincial (voting takes place on Thursdays). While the coastal symbols may be well known, Lutz said B.C.'s diverse geography and history mean that the winner from this section may not galvanize all of the province. "Within the geographic diversity, of course, we have B.C.'s Indigenous culture and history. We've got many waves of settler cultures that have come and contributed and mixed it all up," he said. "So that's the real challenge for the competition, I guess, is to find something that we can all get behind." Voting is open until 10 p.m. Pacific time on Wednesday.
CBC
14 hours ago
- CBC
'Ice-age' era spearhead unearthed by accident on Paris, Ont., farm
When Mike and Laura Vellenga were working on their family farm in Paris, Ont., the last thing they expected to find was what may be a 12,500-year-old piece of history. The couple has accidentally unearthed two pieces of an ancient spearhead that are small enough to fit in your palm and made of a piece of chert flint — light grey, with thin gold veining. Thousands of years ago, it would have been used by a hunter-gatherer as a weapon at the end of a stick. CBC K-W's Aastha Shetty went out to the farm to speak with the Vellenga family about their once-in-a-lifetime discovery.
Japan Times
16 hours ago
- Politics
- Japan Times
A Nazi document trove raises questions for Argentina
The Supreme Court official had a secret to share when he called Eliahu Hamra, the rabbi of Argentina's main Jewish community center, one night around the turn of the year. The court had found a dozen boxes of Nazi documents in its basement archive containing photos of Hitler as well as thousands of red Nazi labor organization membership booklets stamped with the swastika of the Third Reich. Silvio Robles, chief of staff to the court's president, wanted the rabbi's advice about how to handle the discovery, Hamra recalled. It was an uncomfortable subject for Argentina, home to Latin America's largest Jewish community, but also notorious for giving refuge to dozens of Nazi war criminals after World War II. Hamra said he told Robles the court could face awkward questions about how the Nazi material came to be in its basement. "I warned him to take into account that this could leave a stain on them," Hamra said in an interview. The conversation with the rabbi was an important early step in a coordinated effort between the Supreme Court and Jewish community leaders to bring the trove of documents to light. The find surfaced at a time when Argentina is demonstrating new readiness to look back at its complicated history with Nazis in the war era. President Javier Milei, who has shown a personal interest in Judaism and strong support for Israel, in April opened up access to Nazi documents, uploading hundreds of declassified documents online. "The Argentine government is committed to bringing these issues to light," said Emiliano Díaz, a spokesperson for Milei's government. Argentina remained neutral during the conflict until March 1945 when it declared war on Germany. After the Allied victory, many Holocaust survivors emigrated to Argentina. So did Nazi war criminals Adolf Eichmann, the chief organizer of the massacre of Jews during the Holocaust, and Josef Mengele, an Auschwitz death camp doctor who performed experiments on prisoners, granted entry by the Juan Perón government. Even decades later, this history made the Supreme Court tread carefully around the discovery. It declined to answer written questions on the finding or to allow the news agency to see the booklets. The court has said it discovered the boxes during preparations for a new Supreme Court museum. But the Nazi documents had been seen sporadically in the court's archives since the 1970s, according to interviews with three judiciary employees and a private attorney with direct knowledge of the matter. Reporters could not determine why the trove of documents was not made public until now. "Nazis in Argentina set in motion many feelings," said Argentine historian Germán Friedmann. 'Don't touch' The basement archives housed in the large stone building of Argentina's Supreme Court contain hundreds of thousands of legal case files. It's easy to imagine that something could get lost. The Nazi materials were rediscovered in a room storing broken furniture, according to two judiciary officials. Robles, alerted to the find, then reached out to Hamra, the rabbi. And on May 9, Hamra, Jonathan Karszenbaum, the director of the local Holocaust museum and himself the grandson of survivors, and Horacio Rosatti, the president of the court, gathered in a judge's chamber to watch workers pry open the wooden crates. "I couldn't register even my own sensations because of the strangeness of the moment," said Karszenbaum. The court announced the find two days later. Crates containing Nazi-related material are displayed after they were rediscovered at the Supreme Court in Buenos Aires in this picture released on May 11. | Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Republica Argentina / via REUTERS It later said the discovery included 5,000 membership booklets from the German Labor Front and the German Association of Trade Unions, both Nazi labor organizations. But some people who worked in the archives have long known about the boxes of Nazi material. One archive employee said he saw the boxes in the same storage room about a decade ago, and caught a glimpse of booklets with German names in a partially opened box. In the early 1970s, Alberto Garay, now an attorney and constitutional law expert in Buenos Aires, was visiting a friend who worked at the archives. He spotted a pile of red notebooks, imprinted with swastikas and bundled together with string, on the floor, he said. "I was surprised and said, 'what do you have here?'" Garay recalled. "He said, 'don't touch.'" A ship and a raid According to the Supreme Court, the material arrived in Argentina in 1941 aboard a Japanese vessel, part of a shipment of 83 packages from the German Embassy in Tokyo. The cargo was impounded by customs agents because of concerns it could damage Argentina's war neutrality, the court said. But for local historian Julio Mutti, whose work focuses on Nazis in Argentina, that sounded implausible. In a May 15 article, Mutti suggested the court had conflated two events that occurred a month apart: the arrival of the Japanese ship and a raid on underground Nazi organizations. Argentina was home to about 250,000 German-speakers at the outbreak of World War II. When Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, more than 10,000 people filled a Buenos Aires stadium to celebrate, causing alarm among locals. In 1939, Argentina's president dissolved the local branch of the Nazi party. Two years later, in 1941, Argentina's congress created a commission to investigate Nazi activities in the country. When the Nan A Maru docked in Buenos Aires, the commission asked the foreign ministry to intervene, according to a review of reports in La Prensa, a popular Argentine daily at the time. Inspectors opened five packages, finding propaganda, La Prensa reported. Searches of the remaining 78 packages revealed mostly children's books, magazines and envelopes with war photographs. There was no mention of membership booklets. Reporters were unable to determine what happened to the impounded cargo. Around this time, the commission was also investigating whether the banned Nazi party and the German Labor Front were continuing to operate underground. On July 23 — a month after the arrival of the Japanese ship — the authorities raided the offices of the German Association of Trade Unions and the Federation of German Beneficence and Cultural Clubs, fronts for the banned Nazi labor organization and party, seizing thousands of red membership booklets, according to La Prensa. The booklets were stored in the Supreme Court, La Prensa reported. Mutti, who learned about the raids through archival research in 2016, had searched for the notebooks in the court building, eventually concluding they had been incinerated to make space in the archive. When news broke of the discovery of the red booklets in the basement, "I immediately realized where they came from," he said. In June, the Supreme Court said it was digitizing and cataloguing the materials, and released photos of workers in masks and hairnets poring over the find. For now, it's unclear what the rediscovered booklets will reveal. Four historians said it's unlikely the notebooks will yield information not already uncovered by the wartime commission. Holger Meding, a historian at the University of Cologne, didn't expect the booklets would radically change historians' understanding of Nazi activities in Argentina. But, he said, "for historians, every piece of the mosaic is important."
CNA
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CNA
East Asia Tonight - Tue 15 Jul 2025
47:39 Min Spotlight on East Asia, a region steeped in history and now helping to write the future of our world. We'll break down the key stories and explain why they matter. East Asia Tonight About the show: 'East Asia Tonight' shines a spotlight on a region steeped in history and now helping to write the future of our world. Greater China, Japan, and the Korean Peninsula have economic and political might, and are major drivers of daily news and business. We'll break down the key stories and explain why they matter.
