Weekly Review

Lost Souls in Hell, 1875. At least 42,000 people died in an earthquake in Pakistan,ABC Newsand hundreds of people in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador were buried alive in mudslides caused by Hurricane Stan. Read More

John G. Roberts, Jr. was sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States,CNN.comand President George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers, a White House lawyer who has never been a judge, to the Supreme Court. Miers has allegedly described… Read More

Hurricane Rita, the third-most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic basin, struck Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, killing 36 people and causing flooding, tornadoes, and storm surges, and re-flooding parts of New Orleans. Hurricane evacuations caused miles of traffic jams in… Read More

At least 167 Baghdad residents were killed in 14 separate bombings, with 570 wounded. The next day 40 people were killed with car bombs and guns. Twenty-one more were killed the next day, 52 more the day after that, and 7 the day after that. At least 30 more… Read More

Lost Souls in Hell, 1875. Emergency officials in Louisiana requested 25,000 body bags for victims of Hurricane Katrina, and a total evacuation of New Orleans was ordered. Much of the city was still underwater, though several people who lived on high ground objected to the evacuation. “I… Read More

Lost Souls in Hell, 1875. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the United States declared disasters in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Taken together, the 90,000-square-mile disaster area would be the twelfth largest state. Emergencies were declared in Colorado, Georgia,… Read More

Lost Souls in Hell, 1875. Pat Robertson called for the United States to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez; Robertson then lied about calling for the assassination (“‘take him out’,” he said, “can be a number of things”), and finally apologized. Chavez said that Venezuela would take legal action… Read More

Runaway Raft on the Tigris. Peter Schoomaker, the Army’s top general, revealed that the United States was developing a plan to keep at least 100,000 soldiers in Iraq through 2009. Senator Chuck Hagel (R., Nebr.) called the plan “complete folly.” “It would further destabilize the… Read More

The United Nations warned that 2.5 million people will die of hunger in Niger if the country does not receive foreign food aid immediately. President Mamadou Tandja responded that “the people of Niger look well-fed.”AlertNet… Read More

A Christian martyr. The world marked the sixtieth anniversary of America’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.LATimes.comThe United States sentenced a South African man to three years in jail for smuggling nuclear bomb parts… Read More

Lost Souls in Hell, 1875. As the culmination of its $1.4 billion “Return to Flight” effort, NASA launched the Space Shuttle Discovery into orbit. Almost immediately, the shuttle shed pieces of insulation and hit a bird. President George W. Bush watched the launch on a… Read More

Lost Souls in Hell, 1875. It was hot in most of the United States. Many U.S. cities set records for high temperatures, and huge wildfires burned in the Southwest. At least twenty people, many of them homeless, died from the heat in Phoenix, Arizona. Read More

It was hurricane season.PR NewswireIt became clear that Karl Rove had leaked information about Valerie Plame to the press. In response, President George W. Bush, who had previously… Read More

Visiting Scotland for the G8 summit, President George W. Bush fell off his bicycle after running into a policeman. Bush was hurt, but not badly. The policeman hurt his ankle. “I should act my age,” said Bush.AP… Read More

A bovine idyll. It was the 229th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.Arrivenet.comThe U.S. Capitol was evacuated for a few minutes,CNN.comChina Export & Credit Insurance… Read More

Runaway Raft on the Tigris. Bombs went off in Baghdad and Kirkuk, gunmen killed three people in a Baghdad barbershop, then blew it up,Reutersand suicide bombers killed thirty-three people in Mosul. Read More

Lost Souls in Hell, 1875. In New Delhi, India, children and adults carrying both lit candles and hydrogen-filled balloons marched to mark the World Day Against Child Labor. At least twenty-five people were subsequently hospitalized for exploding-balloon-related burns. Read More

General Motors announced that it will eliminate the jobs of 25,000 blue-collar workers in the United States by the end of 2008; the cuts amount to 22 percent of the company’s hourly work force. Washington PostTwenty-eight bodies were found… Read More

President George W. Bush said that allegations made by Amnesty International, claiming that the prison at Guantánamo Bay is a “gulag,” were absurd. Bush accused Amnesty of listening to “people that have been trained in some instances to disassemble–that means not tell the truth.”… Read More

Amnesty International released a report calling the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay “the gulag of our time.” General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the prison camp was “a model facility” and pointed out that 1,300 Korans had been handed out at… Read More

Lost Souls in Hell, 1875. North Korea needed food.BBC NewsWal-Mart announced that it would export $18 billion worth of Chinese goods,… Read More

The United States was investigating claims that someone flushed a copy of the Koran down a Guantánamo Bay toilet. In Afghanistan, news of the flushing led to riots, where hundreds chanted “death to America” and at least fifteen people died. Read More

A papyrologist at Oxford University announced that new techniques in spectral imaging, which make it possible to decipher previously illegible ink on papyrus fragments, have yielded parts of a lost tragedy by Sophocles, a novel by Lucian, and an epic poem by Archilochos; researchers also applied the technique… Read More

In Iraq at least one hundred Iraqis and eleven U.S. troops were killed in a span of four days. More than twenty car bombs were detonated, and in one case, a suicide bomber drove a car bomb into a Kurdish funeral tent, killing at least twenty-five people. Read More

In Iraq, the bodies of fifty Shiite hostages, some mutilated or headless, were pulled from the Tigris river, and the bodies of nineteen Iraqi soldiers were found in a soccer stadium in the city of Haditha. A suicide bomber tried to assassinate Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi,… Read More

Two suicide car bombs blew up in central Baghdad, killing fifteen and injuring thirty.BBC NewsA bomb in Kirkuk killed twelve Iraqi guards,Al Jazeeraan American contractor was kidnapped north of Baghdad,… Read More

Eighteen people died when a U.S. helicopter crashed in Afghanistan. The Taliban claimed they shot down the helicopter; the United States blamed bad weather.BBC NewsChicago TribuneIraq’s parliament elected Jalal… Read More

Militants in Iraq attacked the Abu Ghraib prison, wounding forty-four American soldiers and twelve prisoners.BBC NewsBritain announced that it will pull 5,500 troops from Iraq and increase its presence in Afghanistan, to help with the hunt for… Read More

A Christian martyr. In Minnesota, an overweight loner Chippewa neo-Nazi goth teenager shot and killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s girlfriend, then went to his high school and shot and killed a security guard, five students, a teacher, and himself. Read More

A Christian martyr. The U.S. Senate subpoenaed Terri Schiavo, a woman who has been in a persistent vegetative state since 1991, to testify before the Health, Education, and Labor Committee. The subpoena was intended to make it impossible for Schiavo to be taken off the feeding… Read More