A presidential commission journeys into the nightmare of the past Fulfilling a pledge made on the 30th anniversary of Israel's founding, Jimmy Carter last year appointed a 34-member presidential commission on the Holocaust to develop a memorial in the U.S. to the 6 million victims of the Nazis' "final solution." Last week, as a first step in that effort, the commission toured the sites in Eastern Europe where the campaign of extermination of Jews took place in a search for ...

Oct. 7 marks the eighth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan — a war that has slouched from campaign to crusade to near quagmire as the U.S. has rethought and redefined its strategy in the war on terrorism. According to a recent CBS/New York Times poll, 53% of Americans now say things are going badly for the U.S. in Afghanistan. And few are saying that as vehemently as those who have picked the anniversary as ...

Kevin Clash is an Emmy-award-winning performer and producer with dozens of TV and film credits to his name, but he's far better known as a furry red monster. Clash is the puppeteer and the voice behind Elmo, one of the most popular characters on the seminal children's television show Sesame Street, which this week marks its 40th anniversary with a series of special episodes and a two-disc DVD set, Sesame Street: 40 Years of Sunny Days. Clash ...

One year ago, British voters made history by forcing rival politicians into the first coalition government since the end of World War II. And they celebrated the first anniversary of that event on Friday by delivering verdicts in a series of elections that could yet tear that same coalition government apart. A day earlier, on a "super Thursday" of polls, there were elections for all 279 local administrations outside London and for the devolved ...

It's the year 2031--one generation removed from Sept. 11, 2001--and Americans are commemorating the 30th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington. How well did America respond to that day, when viewed with the benefit of hindsight? How has history judged our leaders' actions? Here, a historian looks back on that distant event and explains how 9/11 would change America, and the world, in ways that few could have imagined. Nineteen terrorists. Four hijacked aircraft. Nearly ...

I was born in 1957 and spent my childhood in China's remote Xinjiang region, where my father, Ai Qing, had been exiled. He was a poet, not a revolutionary, but the Communist Party had no tolerance for free thinkers. So he spent years cleaning toilets, enduring beatings and public humiliation. To me, it was a lesson in how horribly humans can treat one another. On Oct. 1, the Party will mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. ...

Death on the job was a routine hazard for American workers a century ago. About 100 workers, on average, died every day as mines collapsed, ships sank, trains crashed and factories burned. Nearly all of them are long forgotten. But not the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Events marking the 100th anniversary of that disaster in New York City have been planned across the country at public gatherings, panel discussions, art exhibitions and concerts. I used to stop on ...

In March 1961, Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution was a three-alarm reminder that CIA-engineered coups weren't enough to keep communism out of the western hemisphere. Living standards had to be raised in Latin America, then as now the world's most inegalitarian region. So U.S. President John F. Kennedy announced the Alliance for Progress to help America's distant neighbors get their societal acts together: democratize, build stronger economies, pull people out of poverty. The alliance delivered little of that, as ...

Kevin Clash is an Emmy-award-winning performer and producer with dozens of TV and film credits to his name, but he's far better known as a furry red monster. Clash is the puppeteer and the voice behind Elmo, one of the most popular characters on the seminal children's television show Sesame Street, which this week marks its 40th anniversary with a series of special episodes and a two-disc DVD set, Sesame Street: 40 Years of Sunny Days. Clash spoke to ...

Too much sugar will make you fat, but too much artificial sweetener will ... do what, exactly? Kill you? Make you thinner? Or have absolutely no effect at all? This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration's decision to ban cyclamate, the first artificial sweetener prohibited in the U.S., and yet scientists still haven't reached a consensus about how safe artificial sweeteners may be. Shouldn't we have figured this out by now? The ...