Its now official according to a link sent to me at work by an Italian co-worker.

Antonio Meucci is now officially recognized as the inventor of the telephone. A bit of a blow to Bell, but history is history.

Now if they can just get telephones to work in Italy. :rolleyes:

My girlfriend's phone line is "out of order" once again. Over the years, it was out of order for up to two weeks at a time. I guess "service" takes on a whole new meaning there. ;)

Thanks for the update traveller, glad to hear it is now official.

For anyone else that would like to know more about Antonio Meucci here is an article I wrote:

http://www.lifeinitaly.com/heroes-villains/antonio-meucci.asp

History seems to be full of one man getting all
the credit for another man's research.

Example; Cuban doctor Dr. Carlos Juan Finlay born Dec. 3, 1833

Camaguey, Cuba years after his death was finally credited for the

discovery of what caused the Yellow Fever Epidemic that killed

untold thousands. The American doctor Walter Reed was credited

for this discover which was not true.

Dr. Finaly was the first to theorize in 1881 that a certain kind

of mosquito was the carrier, his exhaustive efforts took years to

be taken seriously. He retired in 1909.


In Havana sits a monument in his honor, named the El Obelisco.

He also was honored in Cuba by a 1981 Cuban Stamp with his image.

Finley went on to become the Chief Health Officer of Cuba from 1902

till his retirement in 1909. Busts and statues are found of him throughout

Cuba and artifacts from his career are in a musuem in Havana and his home

was made a historic landmark. I remember in school hearing a lot about Dr.

Walter Reed but Dr. Carlos Finlay was never mentioned. It wasn't until I

became a Spanish major that I heard about him. Also when I went to Cuba I saw his monument.

Thanks for the update traveller, glad to hear it is now official.

For anyone else that would like to know more about Antonio Meucci here is an article I wrote:

http://www.lifeinitaly.com/heroes-villains/antonio-meucci.asp


I was going to post that article you did, it is very well written and informative.

As for that Cuban doctor, that I have never heard myself, and I am part Cuban from my mothers side. I will speak to her about it, very interesting.

Dan, funny how I thought nobody was going to want
to hear about a Cuban doctor. Glad you liked it.

Besides the greatest Cuban national heroe Jose Marti,
have you ever heard of Antonio Maceo? For a long time,
Maceo far eclipsed Jose Marti in importance, as Marti
was abroad in exile and less well known in Cuba. At any
rate Antonio Maceo is considered second only to Jose Marti by
Cubans. And to top it off he was Black.

Babalu Blog: The Cuban HeroDec 7, 2004 ... The Cuban Hero. Antonio Maceo y Grajales -June 14, 1845 - December 7,1895. Born June 14, 1845, Antonio Maceo y Grajales became an ...
www.babalublog.com/archives/001215.html - 9k - Cached - Similar pages

A part from all this have you seen the Cuban movie Azucar Amargo? It's
partly about this Italian tourist that goes to modern Cuba on vacation.
He meets up with a young Cuban lady and her boyfriend. The Italian speaks
only to them in Italian and they speak back to him only in Spanish and they
understand each other perfectly bene.

Wow! That is all stuff I have to ask my mom about.

The problem with Cuban history is that the United States doesn't exactly like Cuba and their regime, so they are reluctant to report anything about them, let alone the truth about people who were important in Cuba.

Its another way that the US is so ignorant. There is rarely news about Cuba, and its always biased to one side, obviously ours.

Maybe someday the US will accept people and their beliefs. Probably after I die though. :rolleyes:

Dan, This is a really good book. I've got the
actuall book and the book on tape or CD.

Lies My Teacher Told Me:
Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

by James W. Loewen

Not too long ago a shocking realization hit me. Though I was an attentive history student in high school, and later earned a college degree in American history, I realized I knew absolutely nothing about the Vietnam War. How could that happen, I wondered? How could someone who spent so much time studying history in school, and even more time studying it outside of school, be ignorant of such an important event? And more importantly, if it had slipped by me, what about others like me?

James Loewen provides the answer in Lies My Teacher Told Me. It turns out that 90 percent of high school history classes never even mention Vietnam – and those that do paint an incomplete and misleading picture. Loewen believes American students are being systematically lied to and misled in their history classes. His book chronicles the litany of outrages perpetrated in those history classes and in our educational system as a whole. Though its unabashed left-wing perspective makes it unlikely to appeal to our country’s conservative educational institutions, Loewen’s book should be a wake-up call for anyone interested in history or education.

History, ultimately, is a selection of facts, and Loewen argues convincingly that current textbooks have chosen to include all the wrong facts. It is no wonder that most students find history boring when it is taught as merely a succession of presidents, with a pleasant little war every now and then to spice things up. But shouldn’t students learn all aspects of our history? Instead of being spared the unpleasantness of racial violence, shouldn’t they learn that over a three-year period in the 1860s, an average of one African-American per day was murdered in Hinds County, Mississippi? Shouldn’t American students learn that president Woodrow Wilson was a vicious racist and that the Federal government, which was integrated when he took over, had been purged of African Americans by the time he left office? Shouldn’t they learn about the government’s kidnapping and deportation of thousands of Mexican-Americans – including many who had been born in the United States – in the 1930s? Shouldn’t they learn about the concentration camps in which Japanese Americans were confined during World War II? Shouldn’t they learn about Paul Robeson, perhaps the most talented performing artist in American history, whose acting and singing career was prematurely ended by McCarthyism? Shouldn’t they learn that America’s foreign policy during the 20th century consisted of violently overthrowing the government of any country that refused to bow to U.S. corporate interests? Shouldn’t they learn that the CIA, acting on behalf of the United Fruit Company, hunted down and murdered one of the century’s most important revolutionaries, Che Guevara, in 1967?

But there are no villains, Loewen points out, in American history textbooks. No American has ever done anything wrong. Bad things just “happen.” In high school history there are slaves but no slaveholders, wars but no warmongers, crimes but no criminals. After all, it might confuse students to learn that Thomas Jefferson raped slave women, or that Abraham Lincoln often used the word “nigger.” Textbooks do a good job of covering up for American heroes, but in doing so they rob education of its greatest potential lesson: that in life, there are no easy answers. George Orwell’s 1984 was supposed to be satire, but the prediction he made in it – that history would be falsely rewritten by the government in order to remove its most distasteful aspects – has become literally true. American history as taught in public schools is propaganda of the highest order, just like that once used in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. The result of all this, sadly, is that one can learn far more about how our society works from a single Ani DiFranco song than from an entire U.S. History textbook.

Why is history taught like this? The main reason is that textbook publishers, to ensure that their books will make money, self-censor their works to remove all material that might remotely offend someone. Because textbook adoption committees in most states are dominated by a powerful and well-organized coalition of right-wing activists, books dealing honestly with issues of race and social class have no hope for adoption. In most high schools history is not a form of education, but of indoctrination. Textbooks’ sunny, blindly patriotic view of history discourages activism by promoting the falsehood that if one does nothing, everything will turn out fine in the end. A textbook then becomes merely a tool for preservation of the status quo – it keeps the Haves in control, and assures the Have-nots that there is no need to worry. In Texas, state law explicitly states that “textbooks shall not contain material which serves to undermine authority.” Perhaps this is why Texas students are never taught that theirs is the only state that has fought three wars – the Texas War for Independence, the Mexican War of 1845, and the Civil War – to preserve slavery.

The most common theme in American history textbooks is the idea that the United States is a land of opportunity, and that anyone, no matter how poor, can succeed through hard work – an idea that is pure hogwash. Authors conveniently omit the statistics showing that the United States has the world’s greatest disparity between rich and poor, and that opportunities for social mobility are far fewer here than in most other countries. Textbooks fail to chronicle how corporate influence over government has steadily increased since 1900. They ignore the fact that in order to aspire to our nation’s highest office – the presidency – one must be born white, male, and rich. But history textbooks are utterly unconcerned with such social issues. U.S. history as taught in textbooks is nothing more than blind patriotism, a flag-waving story of American achievement. For those of us who cannot wave such a flag, it is a history that rings false.

Great post Villa!

That reminds me of a phrase I picked up from somewhere:

The winners of the world get to write the history books.

There will always be a bias towards one side. Not to say all historic facts are false, but there are many stories that have not been told...and probably never will be.

There is rarely news about Cuba, and its always biased to one side, obviously ours.

No problem!

Tune into Radio Habana Cuba (http://www.radiohc.org) every night or has the dictatorship in the US come up with some kind of jamming device so that you can't. :D

And on the subject of the US, someone on this forum sent me a PM with a link to a movie that I've now watched quite a few times. Its 2 hours long. Although there are a few areas I could shoot through; there are far more truths to offset those. Its a bit of an eye-opener. I've always suspected a 911 conspiracy/coverup.

I'm surprised it hasn't been banned.

Zeit Geist Movie (http://zeitgeistmovie.com)

The movie or documentary Zeit Geist explains it all.
G.W., the war in Iraq, reglion, all governments, society in general etc. etc.
Ma la gran maggioranza di la gente in questo forum
can't handle the truth of Zeit Geist.


I'm surprised it hasn't been banned.

Zeit Geist Movie (http://zeitgeistmovie.com)[/quote]

See also:

9/11 conspiracy theories
911: In Plane Site - the movie
Conspiracy theory
False Flag
Fractional reserve banking
Jesus Christ in comparative mythology
List of documentaries
New World Order (conspiracy theory)

The movie or documentary Zeit Geist explains it all.

What they failed to explain is, if a plane didn't hit the Pentagon (they said they couldn't find bodies, seats, etc.), then where is that aircraft parked at the moment...and where are the passengers? Surely they would come forward.

What they failed to explain is, if a plane didn't hit the Pentagon (they said they couldn't find bodies, seats, etc.), then where is that aircraft parked at the moment...and where are the passengers? Surely they would come forward.

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