Witchy woman

In the 18th century, supposedly enlightened Europeans beheaded the continent's 'last witch.' Now Anna Göldi is celebrated with a new museum and an effort to clear her name. click here to watch the video.

Today, historians trying to explain the flights of anxiety that sparked witch hunts blame everything from high inflation to cyclical poor weather and low crop yields to the tensions of the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation of the day.

Constitution? What's that?

A Knight Foundation study found that:

1. More than half of all high school students say they have not heard of Constitution Day, mandated by federal law since 2004 to be the day the Constitution is taught in schools. Just 1 in 10 remember how their high school celebrated the day last year.
2. Despite increases in the number of First Amendment classes from 2004 through 2006, nearly three-fourths of students still don’t know how they feel about the First Amendment, or take it for granted.
3. Students support individual free expression rights that directly affect or interest them; they’re less supportive of rights that are less relevant to their lives.
4. Parents, not teachers, have the greatest influence on students’ choice of news sources.
5. More students are turning to the Internet to find their news. Their definition of news isn’t much different than that of their parents.

Today in History:
On Sept. 17, 1787, the Constitution of the United States was completed and signed by a majority of delegates attending the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

Ellis Island site helps search for historic treasure

More than 22 million passengers and members of ships' crews entered the United States through Ellis Island and the Port of New York between 1892 and 1924. Information about each person was written down in ships' passenger lists, known as 'manifests.' Manifests were used to examine immigrants upon arrival in the United States. Now you can search these millions of records for information on individual Ellis Island passengers.