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A Jo Freeman book review of Democracy Restored: A History of the Georgia State Capitol — It is "a conscious effort in historical memory making" which blends stories about politics and protest into a narrative about architecture and construction

The Theft of the Mona Lisa

Even being a senior woman didn't prepare me for the retelling of the August 21st, 1911 theft of the 'most famous painting in the world' from the Louvre. But then again, 1911 is a bit ahead of my time.

A PBS site, Treasures of the World, describes the theft in the words of author Seymour Reit:

According to author Seymour Reit, "Someone walked into the Salon Carré, lifted it off the wall and went out with it! The painting was stolen Monday morning, but the interesting thing about it was that it wasn't 'til Tuesday at noon that they first realized it was gone."

The Section Chief of the Louvre makes a frantic call to the Captain of the Guards ... who informs the Curator ... who telephones the Paris Prefect of Police ... who alerts La Sûreté, the National Criminal Investigation Department. By early afternoon, sixty inspectors and more than one hundred gendarmes rush to the museum. They bolt the doors and interrogate the visitors, then clear the galleries and station guards at the entrances. And for an entire week they search every closet and corner — room-by-room, floor-by-floor — all forty-nine acres of the Louvre.

The news shocks the world. "Of course it had worldwide repercussions. It was on the front page of every major newspaper," says Reit. Who could have done such a thing? Perhaps one of the countless cleaners and workmen who labor in the Louvre, or the underpaid security guards. Even the Louvre administrators themselves are suspected of staging the theft to boost attendance. "One of the head directors was fired. Another was suspended. Various maintenance people were fined and questioned and vilified." (Reit)

Read the rest of the mysterious disappearance of the Mona Lisa at the PBS site.

Frontline Diplomacy

Another Library of Congress site that caught our eye is Frontline Diplomacy. The site is described in this fashion:

Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training presents a window into the lives of American diplomats. Transcripts of interviews with U.S. diplomatic personnel capture their experiences, motivations, critiques, personal analyses, and private thoughts.  These elements are crucial to understanding the full story of how a structure of stable relationships that maintained world peace and protected U.S. interests and values was built.

The interviews in the collection are mostly with Foreign Service Officers but there also are some with political appointees and other officials.  While some 1920s-, 1930s-, and World-War-II-era diplomacy is covered, most of the interviews involve post-World-War-II diplomacy, from the late 1940s to the 1990s.  This collection captures the post-World-War-II period in vivid terms and intimate detail, documenting the way that U.S. diplomacy defends the United States and its interests in a challenging world.  The narratives span the major diplomatic crises and issues that faced the United States during the second half of the 20th century and, as new interviews are added, will include developments in the 21st century.  The 1,301 transcripts of oral history interviews were donated by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST), a private, nonprofit organization.

An essay, The Interview Process, relates some of the aspects of foreign service covered by the site:

"Dealing with the Soviets is a major focal point of the oral history program. There are accounts going back to the 1940s — in the middle of World War II.  Informants described the hostility of the Soviet “ally” even while America was shipping vast amounts of war supplies to the USSR.  As a result of the continuing harassment by the KGB, Foreign Service Officers always went in pairs when traveling outside Moscow to avoid being compromised."

"There were interminable negotiations with the Soviets. One account noted that at a nuclear disarmament negotiation, the head of the U.S. delegation described what US diplomats knew of Soviet rocket launch sites. At a recess in the talks, the top general on the Soviet side came up to the US negotiator and asked that he not be so specific as to what the Soviet Union had, since the civilians on the Russian team were not cleared for that information."

"Berlin — for years a center of intrigue and cat-and-mouse games between the East and West —- was the focus of much of the Cold War, as it was considered the most likely place for a conflict to break out.  Taped stories include accounts from personnel in Berlin over the entire period of tension.  Stories range from the 1948 airlift, to the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1962, from those present when Kennedy said, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” and from when Reagan said, “Tear down that wall, Mr. Gorbachev.” There are also recollections from the American ambassador to East Germany at the time the wall was dismantled in 1989." 

One example is seen in the text of an interview with William B. Dunham, entitled How Did You Get Here from There? Memoir of a Diplomatic Career; The Art of Diplomacy Is Letting the Other Guy Have it Your Way:

It all began with Auntie Mae and Glen Martner, FDR and The Great Depression, and Professor David Bryn-Jones, when I was a rising teenager in Minneapolis.

Growing up in the '20s was a carefree picnic for kids. For that included, from May to October, many weekends and most of the summer vacation at a cabin in the north woods of Minnesota that my father had designed for a brother and sister who were our closest family friends, the Martners. They had come to Minneapolis after World War I from a farm near Litchfield, Minnesota, and over time became another set of parents for me. It was during those extended periods at their cabin that I became infected with the political bug, foreign and domestic. They had a wide range of friends from Federal judge to doctors, lawyers, bankers, businessmen and artistto a nearby lumberjack who had built the cabin and the wonderful man who looked after Glen's car. Such weekend guests made for a very yeasty combination and mealtime conversations, often debates, were always about national politics and international affairs. How infectious! And so the process began.

The collection may be browsed by author and subject while there are more manuscripts to be discovered through the manuscript division.

Today in History

Having just been at the Library of Congress and enjoying a briefing to our group (Time-Life Alumni Society) by the Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, we were pleased to add to our LOC sites Today in History:

On October 28, 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act providing for enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified nine months earlier. Known as the Prohibition Amendment, it prohibited the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors" in the United States.

The movement to prohibit alcohol began in the early years of the nineteenth century when individuals concerned about the adverse effects of drink began forming local societies to promote temperance in consumption of alcohol. The first temperance societies were organized in New York (1808) and Massachusetts (1813). Members, many of whom belonged to Protestant evangelical denominations, frequently met in local churches. As time passed, most temperance societies began to call for complete abstinence from all alcoholic beverages.

The Anti-Saloon League, founded in Ohio in 1893 and organized as a national society in 1895, helped pave the way for passage of the Eighteenth Amendment with an effective campaign calling for prohibition at the state level. By January 1920, thirty-three states had already enacted laws prohibiting alcohol. Between 1920 and 1933, the Anti-Saloon League lobbied for strict federal enforcement of the Volstead Act.
Anti-Saloon League of America,
Sixteenth Annual Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, July 6-9, 1915.
Taking the Long View, 1851-1991

Organizations like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union, founded by reformer and educator Frances Willard in 1883, mobilized thousands of women in the fight for temperance.

"I Never Knew I Had a Wonderful Wife Until the Town Went Dry,"
Words by Lew Brown.
Music by Albert Von Tilzer, 1919.
Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920

Obviously, the entries change daily and are a touchstone for a history lesson. Today in History is a Library of Congress presentation of historic facts highlighted by items from the American Memory collections.

Teaching the American 20s

Although The American 20s, part of the online Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center is dedicated to a 1-12K level, there's much here for the more mature public. The subtitle of the exhibit is Exploring the Decade Through Literature and Art.

The themes are:

• Overview
• After the War
• Capital and Labor
• Rise of Women

• Overview
• Who Were the Babbits and Bohemians?
• The Dream Factory
• House and Home

• Overview
• New Forms, New Ideas
• Regionalism: Reacting to the Modern
• The Murder Mystery

America Encounters the Modern includes the photography of Alfred Steiglitz and Eduard Steichen, the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Hilda Doolittle, and the jazz music of Louis Armstrong, Joe "King" Oliver, and George Gershwin. Read more about New Forms, New Ideas.

Another section is Regionalism: Reacting to the Modern: Americans like Robert Penn Warren and the "Southern Agrarians" and Mabel Dodge Luhan and her community of artists in New Mexico take the country's regional differences as the inspiration for and subject of their work.

An additional subset is that of The Murder Mystery. Two authors explored here are Dashiell Hammett and Erle Stanley Gardner.

"A former Pinkerton detective, Dashiell Hammett created detective characters completely unlike the hired thugs that often filled the ranks of private detective agencies. After having been offered money to assassinate Frank Little, a leader of the International Workers of the World who was organizing miners in the Northwest, Hammett quit the agency with a marked sympathy for workers and people disenfranchised by the forces of capitalism."

"One critic notes that the instability of his characters and the untidy, unsatisfying endings of his novels are best symbolized by the statue of the Maltese Falcon itself — after his characters have committed murder and chased this statue across the globe, it turns out to be empty and worthless. Hammett makes an ironic statement as his narratives display the very elements of modern life he critiqued — the emptiness and futility of searching for meaning in a degenerate modern world."

Brown University's Digital Collections: Napoleonic Satires

George Cruikshank, one of the better known political caricaturists, is well represented in the Napoleonic Satires section of Brown's digital collections.

As well as the illustrations themselves, titles are amusing: The allied bakers or the Corsican toad in the hole; The noble Spaniards. Or Britannia assisting the course of freedom all over the world, whither friend or foe!; Hard times, or, O! Dear what will become of us, O! Dear what shall we do?!!!

As you can see from After-piece to the tragedy of Waterloo — or — Madame François and her managers!!!, the political meanings on display from these caricatures are elaborate and, to say the least, thorough. (Increase the size of the image by the use of the bars above)

• A green curtain opens to uncover a scene played on the international stage. Recalling Gulliver's capture by the Lilliputians, Madame Françoise, symbol of the French nation, lies in the center of the image; her hair is disheveled and she is dressed in a loose shift. In this state of disarray, France is enchained and ravished by a swarm of small men wearing uniforms. Arms and legs shackled to the floor, she is force fed "Bourbons" by a menacing knight while other figures set about her, cutting off her clothing and removing her jewelry. On the ground in front of Mme. Françoise, a shield inscribed "Napoleon Le Grand" is broken in two, as is a lance and a crown of laurels. To the left of the image, the tricolore lays in a crumpled heap. Behind Madame Françoise and her captors, a group of soldiers stands at attention watching the scene. Forming a backdrop to the action, Cruikshank includes a vision of bewildered French citizens standing in confusion in front of the Louvre turned topsy-turvy. A group of soldiers in the right middle section carrying framed canvases, drawing folios, and "borrowed ornaments," are presumably in the process of returning pillaged goods to to their rightful owners. In the upper right corner of the sheet, John Bull looks down on the scene with vindictive approval at France's rough treatment. The figures who are responsible for France's enchainment are none other than the European monarchs and politicians who stood in staunch opposition to Napoleon. Now, they look forward to punishing France for the sins of the exiled emperor. At the left side of the image, Francis I pounds a stake into the ground; to this is attached a chain to which Alexander, the Russian Tsar, affixes a padlock. William I, in the guise of a hefty Dutchman, stoops to cut a strategic piece of Madame Françoise's shift, labeled"The Netherlands." To the right of the sheet Blücher reaches into her pockets and removes a portrait medallion of Napoleon from her waist. Next to Blücher, Wellington bends, hammering a stake into the ground that holds her shackles in place.

Another caricature is Grand manoeuvre !, or, the rogues march to the Island of Elba

Celebrating Napoleon's exile to Elba, this satire imagines a joyful procession that accompanies Napoleon to the boat to Elba. Napoleon, looking forlorn and bedraggled, is in the center of the sheet. He wears his uniform coat backwards and has his hands tied behind his back. Large tears drip from his eyes while a small demon fiddles and dances on his head. The infant King of Rome pops out of Napoleon's coat pocket and waves a rattle proudly announcing the "grand manouevre" he has made in his pocket. Napoleon's removed epaulettes are on the ground behind him, as are his broken sword, scissors, and a sheet of paper inscribed "Done at Fountainbleau." Two impish children tug at the rope looped around Napoleon's neck and pull him on towards a boat steered by the Devil waiting by the riverside. Talleyrand follows Napoleon, pushing him forward with the "Allied Broom." Greatly satired, he grins malevolently while pointing a crooked finger at Napoleon and marching forward. Signalling Talleyrand's imperfect and untrustworthy nature, Cruikshank has chosen to emphasize his deformed leg. A group of French citizens bring up the rear of the procession. They fly a flag topped by a fleur-de-lys and embroidered with the words: "Vivent les Bourbons." The crowd cheers the Bourbon restoration and pelts Napoleon with bits of trash that include bones and animal carcasses. As evident in the caps of the children (or dwarves) that accompany the spectacle, liberty caps and French imperial symbols have been replaced with oaths of loyalty to the restored monarch. In this distance, Elba is ablaze with large bonfires and is topped by a gibbett standing on the rocky peak. While one body already dangles from the pole, another noose is empty and waiting for Napoleon's neck.

General notes: Published by Thomas Tegg, No. 111 Cheapside, April 13, 1814. Not only does this satire ridicule Napoleon, but it also pointedly satirizes the French who happily embraced the restoration of absolute Monarchy; George refers to this ambiguity as 'French fickleness.' Thus, once more the French, as a nation, are characterized by their propensity towards extremes and inability or unwillingness to seek a happy medium (as in England's Constitutional Monarchy).  

You can browse the other caricaturists alphabetically at the site.

The Bluestockings

When looking for the letter of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn (again spurred on by the TV cable series of The Tudors) we came across Bartleby's Great Books online once more and the The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).

While browsing the authors' index, we discovered Volume XI,  The Period of the French Revolution and most specifically, The Bluestockings by Mrs. H. G. Aldis:

During the first half of the eighteenth century, English-women had little education and still less intellectual status. It was considered “unbecoming” for them to know Greek or Latin, almost immodest for them to be authors, and certainly indiscreet to own the fact. Mrs. Barbauld was merely the echo of popular sentiment when she protested that women did not want colleges. “The best way for a woman to acquire knowledge,” she wrote, “is from conversation with a father, or brother, or friend.” It was not till the beginning of the next century — after the pioneer work of the bluestockings, be it observed — that Sydney Smith, aided, doubtless, by his extraordinary sense of humour, discovered the absurdity of the fact that a woman of forty should be more ignorant than a boy of twelve.

In society, at routs or assemblies, cards or dancing were the main diversions. Women were approached with flattering respect, with exaggerated compliment, but they were never accorded the greater compliment of being credited with sufficient intelligence to appreciate the subjects that interested men. What dean Swift wrote in 1734 to Mrs. Delany from Ireland applied equally well to general opinion in England: “A pernicious error prevails here among the men that it is the duty of your sex to be fools in every article except what is merely domestic.”

There were then, as there always had been, exceptions. There were women who, by some unusual fortune of circumstance, or by their own persistent efforts, had secured a share of the education that was given to their brothers as a matter of course. One such woman, Elizabeth Carter, a learned linguist guist and prominent bluestocking, wrote to Mrs. Montagu concerning a social evening:

As if the two sexes had been in a state of war the gentlemen ranged themselves on one side of the room where they talked their own talk and left us poor ladies to twirl our shuttles and amuse each other by conversing as we could. By what little I could overhear our opposites were discoursing on the old English Poets, and this did not seem so much beyond a female capacity but that we might have been indulged with a share in it.

The faint resentment underlying this gentle complaint indicates how a few women with a natural and cultivated taste for literature began to regard the limitations imposed by traditional prejudice on their mental activities. As an unconscious protest against this intellectual stifling, as well as against “the tyranny of cards,” it began to be much the fashion for several ladies to have evening assemblies, where the fair sex might participate in conversation with literary and ingenious men, animated by a desire to please.

Read the rest of the Chapters at the Bartleby site.

1939 World's Fair Capsule

When I was three years old, I attended (with my parents) the 1939 World's Fair in Queens, New York. I can remember it today, particularly sitting on the side of a reflecting pool which, I've found out, was called the Lagoon of Nations.

A map of the fair grounds can be enlarged at the University of Virginia site page entitled Touring the Future:

In the amalgamation of "democracity, the greenbelt, and the new superhighways," GM was to provide the means to navigate the new world. Responding to the embedded message of the exhibit, Walter Lippman wrote that "General Motors has spent a small fortune to convince the American public that if it wishes to enjoy the full benefit of private enterprise in motor manufacturing, it will have to rebuild its cities and its highways by public enterprise." While declaring Futurama as a major factor in the development of the American highway system may seem far-fetched, its role in the development of the American obsession with the automobile cannot be ignored. It is not a coincidence that the number of motor vehicles in America has risen from 0 at the beginning of the twentieth century to an estimated 240 million by the year 2000, nor is it a coincidence that the mileage of paved roads in America rose from 387,000 miles in 1920 to roughly 2,946,000 miles by 1970. General Motors staked its claim to the future by providing a comprehensive worldview in which it was to be the chief proponent of a better quality of life, and it did so at a crucial point in the redevelopment of the nation. Its message not only changed the face and the scale of advertising and marketing forever; it changed the ways in which Americans live, move, and build. GM's vision of 1960 was not too far off the mark, minus the floating dirigible hangars and auto-gyros.

In 1939, just prior to the opening of the fair, the Westinghouse company created for the fair a "Time Capsule, bearing the message of present-day America to the people of Earth of 6939 A.D." Again, the message was clear: Westinghouse was obviously a company with an eye on the future .Among the most popular exhibits of the fair was Westinghouse's robot Elektro, an automated machine who could walk and talk to audiences and to his robot dog, Sparko.

A New York Times article describes the probable discovery of the Westinghouse time capsule:

"Westinghouse's resulting product was a bullet-shaped Time Capsule I, constructed from an alloy made of tempered copper, chromium and silver called Cupaloy. The contents, sealed snugly inside an airtight glass envelope, were selected based upon how well they captured American life as it was in 1939. The contents were divided into five basic areas: small articles of common use, textiles and materials, miscellaneous items, an essay in microfilm, newsreel. And what was inside? Some things as common as fountain pens and a set of alphabet blocks — about 35 small, everyday articles in all. The capsule also contained 75 representative fabrics, metals, plastics and seeds. Contemporary art, literature and news events collected on microfilm also secured a spot in the capsule. How will they find it?"

"Some day, 5,000 years in the future, a person will stumble across a key to the capsule. Perhaps someone will find it in a monastery in Tibet, or in a library in Manhattan. The Book of Record, printed in 1938 on permanent paper with special ink, describes the latitude and longitude of the capsule's burying place. Some 3,000 copies of the Book of Record are stored in libraries, museums and monasteries throughout the world."

Queen's Gallery:
Amazing Rare Things & Five Gold Rings

David Attenborough known for his broadcasting and nature documentaries, here introduces "five remarkable and diverse groups of natural history drawings and watercolours in the Royal Collection. They date from the late fifteenth century to the early eighteenth century, a period when European knowledge of the world’s flora and fauna was transformed by voyages of discovery to Africa, Asia and the Americas. Through painstaking examination and description, Leonardo da Vinci, the collector Cassiano dal Pozzo, Alexander Marshal, Maria Sibylla Merian and Mark Catesby hoped to comprehend the natural riches of an ever-expandingworld."

Also on view at the site is a decade-by-decade photographic exhibit of the Queen to celebrate her 80th birthday as well as Treasures from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle.

Another exhibit, Five Gold Rings, is of royal weddings with both extravagant and homey details:

Queen Victoria ascended the throne three years before her marriage to Prince Albert and was the first reigning queen to marry since the 16th century.  For her engagement in 1839, she received a beautiful gold bracelet with conjoined amethyst hearts from her mother, the Duchess of Kent, and ‘a lovely brooch, a spray of orange flowers’, designed by the Prince.  The royal couple’s portraits of one another, drawn in the year of their marriage, clearly demonstrate their mutual affection.  The Queen considered her future husband to be ‘so excessively handsome’ with ‘such beautiful blue eyes, and exquisite nose, and such a pretty mouth with delicate moustachios and slight but very slight whiskers’.  

At the wedding ceremony on 10 February 1840 Queen Victoria was attended by twelve train-bearers, all daughters of peers of the realm.  Each girl received a gold brooch, designed by Prince Albert, in the form of an eagle and set with turquoises and pearls (to represent true love), rubies (for passion) and diamonds (for eternity).  The Queen designed their dresses and recorded in her diary her first sight of the bridesmaids ‘dressed all in white with white roses, which had a beautiful effect’.  Two boxes containing pieces of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s wedding cake are included in the exhibition.  One of the cakes is said to have measured three yards in circumference and weighed over 300 lbs.  

Chapter One, The Meinertzhagen Mystery

When Richard Meinertzhagen arrives late for a dinner party he carries a revolver in his hand. The party is in a posh British country estate. The hosts and dinner guests wear evening attire. For this
company Meinertzhagen wears a hunter’s jacket and a pair of rumpled military slacks over scuffed boots. He can dress properly when he chooses to, but among his friends and their friends he seems to enjoy the disapproval he arouses, especially among the women.

His stride has the indolent menace of the very tall and very well-born. He makes his belated entrance without apology and offers the revolver to his host. The weapon is warm to the touch and smells of cordite: it has been fired — it is literally a smoking gun. Meinertzhagen asks in a not-quite stage whisper whether his host would mind putting it out of sight and holding onto it for a few minutes.

Then he takes his seat as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

The guests around him are by turns startled, puzzled, awed, and amused. After a bit someone asks Meinertzhagen a question — something neutral, nothing about the revolver, of course. The innocuous question is enough to launch Meinertzhagen into an off-the-cuff speech.

He is a valued dinner companion, lionized for his monologues. So high and wide that he is conspicuous in any company, Richard Meinertzhagen in maturity is like a great striking sculpture, with a falcon’s sharp-edged face and hazel-brown eyes that swing from one guest’s face to another with the gaze of a raptor: alert, hungry, ready for prey.

He possesses a big voice — he can be heard by neighbors, through
walls — and a magnificent presence, if a daunting one. Few who meet him ever forget him.

Read the thirteen pages of Chapter One of Brian Garfield's book, The Meinertzhagen Mystery at the Potomac Books, Inc site

World War One Museum, Kansas City

From a July 2th, 1918 letter from Nurse Hemphill to her wartime correspondent, Olive:

... So you have done it. You have joined the forces and against all the wise advice of these two old nurses you have gone ahead. Seems to be the distinction of the Hemphills to become trained nurses. However, the profession does not suffer from it. I did so hate to see you do it for it means you giving up so much, but when you feel you are serving our great U.S.A. in that way, why, I am resigned.

I am glad everyday that I came and know full well that the sacrifice, if there was one, was small compared to the amount of work there is to do. I don’t believe I will ever be able again to cater to one patient and spend 24 hours on one patient where here we have any number of sick boys and somehow we take care of them all.

’ll never forget when we first came I thought it could never be done - impossible to stand up and say it could be down, but never the less we do it.

I used to squirm if I had to take out a few stitches from a wound, but my dear, you get used to wounds you never dreamed you could look at. You dress them with the patient yelling at the top of his voice or biting the corner out of his pillow and it is not because you are unfeeling it is because it must be done and you must do it. There is no one else ....

Nurse Hemphill's diaries are a part of the memorabilia and narratives in the new National World War One Museum in Kansas City, MO.

"During the Allied occupation of Germany following the Armistice, American troops in Coblenz raised a Christmas tree in front of the Government building.  Placing long strands of lights on the pine tree, it soon lit up the area after dusk.  As music enveloped the large crowd of soldiers and German civilians, a festive air was made more so when the children received paper trumpets and other goodies pulled from soldiers’ pockets. For the first time in years, the windows of the Government Palace were also lit and a lighted cross placed on top of the building."

Christmastime During the Great War

"Just a few feet from me are members of a typical German family, throwing up a tiny Christmas tree, decorating it thoroughly in accordance with all respect due to the famed Christmas tree.”

— Sergeant 1st Class Charles Stevenson, Co. A, 314th Engineers, 89th Division in a letter dated 24 December 1918.

We had our Christmas dinner [1916] in Albert in an old sewing-machine factory.  We had beer for our dinner - plenty of it - and a good tuck-in to go with it!  Roast pork!  Beautiful after bully beef!

— C.H. Williams, 5th Battalion, The Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, British Army.

Christmas Day, 1917
...like every other outfit that was well quartered, we had a tree up in the square and presents for all the French youngsters...   Three of my Christmas packages came on Christmas Eve ...smokes and eats and socks and all the things I had been hankering for ever since my arrival.

— An American soldier’s letter from France.

In The Beginning at the Smithsonian

The Arthur Sackler Gallery, part of the Smithsonian, is displaying In The Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000, an examination of "important early Hebrew and Christian bibles — the first time many of these fragile treasures have been shown to the public ... from fragile fragments of papyrus and humble early parchment codices to resplendent illuminated manuscripts."

"The Bible developed gradually, over many centuries, as the result of cultural interaction and exchange among many different societies. Over time, some texts were accepted as part of the canon of belief, while others were excluded as apocryphal and heretical. Out of this rich diversity and cultural complexity emerged the modern Bible."

The exhibit is divided into six main sections: An introduction which includes a description of a Genizah: Exciting finds included the Cairo Genizah, associated with the thousand-year-old Ben Ezra Synagogue. A genizah was a sealed room where copies of scripture with scribal errors were stored until they could be ritually destroyed. In 1896–98, Cambridge University academics Solomon Schechter and Charles Taylor shipped the bulk of the Cairo Genizah's contents to Cambridge for further research. Photographs taken at the time convey the excitement of the scholars who were the first to study these long-lost works.

The introduction also expands on the American collectors who played a role in the gathering of manuscripts and other finds:

"The role of American collectors
A number of collectors felt the thrill of the chase for biblical manuscripts, and they relished the clandestine negotiations surrounding their purchases. 'I am a little in doubt as to the wisdom of letting it be known ... that I anticipate visiting Egypt,' explained Detroit industrialist Charles Lang Freer, 'as one can never measure the competition that may spring up if it is known a real search is being made for rareties.'

"Freer's 1906 purchase of early biblical manuscripts from Ali Arabi, a dealer in Giza, Egypt, includes two substantially complete Greek codices dating from the late fourth or early fifth century. One contains the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua and the other the Freer Gospels, also known as Codex Washingtonensis — one of the earliest versions of the Greek Bible. Freer also acquired codices of the Psalms, the Epistles of Paul, and, in 1916, the Minor Prophets. He even bought an early Coptic bookstand on which such volumes would originally have been displayed. Freer's collection of manuscripts remains the most important of its kind outside the Middle East and Europe.

"The American mining engineer Alfred Chester Beatty was a prominent collector of early biblical materials, many of which he purchased from Egyptian dealers. Consequently, the find sites of these items are unknown, though most are thought to have come from the Fayyum (an area southwest of Cairo). Beatty's collection, now housed in Dublin Castle, includes twelve important early Christian codices dating from the third to fourth century: their discovery was announced in The Times of London on November 17, 1931.

Earliest Scriptures, Formation and Codification, Spreading the Word, and Book as Icon make up the divisions of the online exhibit:

"By the year 1000, illuminated books symbolized the ongoing transmission of the Word. Books helped people believe that the Christian Bible had been handed down as a powerful unified whole. The transition from late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, and with it the process of formation of the Christian Bible, was complete."

By the way, there's a who's who, a glossary and a chronology to sort out people, places and events available in the resources section.

Archimedes; The Palimpsest

The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore is the host of a unique manuscript from the 10th century that is "particularly important, because it is the unique source for Archimedes Treatise On Floating Bodies in Greek, and it is the unique source for two other treatises that he wrote, The Method of Mechanical Theorems and Stomachion."

Some of the stories related about Archimedes on this site dedicated to his palimpsest are quite wonderful and worth a read.

Archimedes' Screw

The Puzzle of King Hiero's Crown

King Hiero had commissioned a new royal crown for which he provided solid gold to the goldsmith. When the crown arrived, King Hiero was suspicious that the goldsmith only used some of the gold, kept the rest for himself and added silver to make the crown the correct weight. Archimedes was asked to determine whether or not the crown was pure gold without harming it in the process. Archimedes was perplexed but found inspiration while taking a bath.

He noticed that the full bath overflowed when he lowered himself into it, and suddenly realized that he could measure the crown's volume by the amount of water it displaced. He knew that since he could measure the crown's volume, all he had to do was discover its weight in order to calculate its density and hence its purity. Archimedes was so exuberant about his discovery that he ran down the streets of Syracuse naked shouting, "Eureka!" which meant "I've found it!" in Greek.

Archimedes and the Defense of Syracuse

King Hiero II had anticipated such an eventuality. Before his death in 216 BC, Hiero set Archimedes to work, strengthening the walls of Syracuse and modifying its great stronghold, the Euryelos fortress. Archimedes also constructed war machines to defend Syracuse.

When the Romans arrived under the command of the famed general Marcellus, Archimedes was prepared. The Roman historian Polybius relates that Archimedes now made such extensive preparations, both within the city and also to guard against an attack from the sea, that there would be no chance of the defenders being employed in meeting emergencies but that every move of the enemy could be replied to instantly by a counter move.…huge beams were suddenly projected at the [Roman] ships from the walls, which sank some of them with great weights plunging down from on high; others were seized at the prow by iron claws….drawn straight up into the air, and then plunged stern foremost into the depths…. with great destruction of the fighting men on board, who perished in the wrecks….in reality all the rest of the Syracusans were but a body for the designs of Archimedes, and his the one soul moving and managing everything; for all other weapons laid idle, and his alone were then employed by the city both in offense and defense.

The Death of Archimedes

For two years the genius of Archimedes repelled the Romans, enabling the city to survive the lengthy siege. Nevertheless, in 212 BC the forces of Marcellus prevailed and took the city. Marcellus had great respect for Archimedes, and immediately dispatched soldiers to retrieve his foe. Apparently, the great mathematician was unaware that his enemy had stormed the city, so deeply were his attentions focused on a mathematical problem. When a soldier demanded Archimedes accompany him to the quarters of Marcellus he simply refused, and continued his ruminations. The enraged soldier flew upon Archimedes, striking the 75 year-old eccentric dead. Marcellus was greatly distressed upon hearing the news of Archimedes' death, and ordered that he be buried with honors. Archimedes' tombstone was, as he had wished, engraved with an image of a sphere within a cylinder, after one of his geometrical treatises.

Enjoy the rest of the site including an article on the scholarship of the palimpsest by Nigel Wilson of Lincoln College, Oxford

The Autobiography Project

From the Philadelphia Project's web pages:

Throughout a six-week writing period that began on April 5, 2006, over three hundred people sent in stories from their lives, and you can read them all online here. Participants were offered writing support services at free drop-in writing centers at Drexel University and Free Library of Philadelphia branches; online, with interactive feedback; or by attending a writing workshop. Organizations and institutions with a group of potential participants were invited to request a free writing workshop at their institution. If reading about this project has inspired you to tell us your story, you can still find writing prompts and a revision checklist online here.

The project goes on to explain and instruct for potential biographers on finding your subject matter:

Maybe you know exactly which story from your life you want to tell.  You can feel free to skip ahead and start writing your first draft.  If not, don’t worry, you can have some fun figuring it out.  For instance, you might like to talk about The Autobiography Project with your friends and relatives, reminisce about important moments you’ve shared, and ask them what stories they would choose to tell about you.  Or you could imagine that you’re writing a story about your life for your child (as Franklin did) or parent: what is it that you want to share with them?  If you are looking for a focus, here are three questions that we’ve put together: take a look at them and choose one that makes you think. Remember, these are just suggestions to get you going and your story need not be restricted to these topics – it can be about any episode of your life that you wish!

The Things I Carry

What’s in your pocketbook or pocket right now, and what story does it tell? 

Examine the objects closely – touch them, smell them, turn them over – perhaps there’s one in particular that you have something to say about? What’s its history; how did it come into your life; and where has it traveled to with you? How did you feel when you bought or received it, and how do you feel about it now? Maybe someone else owned one of these things before you: what does the object communicate about your relationship with them? Or perhaps there’s something missing from your bag/pocket, something that was lost or stolen from you?

Did I Ever Tell You About The Time ...?

What was your funniest or most embarrassing moment ever? 

Put yourself back into a moment in your life when something out of the ordinary happened to you.  It might jump-start your memory to connect back to what was happening in the world, and in your life?  Who was with you, and what was their relationship to you – friend, enemy, supporter or source of conflict? You can tell the story just the way it happened.  Or you can also choose to reflect on the effect this moment had on your life, and why it’s still memorable for you.  Just be sure to use specific details to bring the time and the story alive to a reader.  Has the way you feel about this moment changed over time? Whom do you share this story with, normally, and why?

Continue at the Autobiography Project. Whether or not you submit it to be included to the online files, it will provide a jumping off place in thinking about writing an autobiography.

Letters to Sala

The New York Public Library has presented online an exhibit of the some 300 letters that Holocaust survivor Sala Garncarz had in her possession, revealed to her family when she was age 67.

"Sala began to fill in the missing pieces of her history. She was taken from home when she was 16 and survived five years in seven different Nazi forced labor camps. Saving the letters became inextricably linked with saving her life. The letters were not mere pieces of paper: they were the people she loved, friends and family waiting for her return. She risked her life to preserve the letters, hiding them during line-ups, handing them off to friends, throwing them under a building, even burying them, but always managing somehow to take them with her from camp to camp."

Enter the world of Letters to Sala; A Young Woman's Life in Nazi Labor Camps presented by the New York Public Library

After liberation "Sala soon set off again in search of family members, this time heading for the largest gathering of refugees, in Bergen-Belsen, Germany. En route, she stopped in the charming Bavarian village of Ansbach, where she and other survivors celebrated their first Jewish New Year in freedom in the town’s Baroque synagogue. Afterward, a young soldier from New York, Corporal Sidney Kirschner, introduced himself to Sala. They conversed in Yiddish, the only language they shared. After a brief courtship, and with the reluctant consent of Sidney’s mother, they became engaged."

"Soon after meeting Sidney, Sala joyfully confirmed through the informal network of refugees that two sisters, Raizel and Blima, were alive. They were among the handful of women who survived a 280-mile death march from Neusalz to Bergen-Belsen. Upon liberation, the sisters were sent to Sweden, where they were recuperating from typhus, tuberculosis, and heart disease. The letters began again. Sala wrote her sisters: 'I have the pictures of our dear father and dear mother, together with all the mail I received from home, starting from the first minute that I left for camp. All along, I watched it and guarded it like the eyes in my head, since it was my greatest treasure.' ”

Decoding

Frode Weierud's CryptoCellar site has supplemented its previous reports on continuing efforts to decode Wehrmacht ciphers used by the Germans during World War II:

"Our project, which we call Breaking German Army Ciphers because the messages were enciphered on the 3-wheel German Army Enigma machine, started in earnest when we broke the first message in March 2003. A selection of these messages had been handed over to use already in February 2001, but it was first in 2002 that we really started to explore the possibility of attacking these messages. The problems we faced was an order of magnitude greater than those Bletchley Park (BP) usually were facing. When they intercepted enemy messages they usually had an idea of their origin. They would know from where the messages were transmitted due to direction finding and they would also usually be able to tell if they were Army, Navy or Air Force (Luftwaffe) messages. Sometimes they would even be able to make fairly accurate guesses about the possible contents. None of this information was available to us, however we made an accurate guess that they were German Army messages from the look of the messages themselves. One advantage we had over BP was that the messages came to us on original German message forms. Therefore we usually did not have to worry about transmission garbles, even if later on we also discovered that the messages had garbles due to erroneous transmission or reception on the part of the German radio operators. However, we faced the problem of  “deciphering” the radio/cipher operators hieroglyphs which sometimes meant that during the transcription process to convert the messages from the message forms to electronic copies we introduced our own garbles."

The page also contains updates for the M4 Message Breaking Project:

"The M4 Project is an effort by Stefan Krah to break 3 original Kriegsmarine messages, enciphered on the notorious four-rotor Enigma M4. This project attempts to break these Naval messages with the help of distributed computing, a large number of computers, working together in a network. Stefan already succeeded in breaking 2 out of 3 messages. Meanwhile, a few thousand people downloaded his software to help the breaking project. The messages, believed to be unbroken until today, were intercepted in the North Atlantic in 1942."

Another page covers messages from the Flossenbürg concentration camp including the execution orders for, among others, Simone Michel-Lévy:

"Her specialty was indeed clandestine communications. Under the aliases "Francoise" and "Madame Royale" she developed an excellent system of moving post throughout France using a variety of methods including transport by sea and by air. The strength of a resistance movement is largely dependent on its intelligence sources and its clandestine methods of communication. Seen in this light Simone Michel-Lèvy's work was of crucial importance. She was tireless and dedicated, never refusing to fulfill the most dangerous and demanding tasks. Even after nights without sleep and long voyages she would be at her place of working each morning, her face drawn and tired, but always with a smile."

Coincidentally, there have been revelations about the code that had been applied to a sculpture on the CIA grounds, Langley, VA: The Kryptos Group, announced this week that what everyone thought was the answer to part 2 of the CIA's 16-year-old Kryptos puzzle, was actually wrong.

Kryptos is a unique sculpture located at the center of CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, installed by Washington DC artist James Sanborn in 1990, and covered with a four-part encrypted puzzle that was intended as a challenge to the employees at the CIA. Since 2003, the sculpture's fame has been increasing since hints pointing to it were hidden in the bookjacket of the U.S. hardcover edition of Dan Brown's bestseller, The Da Vinci Code.

The sculpture stood at its location in the CIA central courtyard for several years, seemingly unsolvable, until in 1999, a California computer scientist, Jim Gillogly, announced that he had cracked the first three parts. After his announcement, two government intelligence agencies announced that they too had internal solvers who had also figured out the first three sections, but no one, in or outside of the intelligence agencies, had yet been able to figure out part four, which is now on the list of the world's most famous unsolved codes.

The War That Made America

KQED has produced a four-part series entitled The War That Made America, about the French and Indian War using historical recreations in lieu of on — camera historians.

The website, though not particularly elaborate, does include historical notes such as:

• Camp followers — women, children, servants and slaves — were integral to both the French and British militaries.  They traveled with the soldiers to cook, do laundry, sew, and serve in hospitals, putting themselves in harm's way.
• En route to capturing Fort Duquesne, General Forbes builds a line of forts from Philadelphia to present-day Pittsburgh — the start of what would one day become the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  
• Upon capturing Fort Beausejour, the British expelled French Acadians from Nova Scotia.  Many of them fled to Louisiana, and their descendants are known as the Cajuns. 
• Louis Coulon de Villiers, the French captain who led the attack on Fort Neccessity, also had a personal motive.  He was the brother of Ensign Jumonville, whose killing helped spark the French and Indian War. 
• George Washington was the only representative to arrive in uniform at the Second Continental Congress — signaling that he was ready to fight for the revolution. 
• To reduce the number of Indian dissenters in Pontiac's War, General Amherst suggests germ warfare — giving smallpox-infected blankets to Indians at the siege on Fort Pitt.
• General Braddock, mortally wounded in the Battle of Monongahela, was buried in the middle of a road in Southwestern Pennsylvania.  His soldiers then marched over the road so the French and Indians would not discover the whereabouts of his remains. 
• The Indians took settlers captive as a means to replace family members lost in conflicts and scare colonists from their land.  Captives were released as part of the Treaty of Easton, but some, like Mary Jemison, chose to stay with their new Indian families. 

A timeline tracks events in the period between 1753 -1776. Another page, Visit the French and Indian War's 250 Historic Sites, with links provided for information on lodging, restaurants, shopping and other activities in the area, such as:

Young George Washington:
Experience a unique slice of history and the beginning of a young colonel's military career that later determined the founding of our nation. It's the 250th anniversary commemoration of the French and Indian War, fought heavily in southwestern Pennsylvania. Immerse yourself in the details of the conflict, just like young George Washington did in the 1750s. Visit forts, historical sites, and even a local winery with special commemorative French and Indian War-themed vintage! A link explores more options in the area.

PBS has also produced its own website of this program.

And don't forget to take a look at the Charles Willson Peale portrait of Washington at auction: "Sent to Spain by Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) soon after its completion, this rendition of the American General was intended to promote the American cause abroad and coincided with Spain's formal entry into the conflict. Thus, this portrait can be viewed as one of the earliest emblems of American diplomacy, conceived and executed before the triumph of independence." The sale of part of Mrs. J. Insley Blair's collection is a wondrful look into the world of 17th century furnishings.

Domesday Book

Last year we met with a couple in England whose house is in the Domesday Book. We decided to find out just what the Domesday Book looked like and found it in the National Archives of England, Wales and the United Kingdom. The archives have one of the largest archival collections in the world, spanning 1000 years of British history, from Domesday Book of 1086 extending to government papers recently released to the public. One of the online exhibitions focuses on the book. More than 13,000 places are mentioned in Domesday Book. Most of them still survive today.

The Battle of Hastings in 1066 created dramatic events that led to the creation of the Domesday Book; one section of the site outlines those events.

The following quotes give us some idea about how Domesday Book was created.

"King William sent his men over all England into every shire and had them find out how many 100 hides there were in the shire, or what land and cattle the King himself had in the country or what dues he ought to have in the 12 months from the shire. He also recorded how much land his archbishops had and his bishops and his abbots and his earls, how much each man who was a landholder in England had in land or livestock and how much money it was worth."

From the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written in 1085:

"In the year one thousand and eighty-six from the Incarnation of our Lord, and in the twentieth year of the reign of William there was made this survey not only through these three counties, but also through others."

Domesday Book describes almost all of England. County Durham and Northumberland were not included in King William's survey as he did not control them properly and so they are not in Domesday Book.

A few places which are now in North Wales are in Great Domesday. Great Domesday also covers the rest of England, apart from Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk which are in Little Domesday.

Some very important towns were surveyed but the survey results were never written into the spaces left for them in Great Domesday. One missing place was Winchester which was the capital city of England in 1086. Another missing place was London which was already the richest and largest city in the land.

After you absorb parts of this site, gather courage and take the quiz.

Excerpt: The Tiger in the Attic

I do not remember the journey before that, though I know it was a journey of children: children of every age and size and condition. I vaguely recall weeping adults, my mother presumably among them, although I do not remember her. They stood, blocked by wooden barriers, as we were taken along the platform and put into railway compartments, which I seem to remember had hard, slatted seats. There was a boy, a country boy I suppose, with a huge basket of strawberries that he handed around to us all. The guard came by now and then and made jokes, and the officer in uniform and with a swastika armband who collected our papers at the border looked upon me with what I took to be parental concern as he handed back my passport, which under my name—augmented by the Jewish “Sara” mandated by the Third Reich—had been stamped STATELESS. I remember feeling a shy affection for him, a sense of safety in traveling in this carriage under his care.

I know that to cross to England we boarded the boat at Rotterdam. I know this because I had thought we would go through Amsterdam, which I had read about in the Bibi books of Karen Michaelis; Rotterdam, unsung in literature, was a great disappointment, which I resented enough to file firmly in memory. But the crossing itself is a blank. Probably we were all asleep. The next day comes to mind as the revelation of a huge London station with massive steel arches overhead. Liverpool Street Station. There were, I think, people at tables who shuffled through papers and who spoke an incomprehensible language that I knew must be English. I was wearing a brown hat with a rolled-up brim, and there were labels pinned to my collar and dangling from the various buttons of my new brown coat.

And then a tall, thin, aquiline woman, encased in a tweed suit that looked as if it would cause severe abrasions to any skin with which it came in contact, emerged from the crowd to lay claim to this refugee package from Germany, and she led us away.

That point of my life is where my real memory begins. My earlier recollections are not much more than mental snapshots of discrete moments, deprived of emotional content and affect. Or if there is any emotion, it tends towards shame, which I have somehow breathed in during my last year there, from the air of Karlsruhe. I understand, for instance, when my best friend Ursula no longer comes to my house, that shame must be the element that most properly belongs to me. When I go to visit her, her mother will not open the gate, and when on my way home three children call out names at me which I completely fail to comprehend, I nevertheless know them to be shameful.

Read the rest of excerpt from The Tiger in the Attic; Memories of the Kindertransport and Growing Up English by Edith Milton at the University of Chicago Press site

Eavesdropping on Hell: Historical Guide to Western Communications Intelligence and the Holocaust, 1939-1945

Robert J. Hanyok's 172 page analysis lays out the intercepted codes and Nazi messages that, one could speculate, might have been used to change the course of history in terms of the oncoming Holocaust

Here are some selected paragraphs:

Many people also did not know that the operational needs of these agencies largely determined what wartime records were retained after the war, how the existing records were controlled, where the relevant records resided in various national archival collections, and who was responsible for their release. In short, the story of COMINT records relating to the Holocaust is much more than a simple matter of the number of pages available to the public at various national archives.

In considering all of the above, I determined that a historical guide would be useful for researchers, scholars, and the general public. Such a guide could help Holocaust researchers gain a better understanding of how Allied communications intelligence reported intelligence on the Holocaust. It would explain the variety of material that would be encountered in the records of the wartime cryptologic agencies.

This guide, then, will concentrate on three topics that would be of interest and utility to scholars and the general public. First, it explains how the Western communications intelligence system operated during the war. It will consider how well the system operated and what were its limitations. This latter point is important when considering how Western COMINT handled intelligence about the Holocaust. Second, the guide describes how the wartime records of the SIS and GC&CS currently are organized in the national archives of Great Britain and the United States, where these records can be found, and the various formats they come in. Third, the guide summarizes what information is available from SIGINT records about the Holocaust. This summary consists of both a general chronology of the Holocaust and selected incidents for which significant communications intelligence records are available.

Despite the scope and detail of some of the material contained in this guide, it is not intended as a narrative history of the Holocaust based on the records of Western communications intelligence agencies. The major reason is that the archived COMINT records cannot sustain such a history. There are too many important parts of the history of the Holocaust for which no communications intelligence was collected. As will be demonstrated later in this work, communications intelligence could not reveal high-level Nazi policy deliberations regarding the Jews and other groups. On occasion, communications intelligence could “tip off’ an impending action by Nazi security forces, as in Italy in the fall of 1943. But this advantage was rare. More often, COMINT was best as a chronicle of some campaigns that already were under way such as the massacres carried out by the German Police units in the western USSR in 1941 and the roundup of the Hungarian Jews in mid-1944.

Although something of a historical narrative of the Holocaust is presented in the last chapter of this guide, it is meant to be a selected summary of the available information from COMINT records. It is beyond the scope and means for historians of cryptology to rewrite the story of the dreadful events of the Holocaust. Their mission is to discover the relevant records and write the history of cryptology and place that story within the context of larger events of the Second World War. It remains for historians of the Holocaust to utilize completely within their narratives the historical information provided by the records of the Allied code-breaking agencies.

This guide will limit its focus to the two major Western COMINT agencies that produced intelligence about the Holocaust during the war: the British GC&CS and the U.S. Army’s SIS. Early in the war, the U.S. Navy’s cryptologic element, OP-20-G, contributed some intercept of diplomatic communications, but by mid-1942, it ceded this work completely to the SIS and concentrated almost exclusively on Axis naval communications. A number of smaller Allies contributed to the overall Western radio intelligence work. These included Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others. However, the American and British security concern to protect Ultra sometimes circumscribed the contribution of these smaller allies. Among these, refugee Polish cryptologists contributed major intercept and code-breaking efforts against German Police communications. Their work will be discussed later in the guide.

Read the entire report at the National Security Agency's Center for Cryptologic History

Fatal Flood: A Story of Greed, Power and Race

The American Experience program entitled Fatal Flood recalls that in the spring of 1927, after weeks of incessant rains, the Mississippi River went on a rampage from Cairo, Illinois to New Orleans, inundating hundreds of towns, killing as many as a thousand people and leaving a million homeless.

The timeline at the PBS site begins the 1726 building of artificial levees by residents of New Orleans ranging in height from 4 to 6 feet to protect their young city from the ravages of floods.

Levee building remains in vogue along the Louisiana shores of the Mississippi. As settlers move into the territory north of New Orleans, levees are constructed. By 1812 levees have been built to safeguard 155 miles of land north of New Orleans on the east bank of the river and 180 miles north of the city on the west bank.

As early as 1814 the debate over levee building begins, and proposals are made advocating alternatives to levees such as the creation of artificial outlets, called spillways, to drain floodwaters from the river.

Footage on the site includes the following, all too familiar scenes:

Workers along the Mississippi River try reinforcing the levees with sandbags but there is no stopping the overflowed raging river.

During the flood, African American refugees are herded onto the levee into camps guarded by the National Guard. The guards are called in to keep African American sharecroppers from fleeing and finding work elsewhere.

Sections also cover maps comparing floods, voices from the flood and their music:

I woke up this morning;
Couldn't even get out of my door.
I woke up this morning,
Couldn't even get out of my door.
The levee broke and this town is overflowed

Greenville Levee Blues, Alice Pearson

Television Series: Guns, Germs & Steel

First published in the United States by W. W. Norton and Company, Guns, Germs and Steel was initially subtitled ‘The Fates of Human Societies.’ Within a few months, this subtitle had evolved into ‘A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years.’

The website that accompanies Public Television's three one-hour programs filmed across four continents traces humanity's journey over the last 13,000 years – from the dawn of farming at the end of the last Ice Age to the realities of life in the twenty-first century.

Author Jared Diamond seeks to address the following questions in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book:

• Why were Europeans the ones to conquer so much of our planet?
• Why didn't the Chinese, or the Inca, become masters of the globe instead?
• Why did cities first evolve in the Middle East?
• Why did farming never emerge in Australia?
• And why are the tropics now the capital of global poverty?

Episode One begins: Modern history has been shaped by conquest – the conquest of the world by Europeans. The Conquistadors led the way. A few hundred men came to the New World and decimated the native population. The secret of their success? Guns, Germs and Steel. Ever since, people of European origin have dominated the globe, with the same combination of military power, lethal microbes and advanced technology. But how did they develop these advantages in the first place? Why did the world ever become so unequal?

Episode Two: 168 Spaniards attacked the imperial army of the Incas in the highlands of Peru. Before the day was out, they had massacred 7,000 people, and taken control of the Inca Empire. Not a single Spanish life was lost in the process. Why was the balance of power so uneven between Old World and New? And why, in the centuries that followed, were Europeans the ones who conquered so much of the globe?

Episode Three: It’s been called the birthplace of humanity, the land where our ancestors took their first steps. Yet only recently revealed as the home of a vast tropical civilization. Cities and kingdoms once spread across the continent, then vanished, leaving barely a trace. What happened to this great achievement?

NPR's Timeline of London's Explosive History:

London has lived through many devastating bombings in the 20th century, among them, the German Blitz of World War II, which remains an important symbolic part of the city's history and character. NPR takes a brief look at London's history of bombings over the past century.

For instance: World War I, 1915-1918: In May 1915, German Zeppelin airships carry out the first of many bombing raids that year on London, killing seven and injuring 35 others. At first, the British lack proper defenses. But by mid-1916, British planes begin carrying explosive and incendiary bullets that could penetrate the Zeppelins' tough skin and set them ablaze. The WWI raids kill around 700 Londoners.

The Museum of London's Picture Library has images of many aspects of the City's history. A detour at the Museum might take one to The Prittlewell Prince, an extraordinary Anglo-Saxon site and rare example of a princely burial of 7th century AD, and its archeological discoveries.

The Department of Early London History
Material relating to London from the prehistoric period to c.1700. This includes the Archaeological Archive, housing material from archaeological excavations in London. Within the Archaeological Archive, the Centre for Human Bioarchaeology curates the Museum’s extensive holdings of human remains.

The Department of Later London History
Material relating to London from c.1700 to the present day.

London's National Archives

The National Archives of England, Wales and the United Kingdom has one of the largest archival collections in the world, spanning 1000 years of British history, from Domesday Book of 1086 to government papers recently released.

From the site's online exhibitions is the Dambusters Raid archive:

On the night of May 16, 1943, the specially formed 617 Squadron flew 19 modified Lancaster bombers to Germany, on a mission that was to become one of the most famous episodes of WWII, the Dambusters raid. To mark the raids 60th anniversary, the National Archives retells the story using original documents and images from its collection.

Sixty years on, the Dambuster Raid is still one of the most famous operations of the Second World War. The breaching of the dams at Germany's industrial heartland became a hugely evocative symbol. While the impact and significance of the raids has been hotly debated over the years, the ingenuity of Barnes Wallis and the sheer courage, skill, determination and self sacrifice of Gibson and his Dambusters has never been called into question.

The site includes the idea of the raid created by Assistant Chief Designer at Vickers Armstrong, Barnes Wallis, who revealed his idea for "air attacks on dams" which would deprive the German arms industry of its vital water supply and cause a "disaster of the first magnitude".

The preparation for the raid had the 617 Squadron, as it was named, training intensively for several weeks in low level, night flying and navigation. (To successfully destroy the dams the Lancasters had to release the bouncing bomb at right-angles to the dam wall, from an altitude of 60 feet, at a speed of 220 mph, between 425 and 475 yards.)

After the successful mission, 617 Squadron, paid dearly for their success. Of the 133 men who took part in the raid, 53 lost their lives and 3 were captured having bailed out. Five of the Lancasters crashed or were shot down en route to their targets. Two were destroyed whilst executing their attacks and another was shot down on the way home. Two more were so badly damaged that they had to abandon their missions.

You can see, online for the very first time, Barnes Wallis concept drawings for the 'bouncing bomb', 617 Squadron's log books of the Dams raid, the first air reconnaissance photos of the successfully breached Dams and many more fascinating historical records.

Briar Press Museum: Eleven presses that made history; 1400s to 1932. " Notwithstanding the range of press sizes and shapes you'll observe in these pages, the basic technology of the letterpress changed little during its roughly five hundred year development: its object is the impression of type into paper. After Gutenberg, letterpress invention was but a series of refinements on this one idea." There are many ways to approach the presses in the Museum; browsing is as easy as clicking an image or a name. For serious browsing, we've sorted the presses by Type, based on the central mechanism or form of each press. Consult the staff page for biographies of those who have helped structure the online museum of presses.

For those captured by the romance of vintage images, Cuts and Caps (old ornaments reborn) can be downloaded to use in your print, web, or even letterpress projects.

Genographic Project

National Geographic in conjunction with IBM's Watson Research Lab is inviting the public to become involved in their Genographic Project.

Here's an outline of the process:

With a simple and painless cheek swab you can sample your own DNA. You'll submit the sample through our secure, private, and completely anonymous system, then log on to the project Web site to track your personal results online.

This is not a genealogy test and you won't learn about your great grandparents. You will learn, however, of your deep ancestry, the ancient genetic journeys and physical travels of your distant relatives.

To insure total anonymity you will be identified at all times only by your kit number, not by your name. There is no record, no database that links test results with the names of their contributors. If you lose the kit number there will be no way to access your genetic results.

As your own genetic ancestry is revealed you'll also see worldwide samples map humankind's shared genetic background around the world and through the ages.

If you'd like to contribute your own results to the project's global database you'll be asked to answer a dozen "phenotyping" questions that will help place your DNA in cultural context.

As your own genetic ancestry is revealed you'll also see worldwide samples map humankind's shared genetic background around the world and through the ages.

If you'd like to contribute your own results to the project's global database you'll be asked to answer a dozen "phenotyping" questions that will help place your DNA in cultural context. This process is optional and completely anonymous, but it's also important. The Participation Kit costs U.S. $99.95 (plus shipping and handling and tax if applicable). The kit includes:

For the rest of the instructions and explanations, go to the Genographic Project website.

America in the 1930s: A decade of unparalleled contradiction and complexity, marked by the depths of the depression on one end ... and the height of the modern age on the other ... a dance of regional movements and culture ... and the alphabet soup of big government projects.

One aspect of this site is the Film Archive:
Short clips of notable films of the period, along with brief synopses.
Little Caesar (1930)
I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang (1932)
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
The Thin Man (1934)
It Happened One Night (1934)
The Black Cat (1934)
Duck Soup (1935)
Alice Adams (1935)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
Stella Dallas (1937)
Stage Door (1937)
The Awful Truth (1937)
Stagecoach (1939)
Wizard of Oz (1939)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Penny Serenade (1941)
The Lady Eve (1941)
It's A Wonderful Life (1948)

The documentary section includes:

Age of Lost Innocence: Photographs of Childhood Realities and Adult Fears During the Depression
The representation of children and childhood in the work of FSA photographers.

Documenting the 1930s
Documentary work by the Federal Writers Project, Dorothea Lange and Paul Taylor, Malcolm Cowley, Richard Wright, James Agee and Walker Evans, and Lewis Hine.

The Living Newspaper: Understanding the 30s Through Audio
Listen to the Living Newspaper "Triple-A Plowed Under" for a multimedia approach to 30s culture.

The Art of the Great Depression, New Deal Photography and Murals: Their Roles in the Construction of Regional and National Identity
Investigates the consequences of government intervention with regard to the standardization and creation of an American culture.

From Skyscrapers to Skulls: Georgia O'Keeffe Creates the "Native" American
Provides an overview of O'Keeffe's work by placing it within the cultural context of the 20s and 30s

Representing Gringolandia
A history of the artist Diego Rivera's patronage in the United States, his work in Detroit, his influence on his contemporaries, and his relationship with the American public.

Out of One, Many: Regionalism in FSA Photography
Analyzes how regionalism asserted itself in the work of the FSA, even as it strove to document a national identity.

Walker Evans Revolutionizes Documentary Photography
How Evans' aesthetic choices and the ideological implications of his work changed the genre of documentary photography.

Photographing the Representative American: Margaret Bourke-White in the Depression
Between 1935 and 1937, Bourke-White traveled the South searching for the face that would speak out from the printed page, "the representative American."

THE 1930s IN PRINT includes the following sections:

The Great Depression A comparison of the Depression in the United States and Europe.

Charlottesville in the Depression
A local take on major political, social and militaristic events during the Depression through the lens of Charlottesville's VA's newspaper, The Daily Progress.

The Living Newspaper: Understanding the 30s Through Audio
Listen to the Living Newspaper "Triple-A Plowed Under" for a multimedia approach to 30s culture.

There are other sections of this site to be explored and enjoyed.

The 1930s timeline provides a multimedia list of the decade's events — some well-known and others more obscure. Each year in the timeline is divided by months and also by four color-coded categories: Politics and Society; Science and Technology; Arts and Culture; and World Events. Many of the items listed for each year are linked to further information in the form of images, audio, and video. A video "Year in Review" of film clips can be found at the top of each year. Fortunately or unfortunately, a timeline is but a limited glimpse at discrete moments in this decade—as such, visitors are invited to draw their own conclusions, make their own comparisons, and visit again, as material is added