History

Phineas Staunton's Painting of Henry Clay Returns to the Senate

 

Europeana

The Europeana website was so overwhelmed by viewers wanting to connect with this site, that it crashed last November. Finally, it is (almost) ready for prime time. Actually, it won't be until 2010 that it will be officially a complete site. Here's what it's about:

"Europeana.eu is about ideas and inspiration. It links you to 4 million digital items. There are images (paintings, drawings, maps, photos and pictures of museum objects), Texts ( books, newspapers, letters, diaries and archival papers), Sounds (music and spoken word from cylinders, tapes, discs and radio broadcasts), and videos (films, newsreels and TV broadcasts). Some of these are world famous, others are hidden treasures from Europe's museums and galleries, archives, libraries and audio-visual collections. "

"Here is a list of the organisations that our content comes from. They include the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the British Library in London and the Louvre in Paris.

"You can use My Europeana to save searches or bookmark things. You can highlight stuff and add it to your own folders. This website is a prototype. Europeana Version 1.0 is being developed and will launch in 2010 with links to over 10 million digital objects. Europeana.eu is funded by the European Commission and the member states."

Europeana is run by my favorite people: "The project is run by a core team based in the national library of the Netherlands, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. It builds on the project management and technical expertise developed by The European Library, which is a service of the Conference of European National Librarians."

There is a page that instructs on the search function at Europeana (see below). The Resource Shelf's contributing editor, Adrian Janes, has clarified some points of the site:

"The types of items collected in Europeana are in the broad categories of Text, Images, Video, and Sound. Text, for instance, may include books, articles and music scores. However, although the site can be searched in a preferred language (26 in all), it is important to note that all items are presented as originally created (e.g., a Hungarian text will remain in Hungarian). From that point of view, the most international aspect of the site is the range of images, such as paintings, photographs and maps, and access to some music recordings. Similarly the site spans the centuries, with artists like Giotto, Watteau and Picasso, and composers like Mozart and Debussy among those represented.

All items are thoroughly catalogued, which helps make for productive searches. However some contributing organisations are more generous in the access they allow than others. The British Library's images can be freely viewed at a good size, whereas those provided by Scran, a Scottish source, are only thumbnails: anything more requires a licence.

Basic searching can be refined by Language, Country, Date, Provider or Type, or a combination of these. There is also an Advanced Search facility which allows the site to be investigated in other modes, namely by Title, Creator, Date, or Subject. Again, the fields can be combined. But it would be a mistake to assume that searching by an artist's country will necessarily produce the best results. The items provided by French sources tend to be the most relevant and plentiful, at least at the moment. Apart from the richness of their collections, this may be explained by the greater progress achieved in digitisation by some countries and their institutions compared to others.

By clicking on 'View in original context' (displayed beneath any selected result), you are taken to the originating website — a way of opening up the possibilities of discovery beyond Europeana, although facilitated by it. Complimenting this, a very useful gateway page brings together links to all of the websites of Partners and Contributors of content.

There are also customisation possibilities available to registered users, such as the ability to save particular searches, add tags, or share items.

The subtitle to Europeana is 'Think culture,' and its strength lies in its vast range of historical and artistic materials. As the project develops, this can only become even more the case. It is certainly a real collaborative achievement, but would be even more useful if the amount of access granted to items by the contributors was equalised. Nevertheless, this collaboration amongst such a diversity of institutions, languages, and countries is both heartening in itself, and also suggests exciting possibilities for parallel projects in other areas of European expertise, like science or medicine.

Article

Joan L. Cannon, Wasting Words? We have more words than most other modern languages. Of course we don’t need to know them all and couldn’t use them all (though I think Nabokov may have tried). Yet, that richness makes maximum precision almost always possible

NYPL's Scrapbook of Dust Jackets from American and European Books, 1926-1947

The New York Public Library provides a collection history of books' dust jackets when "anonymous librarians selected and saved interesting jackets from books of all sorts." The Library has admitted that their practice has been to remove the jackets from new books during processing. Eventually, these jackets filled 22 large scrapbooks that are displayed online in this digital collection.

"The illustrations and titles mirror the era's changing political concerns and desires. The dominant Art Deco design trends of the early years are evident. Many of the most powerful designs come from the Weimar Republic."

The 'specimens' include Adventures with big fish; Does prohibition work? (1926); Martha and Mary, The Arrow; Mind Your P's and Q's; Up From the Streets: Alfred E. Smith; and Caviare to Candy: recipes for small households from all parts of the world (1926-27).

Others are Less Eminent Victorians; Marionettes, Masks and Shadows; I like America by Granville Hicks and The Financier by Theodore Dreiser.

In fact, the images may be purchased after an optional cropping of the dust jacket.

Article

Jo Freeman reviews Women Making America, covering women’s history from the Revolution to the present day. Chock full of colorful images, it swoops high and low, sometimes mapping the forest and sometimes looking at a tree

At Home: Charles Darwin

Take a tour of Darwin's study at Down House, Kent, England.

"It was here he researched and wrote his most famous and explosive of works, On the Origin of Species. In November 2009 we also welcome the 150th anniversary of the publication of this groundbreaking book, which shook the world when published in 1859 and which continues to influence to this day."

"With a new exhibition and interactive multimedia tours, you can explore this intimate family setting, and discover the extensive grounds known as Darwin's 'outdoor laboratory'. To plan your visit follow the links, where you can also take a virtual tour of Darwin's atmospheric study."

It's possible to explore his study and manuscripts at another page. The complete text of The Voyage of the Beagle is online along with The Origin of the Species.

"ON JANUARY the 15th we sailed from Low's Harbour, and three days afterwards anchored a second time in the bay of S. Carlos in Chiloe. On the night of the 19th the volcano of Osorno was in action. At midnight the sentry observed something like a large star, which gradually increased in size till about three o'clock, when it presented a very magnificent spectacle. By the aid of a glass, dark objects, in constant succession, were seen, in the midst of a great glare of red light, to be thrown up and to fall down. The light was sufficient to cast on the water a long bright reflection. Large masses of molten matter seem very commonly to be cast out of the craters in this part of the Cordillera. I was assured that when the Corcovado is in eruption, great masses are projected upwards and are seen to burst in the air, assuming many fantastical forms, such as trees: their size must be immense, for they can be distinguished from the high land behind S. Carlos, which is no less than ninety-three miles from the Corcovado. In the morning the volcano became tranquil."

From Chapter 14 of The Voyage of the Beagle, Chiloe and Concepcion: Great Earthquake

FDR's First One Hundred Days

"Action, and Action Now" is the name of the exhibit held by Marist College with rarely-seen documents, photographs, artifacts, and posters drawn from the archives of the Roosevelt Library and Museum.

"On Saturday March 4, 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated President of the United States. The majority of Americans had every reason to be afraid. Nearly 13 million people -- one in four -- was jobless. Nineteen million people depended upon meager relief payments to survive. Workers lucky enough to have jobs earned, on average, only two-thirds what they made at the start of the Depression in 1929. Many of those who had money lost it: four thousand banks collapsed in the first two months of 1933.

"President Roosevelt took command of a country that was incapacitated by fear. Perhaps only a man who had experienced polio and struggled to restore his own hope for the future could empathize with the national condition. Infusing people with his conviction that they had "nothing to fear but fear itself," the First 100 Days became a turning point for a nearly beaten population.

"So great was the emergency, some urged dictatorial powers, but FDR rejected the suspension of constitutional government. Instead he embarked on plan of "Action, and Action Now" to meet this vast crisis. The speed and scope of Roosevelt's actions were unprecedented. Many later presidents have used the "First 100 Days" as a measure against which to mobilize their own administrations. But none has succeeded in achieving FDR's legislative agenda. In less that four months the economy was stabilized, homes and farms were saved from foreclosure, and massive relief and work programs addressed the dire needs of the people. Most important, the First 100 Days restored hope and, in the process, preserved democratic government in the United States."

And don't overlook the Fireside Chats also available at the Museum of Broadcast Communications at which a listener to those broadcasts, Carl Carmer, was quoted in April 14, 1945 as saying:

"I never saw him — but I knew him. Can you have forgotten how, with his voice, he came into our house, the President of these United States, calling us friends..."

 

Schindler's List, Continued; Documentarian James Moll

Those who saw or read (or both) Schindler's List, would be interested in the documentary, Inheritance. It is available for viewing at the PBS website, POV, until January 9, 2009. Helen Jonas-Rosensweig was the woman who was forced to live at the villa occupied by SS officer Amon Goeth, the commander of the Polish death camp, Plaszow, in Poland. Goeth's daughter, Monika Hertwig, and Jonas-Rosensweig are brought together for their first meeting.

Goeth's daughter, Monika Hertwig, was only a year old when her father died and reportedly knew little of his past. The Jewish Journal reports that, "Until she was 13, Hertwig believed that her father had died as a war hero and said she was devastated when she learned the truth. She previously traveled to Plaszow with a group of Israeli students and two survivors."

Director of the program, James Moll, has an impressive list of documentary credits and awards for many of his productions:

"Moll received an Academy Award® in 1999 for directing and editing The Last Days, a 90-minute feature documentary, filmed in five countries, chronicling the lives of five Hungarian Holocaust survivors. 

"For NBC, Moll directed and produced the primetime feature-length documentary Price for Peace, hosted by Tom Brokaw.  The late author Stephen Ambrose served as executive producer with Spielberg.  The film focuses on America’s involvement in the Pacific during WWII, and was released on DVD by DreamWorks as part of the Saving Private Ryan box set, The World War II Collection.

"For the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Moll produced and directed A Remarkable Promise, the John Kerry bio-film that introduced the presidential candidate.  The previous year, Moll produced Voices from the List, a documentary about Oskar Schindler for the Schindler’s List DVD.

"Moll was the producer of Broken Silence, a series of five foreign-language documentaries.  The five critically acclaimed films premiered on primetime television in Russia, Poland, Argentina, the Czech Republic and Hungary, and in the U.S. on Cinemax.  Moll received a Christopher Award for this series.

"Moll produced and directed The Four Chaplains, a WWII documentary for The Hallmark Channel about the heroic efforts of four Army chaplains aboard an ill-fated troop ship.  For The History Channel, Moll directed Burma Bridge Busters, about a WWII Air Corps bomb squadron, as well as Massacre at Mystic about a turning point between Native Americans and early European settlers.

"Survivors of the Holocaust, a two-hour documentary produced by Moll for TBS and CNN International, was nominated for three Primetime Emmy® Awards in 1997 (winning two of them), and also received the Peabody Award.  Moll received the Edward R. Murrow Award for producing The Lost Children of Berlin for A&E." 

Pitt Rivers Museum, Anthropology and World Archaeology, University of Oxford

The Museum displays archaeological and ethnographic objects from all parts of the world. It was founded in 1884 when General Pitt Rivers, an influential figure in the development of archaeology and evolutionary anthropology, gave his collection to the University. The General's founding gift contained more than 18,000 objects but there are now over half a million. Many were donated by early anthropologists and explorers. The collection includes extensive photographic and sound archives which contain early records of great importance. The Museum continues to collect through donations, bequests, special purchases and through its staff and students, in the course of their fieldwork.

Permanent displays in the Museum are ethnographic and archaeological and include the following:

Pacific island objects, including a magnificent Tahitian mourner's costume, collected during Captain Cook's Second Voyage in 1773-74; Hawaiian feather cloaks in brilliant shades of red and yellow; a wide range of handwoven textiles and looms; a collection of ceremonial brasses and ivories from the Kingdom of Benin; a fine group of early masks worn by actors in Japanese Noh dramas; more masks from Africa, Melanesia and North America; sculpture from all over the world in wood, pottery, metal and stone; boats, ranging from full-sized sailing craft to model canoes; baskets in all possible shapes and sizes; pottery from Africa and the Americas, including many pre-Columbian pieces; costumes from North America including Inuit fur parkas, Plains skin shirts decorated with porcupine quills, painted coats from the Northeastern Woodlands and a range of decorated moccasins; magic objects including amulets and charms; jewelry and body decoration; locks and keys; tools and weapons; musical instruments.

Go on a virtual tour of the museum, clicking on the symbols located on the various floors for panoramic views that you can increase by a plus or minus symbol producing a stroll through a marvelous collection. (This requires Apple Quick Time for MS Windows or Mac Os, available for free). Move your mouse to explore the floors. Don't miss the boats suspended from the ceilings in some sections.

In the future they will allow web browsers to link to further information about the Museum’s diverse displays.

Two other collections within Pitt Rivers are:

The Tibet Album

The Tibet Album presents more than 6000 photographs spanning 30 years ofTibet's history. These extraordinary photographs are a unique record of people long gone and places changed beyond all recognition. They also document the ways that British visitors encountered Tibet and Tibetans. Go to the Tibet album site.

Recovering the Material and Visual Cultures of the Southern Sudan: A Museological Resource

This website provides access to a detailed catalogue of the collections from Southern Sudan held at the Pitt Rivers Museum, the University of Oxford's museum of anthropology and world archaeology. The Museum's holdings from Southern Sudan comprise more than 1300 artifacts and 5000 photographs. Together together, the artefacts and photographs provide a major resource for studying the cultural and visual history of the region. Go to the Southern Sudan site.

Photographer of the South

The University of Virginia Digital Collection contains the architectural photographs of a woman photographer, Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864 - 1952):

"Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952) was one of the first American women to achieve distinction as a photographer. Although renowned for her work as a photojournalist and as a portraitist, Johnston's greatest achievement as a photographer was her work to document the colonial architecture of the American South. From 1933 through 1940, with financial backing from the Carnegie Corporation, Johnston set about to record the vernacular architecture of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Maryland, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida and Mississippi. During her work in Virginia from 1933 to 1935, Johnston established close professional ties with Edmund S. Campbell, then the head of the Architecture Department at the University of Virginia. An outcome of Campbell working as an advisor to Johnston on the Virginia Survey was the deposit of 948 of Johnston's original photographs for the purpose of study and research at the University. Johnston's intention was not to make images of the grand architecture of the region, but rather to preserve a record of the barns, log cabins, inns, mills and outbuildings of humble origins. Her photographs are breathtaking examples of the American built environment that has been largely erased from today's architectural landscape."

For further information about Johnston's Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South, go to: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/039.html

Lives of the Week

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography presents a Lives of the Week feature (also offered on a daily basis).

For instance, some of this weeks' selections are:

Ramsey [née Dale; other married name Avery], Mary, Lady Ramsey (d. 1601), philanthropist, was the eldest daughter of the Bristol merchant William Dale. Nothing is known of her early years though they may have been made difficult by her father's alienation from the Bristol civic élite after he brought a Star Chamber suit at the end of his year as sheriff in 1518–19 complaining that the income from the office was no longer sufficient to bear its charges because the mayor and aldermen were detaining the profit of the city's lands. He progressed no further in the civic cursus honorum. The identity of his daughter's first husband is unknown, but by 1554 she was married to Thomas Avery (d. 1576), a gentleman of Berden in Essex.

Raine, Kathleen Jessie (1908–2003), poet and literary scholar, was born on 14 June 1908 at 6 Gordon Road, Ilford, Essex, the only child of George Raine, schoolmaster and Methodist lay preacher, and his wife, Jessie, née Wilkie. Her mother was Scottish and her first language Scots, a cultural inheritance that Raine regarded as key to the early ‘language of my imagination’ (Cookson, 56). It was her mother who introduced her to the Romantic poets and who would recite Paradise Lost at the kitchen sink. Raine's father, an English teacher, also helped cultivate his daughter's nascent poetic sensibility. Declining to follow his father into the mines, he had written a thesis on Wordsworth at Durham University (where he met his wife) and would conduct regular visits to performances of Shakespeare at the London theatres.

Turbervill, Edith Picton- (1872–1960), social reformer, was born on 13 June 1872 at Lower House, Fownhope, Herefordshire, the daughter of Captain John Picton-Warlow (b. 1838), an officer in the Indian army, and his second wife, Eleanor Temple (d. 1887). She and her twin Beatrice were the third and fourth children of the eight sons and three daughters (including three sets of twins) born of this marriage; her father had also had two children from a previous marriage. Edith and several siblings spent their early years in Brighton in the care of a maiden aunt, but in 1883 her parents returned from India and after a brief spell in Bruges moved the family to the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales. There Edith passed a happy and vigorous country childhood, seemingly little marred by the death of her mother in 1887 and her father's remarriage two years later. Initially educated by governesses, she was sent to the Royal School in Bath in her late teens.

The publication also offers such special features as History Hoaxers as well as a description of the Scriblerus Club:

Scriblerus Club [Scriblerians] (act. 1714) is the name given, from the later eighteenth century (Goldsmith, 37; Johnson, 4.47–8, 296) , to a literary grouping usually identified as Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, John Arbuthnot, and Thomas Parnell (Spence, no. 218, 1.95; Memoirs … of Martinus Scriblerus, 27, 351–9) . Pope later told Joseph Spence that Queen Anne's lord treasurer, Robert Harley, first earl of Oxford, to whom several verse invitations were addressed, would also ‘come and talk idly with them almost every night’ (Spence, no. 218, 1.95). According to Pope, the character of Martinus Scriblerus was originally conceived as a focus for the club's satire against current trends in culture and scholarship:

The design of the Memoirs of Scriblerus was to have ridiculed all the false tastes in learning, under the character of a man of capacity enough that had dipped in every art and science, but injudiciously in each. It was begun by a club of some of the greatest wits of the age: Lord Bolingbroke, the Bishop of Rochester, Mr. Pope, Congreve, Arbuthnot, Swift, and others. Gay often held the pen, and Addison liked it very well and was not disinclined to come into it. (Spence, no. 135, 1.56)

Review

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

One such story recounts how a perplexed King Hiero was unable to empty rainwater from the hull of one of his ships. The King called upon Archimedes for assistance. Archimedes' solution was to create a machine consisting of a hollow tube containing a spiral that could be turned by a handle at one end. When the lower end of the tube was placed into the hull and the handle turned, water was carried up the tube and out of the boat. The Archimedes Screw is still used as a method of irrigation in developing countries.

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

During Archimedes' lifetime Sicily was a hotspot for both geological and political events. The volcanic Mount Etna loomed threateningly over the island, while on all sides the titanic Punic Wars raged between Rome and Carthage. Situated strategically between the two great powers, Sicily naturally became an object of contention. Self preservation demanded that the kings of Syracuse negotiate with the great powers, and as a result the small city-state often found itself allied with one against the other. Such was the case in 214 BC, when pro-Carthaginian factions within the city chose to side with Carthage against Rome. Shortly thereafter, legions of the Roman army sailed to Syracuse and laid siege to the city walls.

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:

	1.		DVD with a Genographic Project overview hosted by Dr. Spencer Wells, visual instructions on how to collect a DNA sample using a cheek scraper, and a bonus feature program: the National Geographic Channel/PBS production The Journey of Man.
	2.		Exclusive National Geographic map illustrating human migratory history and created especially for the launch of the Genographic Project.
	3.		Buccal swab kit, instructions, and a self-addressed envelope in which to return your cheek swab sample.
	4.		Detailed brochure about the Genographic Project, featuring stunning National Geographic photography
	7.		Confidential Genographic Project ID # (GPID) to anonymously access your results at this Web site

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 frequently.

One day on the radio — September 21, 1939— is presented from sign on to sign off. Another day — October 30, 1938 — is the date The War of the Worlds was presented on the air. The entire broadcast of 58 minutes is accessible on this site.

Excerpt

31 Dec. Sunset. Outside the tomb of Atum-hadu. On the Victrola 50: I'm Sitting on the Back Porch Swing (Won't You Come Sit by Me, Dear?).

My darling Margaret, my eternal Queen whose beauty astonishes the sun,

Your father and I are heading home tomorrow, back to you — the luxurious riverboat north to Cairo, a night at that city's Hotel of the Sphinx, then by rail to Alexandria, and from there we have booked victorious passage on the Italian steamer Cristoforo Colombo, ports of call Malta, London, New York, from where we shall catch the very first train to you in Boston. You shall embrace your fiancé and your father by 20 January.

Upon my return, our wedding will, of course, be our most pressing business. Then, after refreshed preparations, I shall lead a second expedition back here to Deir el Bahari to conduct a photographic survey of the wall paintings and clear the artefacts and treasures from the tomb. All that remains this evening is to seal up the tomb's front, leaving my find exactly as I discovered it. And then posting you this package. My messenger is due here presently.

Nothing stands in our way now, my darling. My success here, your father's reinstated blessing — all is precisely as I promised. You will be relieved to know that your father and I are again fast friends. (Thank you for your "warning" cable, but your father's misplaced anger back in Boston could never have survived his time here in my company!) No, he congratulates me on my find ("our find, Trilipush!" he corrects me), sleepily sends you his love, and sheepishly begs you to disregard those foolish things he told you of me. He was under terrible strain, surrounded by jealousy and intriguers, and now he is simply delighted that I have forgiven him for succumbing, even for an instant, to such corrosive lies. And now we are returning to you, just as you will return to me.

Read the rest of the chapter at The Egyptologist website, a novel by Arthur Phillips and a review of the book is at Archeology Magazine

Links

"I Do Solemnly Swear" Presidential Inaugurations is a Library of Congress collection of approximately 400 items or 2,000 digital files relating to inaugurations from George Washington's in 1789 to George W. Bush's inauguration of 2001. This presentation includes diaries and letters of presidents and of those who witnessed inaugurations, handwritten drafts of inaugural addresses, broadsides, inaugural tickets and programs, prints, photographs, and sheet music.

Although we couldn't find the reference to Roosevelt's final inaugural lunch, another site did provide the allusion.

AlexanderHamiltonExhibition - One of the non-fiction biography bestsellers of this past year was that of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. The New York Historical Society is hosting an online version of their exhibit, Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made America. It brings together "some of the rarest and most precious historical objects and documents connected with Alexander Hamilton and the Founding era, including the pistols that Hamilton and Burr used in their deadly duel, original copies of the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and handwritten correspondence between Hamilton and his friends and enemies." A narration is provided by Richard Brookhiser, one of Hamilton's biographers. One of the interactive sections is a walk through Hamilton's New York City, a map of New Jersey's connections to Hamilton (including the fateful Weehawken locale). There's a timeline and a portrait gallery of Hamilton's family, friends, colleagues and rivals.

SouthPole.com

Message to the Public from Robert Falcon Scott

He explained how the expedition's disaster was not due to poor planning, but by bad weather and bad luck. It was no one's fault ..."but for my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past. We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of providence, determined still to do our best to the last ... Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for." Robert Scott, Terra Nova Expedition 1910 - 13 from the website, south-pole.com

A treasure trove site for those of us who marvel at explorers who test themselves at the extremes of temperature and terrain:

This site is dedicated to the heroic explorers of our polar regions and the surrounding islands. The tales of these brave souls were often related in expedition mail sent home to anxious loved ones and beneficiaries. As you browse through this site, you will witness an extensive mix of reference material that will be useful to philatelists and students of polar history alike.

 

America at War

"Americans have gone to war to win their independence, expand their national boundaries, define their freedoms, and defend their interests around the globe. This exhibition examines how wars have shaped the nation’s history and transformed American society. It highlights the service and sacrifice of generations of American men and women."

So begins the Smithsonian's section on The Price of Freedom: America at War. From the War of Independence through Vietnam and the latter section entitled "New American Roles," the site presents historical looks at the various conflicts, including timelines, artifacts and brief videos. In addition, there are other activities such as that of the Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education which presents one entitled You Be the Conservator and one Who Am I! A History Mystery.

The Museum’s Price of Freedom collection includes hundreds of artifacts related to America’s military history. The collection can be browsed by selecting multiple conflicts and categories.

Great Escapes

In addition to story of the escape from the Stalag Luft III prison for Allied airmen in Germany, the PBS NOVA website carries nine other 'great escapes.' Here are excerpts from some of these daring escape attempts:

"A determined escape artist in both marriage and prison, Casanova began plotting his exit not long after he arrived at the Leads, which was named for the lead that coated its walls and roof."

"One of the most audacious escapes was that of Henry Brown, who was born as a slave in 1816. After his owner suddenly sold Brown's wife and children to a new owner in another state, Brown made an agonizing solo escape to freedom on March 19, 1849."

"The Tower of London has served as a royal palace, arsenal, royal mint, menagerie, and public records office. But its best-known role, which lasted for 850 years, was as a dark, dank, and bone-numbingly cold political prison ... In 1597, a Jesuit priest named John Gerard made a hair-raising escape ... The Earl of Nithsdale, who was jailed in the Tower in 1715 for his role in the Jacobite Rebellion, made a less physically demanding exit. During a visit by his wife and her three ladies-in-waiting, Nithsdale donned the clothes of one of the ladies-in-waiting, a Mrs. Mills, and simply walked out with the other three."

"Alcatraz was the setting for several daring escapes, one of which, in 1962, remains one of the most notorious prison breaks in history. Frank Morris and the brothers Clarence and John Anglin spent six months chipping away at the concrete around the air shafts in their cells, trying to create enough space to climb inside and wiggle their way through Alcatraz's mazelike ventilation system and out to freedom."

"In 1964, Wolfgang Fuchs built one of the most important tunnels, which enabled more than 100 East Germans to reach the West. Fuchs spent seven months digging and orchestrating the 140-yard tunnel, which ran from a bathroom in the East to a basement in the West ... A similarly successful tunnel began in an East Berlin graveyard. "Mourners" brought flowers to a grave and then disappeared underground. This escape route worked well until Communist officers discovered a baby carriage left by the "grave" and sealed the tunnel."

"On the night of March 24-25, 1944, 76 Allied prisoners of Stalag Luft III, a German prison camp in Sagan, 100 miles southeast of Berlin, escaped through a tunnel named "Harry." Within days most were recaptured. An outraged Hitler had 50 of them shot, an appalling abrogation of the Geneva Convention, to which Germany was a signatory. Twenty-three were reincarcerated. Only three made it all the way to freedom—a Dutchman and two Norwegians, all flyers with the British Royal Air Force."

The Stalag Luft III part of the website details the story of The Three Who Got Away written by Alan Burgess, the construction of the tunnel dubbed Harry as an interactive feature and the sketchbook drawings of artist Ley Kenyon creating a visual record of the tunnel's history.

For a fictionalized view, find a copy of David Westheimer's book, DVD or eBook, Von Ryan's Express.

Excerpt

Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945
By Frederick Taylor; Published by Bloomsbury

It is the year 1945. The Anglo-Saxons are engaged in war to the death with their distant family across the North Sea, from whom they had divided so long ago and far away. As a consequence, aircraft laden with bombs are taking off from the wintry fields of Lincolnshire on a belated reverse voyage this February afternoon.

The fliers’ mission is to wreak a terrible revenge on those German relatives’ most proud and beautiful treasures, as well as on the most precious thing they have—their lives.

Twilight. February 13, 1945, Shrove Tuesday. The first waves of aircraft are taking off. The ponderous flocks further darkening the winter sky are made up of Avro Lancaster heavy bombers, attached to 5 Group of Bomber Command. They are bound for a rendezvous point over Berkshire. Their armor—perfunctory to start with—has been further depleted to save weight, and the planes have been equipped with extra fuel tanks because of the exceptional seventeen-hundred-mile round-trip distance to the target. Each Lancaster, big with a seven-ton load of bombs and incendiary devices, wields twice the destructive capacity of the famous American Flying Fortresses and Liberators. By 6 p.m., in the gathering darkness, a total of 244 bombers are circling together in the air, the town of Reading blacked out thousands of feet beneath them, ready to set course.

The aircrew have been routinely briefed that afternoon, and their target described as follows:

The seventh largest city in Germany and not much smaller than Manchester, is also by far the largest unbombed built-up area the enemy has got. In the midst of winter with refugees pouring west-wards and troops to be rested, roofs are at a premium, not only to give shelter to workers, refugees and troops alike, but also to house the administrative services evacuated from other areas...

 

Projects

The Medici Archive Project is the Archive of the Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany (1537-1743), housed in the Archivio di Stato in Florence, Italy.

The Project's goals are to create worldwide public access to the historical data in the Medici Granducal Archive by way of a searchable on-line database. The document highlights section impart a glimpse into a particular historical area, and they've become a respository for the documents the staff are enjoying unearthing.

The document, A Roman Carnival (1601), is put into historical context by the site:

As the unidentified author of the present "avviso" makes clear, "masks" played a crucial role in this licensed pursuit of carnival pleasures. While the mask disguised the user’s personal identity, a voluminous over-garment could also hide his or her social identity as expressed by their characteristic mode of dress. During carnival, the essential distinctions between master and servant, nobleman and artisan, priest and layman, Jew and gentile, whore and nun could thus be banished from sight if not from mind, leaving the anonymous reveler free to cross the accustomed social and moral boundaries without fear of repercussion — at least in theory.

In point of fact, the transgressive elements of carnival merrymaking were sometimes so tightly controlled by the authorities as to reduce them to symbolic performances. In 1601, for example, we see Gian Francesco Aldobrandini, a top official in the city government, requesting and receiving permission from his uncle Pope Clement VIII for the people to take to the streets in festive disguise. Then Salvestro (age 11), head of the Roman convocation of the Knights of Malta, along with Gian Francesco’s other children, Giorgio, and Ippolito, opened the event by appearing personally in the Corso (the long street running from Piazza del Popolo to the Capitoline Hill) which was the traditional setting for such celebrations. Though protective anonymity was the alleged function of the carnival mask, the author of the present "avviso" makes it clear that this Aldobrandini family outing was a carefully staged public event. The author also notes the unusual rush of theatrical entertainments ("comedies" and "tragicomedies"), probably also by special dispensation, since such spectacles were tightly controlled in papal Rome and during some reigns entirely banned.

Most recently, The Discovery Channel discussed the uncovering of a hidden crypt containing the bodies of seven children and an adult. The crypt itself was located under a floor behind an altar of the Medici Chapels at Florence's Michaelangelos' church.

NPR has highlighted the Project with an interview with the Project leader, Dr. Edward Goldberg.

Excerpt

"Armed insurrections were designed as the culmination of Allied plans to undermine Nazi rule. In the early years of the war, resistance had been limited to sabotage, anti-Nazi propaganda, small-scale guerrilla actions, and occasional assassinations. The spectacular, and spectacularly avenged, SOE-assisted killing of SS-Ogruf Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in June 1942 demonstrated both the possibilities and the dangers. Yet as the war progressed, and the Allied cause gained strength, both civilian and military subversion were planned on an ever-growing scale. Of course, local circumstances varied enormously. Generally speaking, the Nazi Occupation regimes were far milder in Western Europe than in countries in the East which the Nazis had earmarked for their Lebensraum. Generally speaking, it was less risky to engage in subversive operations in France or Italy than in Poland or Yugoslavia. Even so, the overall trend was unmistakable. As the German forces of occupation came under attack from the Allied armies, they could also expect to come under pressure from organized groups of local patriots and partisans.

"Western air power was a crucial consideration in planning risings. For two years past, Bomber Command had been pounding German cities with impunity, and during Overlord tactical air support was the one branch of the battle in which the British and Americans enjoyed marked superiority. By mid-1944, therefore, all would-be insurgents knew that the Allies possessed the capacity to supply them from the air, to bombard airfields, to disrupt enemy troop concentrations, and to deploy reinforcements by parachute. If, as was generally agreed, the resistance were to assist the Allied armies, by the same token the Allies were expected to assist the resistance."

Read the rest of the excerpt from Norman Davies' book, Rising '44, the Battle for Warsaw

Women in War II

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro has organized the Women Veterans Historical collection composed of oral histories, letters, artifacts, uniforms, recruiting posters and brochures, diaries and photographs. The veterans section contains mainly oral transcripts (some online that can be read) and photographs.

The Naval Historical Center displays recruiting posters for that particular military service. Women in Propaganda, a site from the University of Arizona consists of World War II posters from several countries using images of women as well as part of an essay on the social roles of women during World War II.

An approach to Canadian women involved, in one way or another, in the war effort is described in the site, Valour and Honor: "Whether overseas, or 'keeping the home fires burning', Canadian women were the unsung heroes of WWII. Each nation at war contributed its all; this included the women. They were not always given the option to go and fight, but there was much to be done, and they did it. The strength and bravery with which these women joined the war effort can not be lauded enough. During the Second World War, more than 45,000 Canadian women volunteered for military service. Every other woman volunteered in her own way."

The contents of a book entitled, My Grandmother's Wartime Diary, is on the Canadian Veterans Affairs site, including a chapter from another book, Women Overseas Memoirs of the Canadian Red Cross Corps and that of A Student Nurse in Wartime England.

The BBC site has included a section, Women Under Fire in World War Two, which has a subset, Fashion and Freedom. Here's an excerpt:

Hair was worn long, but off the face. As war drew to a close, women adopted the 'Victory Roll', where the hair was rolled up tightly, fixed in place, and topped with a swept-up curl. Longer hair, like red lipstick, was thought to add to a woman's glamour. The popular wisdom was that such feminine touches boosted morale, both for women and for the men around them.

Another part of the BBC site tackles Christmas Under Fire detailing how Christmas dinner was a triumph of ingenuity.

Naturally, a prime source for World War II stories and remembrances is the Library of Congress and their Veterans History Project, including those of many women in all walks of life. One such woman is a welder in Baltimore MD at the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard, a lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps, a Red Cross worker who served in England, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany and a major general.

Now that we've focused on World War II, don't neglect sites like Women in Korea and The Korean War Veterans National Museum & Library, which invites contributions by those involved.

Book Excerpts

"If you love a man," Irita said, "you are involved in his destiny whether you are married or not. Everyone, in peace or war, runs a risk when he falls in love. A husband or wife may be killed crossing a street. If you want to protect yourself emotionally, the to do is not to fall in love at all."

It was too late to stop that. The couple had already fallen in love. And Irita's words finally swayed Danny to consider marriage. As they discussed it in earnest, their concerns echoed those of most couples on the brink of war marriages. They talked about how Danny may come back wounded, or missing a leg or an arm. She assured him she would love him anyway. They talked, as best they could, about the possibility he might not come back at all. They agreed to delay children until after the war. And they decided she would finish college and then find a job to help build a financial foundation for their postwar life. A young wife working had not been the norm before the war, but as the writer said, "This was no time to bother with peacetime conventions about the husband's being the breadwinner."

Finally, they set about convincing their parents. Warnings and concerns about the dangers of wartime marriages surfaced again. But after many talks and many tears, their parents warmed to the idea. As the writer said, "Danny and I are making the best of a difficult situation. In war, love is a luxury. It comes at a high price....This brand of marriage, I guess, takes steady nerves." They were married New Year's Day 1942. She was nineteen and he was twenty-two. They believed the sacrifices they were making were worth it.

Both Danny and I feel that the democratic way of life is deeply a part of us. We want to defend it with all we have, with all our heart and soul. We're young, we've got a future to fight for, we wouldn't want to raise those babies we're going to have in a country that wasn't worth fighting for.

Read the entire excerpt at Simon and Shuster's page for Our Mothers' War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II by Emily Yellin.

A Pirate of Exquisite Mind

"On 6 April 1674 the merchant ship Content sailed down the Thames, bound for the fast-growing colony of Jamaica. Onboard was a nervous, thin-faced young man on his way to work on a sugar plantation. Twenty-two-year-old William Dampier had balked at the last moment. He feared being sold as an indentured servant when the ship berthed in Jamaica. As wind filled the sails and the small vessel began to creak and roll, it was too late to change his mind. However, he had sensibly agreed with the ship's captain, John Kent, that he would work his passage as an able seaman. As such, the law required Kent to discharge him as a free man on his arrival."

"Dampier had good reason to be suspicious. The colonies had a ferocious appetite for cheap labor for their burgeoning tobacco and sugar plantations. Agents determinedly roamed London's streets and taverns searching for people to cajole and bully into signing indentures, thereby selling themselves into periods of servitude. Sometimes they simply befuddled them with drink before bundling them up the gangplank; then they took their commission and hastily departed. Their victims sobered up to find themselves at sea. Seaman Edward Barlow often watched such servants going under the hammer in Jamaica and knew the going rate: "for country men and such as have no trades ten, twelve or thirteen pounds ... but they that have any trades, they sell for sixteen, twenty, and sometimes for twenty-five pound." On the slightest and most dubious pretexts, employers arbitrarily extended the period of indentures without recompense. It was little better than slavery."

From a New York Times First Chapter of A Pirate of Exquisite Mind by Diana and Michael Preston

The Women Who Came in the Mayflower

There were women with frail bodies, like Rose Standish and Katherine Carver, but there were strong physiques and dauntless hearts sustained to great old age, matrons like Susanna White and Elizabeth Hopkins and young women like Priscilla Mullins, Mary Chilton, Elizabeth Tilley and Constance Hopkins.

Chapter 1 — Endurance and Adventure: The Voyage and Landing

"So they left ye goodly and pleasante citie, which had been ther resting-place near 12 years; but they knew they were pilgrimes,& looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to ye heavens, their dearest cuntrie, and quieted their spirits."

— Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantations. Chap. VII.

December weather in New England, even at its best, is a test of physical endurance. With warm clothes and sheltering homes today, we find compensations for the cold winds and storms in the exhilarating winter sports and the good cheer of the holiday season.

The passengers of The Mayflower anchored in Plymouth harbor, three hundred years ago, lacked compensations of sports or fireside warmth. One hundred and two in number when they sailed, of whom twenty-nine were women, they had been crowded for ten weeks into a vessel that was intended to carry about half the number of passengers. In low spaces between decks, with some fine weather when the open hatchways allowed air to enter and more stormy days when they were shut in amid discomforts of all kinds, they had come at last within sight of the place where, contrary to their plans, they were destined to make their settlement.

At Plymouth, England, their last port in September, they had "been kindly entertained and courteously used by divers friends there dwelling," but they were homeless now, facing a new country with frozen shores, menaced by wild animals and yet more fearsome savages. Whatever trials of their good sense and sturdy faith came later, those days of waiting until shelter could be raised on shore, after the weeks of confinement, must have challenged their physical and spiritual fortitude.

There must have been exciting days for the women on shipboard and in landing. There must have been hours of distress for the older and the delight in adventure which is an unchanging trait of the young of every race. Wild winds carried away some clothes and cooking-dishes from the ship; there was a birth and a death, and occasional illness, besides the dire seasickness. John Howland, "the lustie young man," fell overboard but he caught hold of the topsail halyard which hung extended and so held on "though he was sundry fathoms under water," until he was pulled up by a rope and rescued by a boat-hook.

Read the rest of The Women Who Came in the Mayflower by Annie Russell Marble at Gutenberg's site.

Links

Creation of Canada: A Scattering of Seeds - Based on a 26-part tv documentary of the founding of Canada by immigrants and their efforts to build a nation. Each chapter done by a different director, including a profile of the director and essays on each subject's history in context. Some of the chapters: The Mennonites and Benjamin Eby, Acadian Spirit, Italians of Schreiber, Passage from India, and Ukrainian Stories from Alberta.

Centropa - Located in Vienna, Centropa is a site funded by a US nonprofits and the Austrian government. It combines oral histories and photographs of 20th-century Jewish history in Central and Eastern Europe. Vickie Goldberg's fine New York Times article, For Faces Almost Lost to History, a Chance to Speak (requires first-time registration) outlines some of the stories that are told, journey's followed and families traced. Researchers borrow family photographs for scanning into the site or have local people trained to enter the photos themselves. There are a number of articles to be read, a searchable database allows for matching interests with data and, in addition, recipes and travel tips at the site.

Discovery.com - The same sources behind the Discovery and Learning Channel television programs have a site that includes guides from ancient history to space, travel and expeditions. If you've ever tuned into the Discovery Channel's programs on trauma rooms, weddings, births and dating, there are updates and articles on A Wedding Story, A Dating Story and A Baby Story as well as pages covering collecting and crafts, pets and health. Features from the Earth Alert section included The Art of Analyzing Natural Disasters, Visit Earth's Windiest Places and The Making of a Killer Storm. Endangered species, pollution index levels and environmental stories from across the country are informative while planet, sun, volcano and hurricane cams are also on view.

DoHistory - An innovative site devised by the Harvard Film Study Center which is an experimental, interactive case study based on research in the book and film, A Midwife's Tale. The site and film are based upon the 27-year diary of midwife and healer Martha Ballard. Links to helpful tools for genealogy include Research at the National Archives & Women and Naturalization Records are included.

New Link

HistoryWorld - Sponsored by Britain's Virtual Teacher Centre (and underwritten by the National Grid For Learning), HistoryWorld contains over 400 separate historical articles and approximately 4000 events within its unique database. Visitors may begin by looking through the World History section, where it is possible to take any number of "tours through time," which essentially display a complete succession of events around a given theme, such as religion, science, or architecture. Students looking for a brief overview regarding any number of subjects may want to take a look at the article section which contains articles on various historical themes organized by region, contributor (in this case, the contributing agency or museum), and category. Definitely the most engaging feature of the site is the Whizz Quizz, an online game where visitors can pit their historical knowledge against other competitors. The fastest contestant is subsequently featured on their homepage as Whizzard of the Hour, and no doubt, numerous accolades may also follow! ... From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003.

The Perseus Project at Tufts Classics Department - A digital library of the ancient world with more than 30,000 images that can be accessed through a search engine or 'lookup tool' which produces a kind of survey result with coins, sculpture or sites returned. Originally planned to focus on the Archaic and Classical Greek world, expansions have been made into Latin texts and tools and Renaissance materials. Ancient science, Roman materials, Greek lexicography, an edition of the works of Christopher Marlowe, sources for Shakespeare's Richard III and Julius Caesar, and a facsimile First Folio are included.

Journey of the Corps of Discovery - A PBS site based on the Ken Burns series about the explorations of Lewis and Clark: "Follow an expedition timeline and maps, or read the journals of the Corps.. Listen to expert historians give their thoughts on the expedition ... and in an interactive story, you're leading the expedition now.." Great fun.

Passages: A Treasure Trove of North American Exploration - Another Canadian history project with accounts of European voyages and explorations to North America, from Columbus' Atlantic crossing in 1492 to the famous trip through the Northwest Passage by Roald Amundsen in 1905. Alphabetical and chronological navigational tools allow browsing of summaries that include links to related material, illustrations, and pages from books on successive North American explorations.

Mormon Church's Genealogy Site - The church's Family History Department contains the world's most extensive genealogical database.

RootsWeb - The goal is to make large volumes of data available to the online genealogical community at minimal cost. Support services are provided to genealogical activities such as the USENET newsgroup moderation, mailing list maintenance and surname list generation.

Theban Mapping Project - This project, now housed at the American University in Cairo is a work in progress compiling a comprehensive archaeological database of Thebes, the fabled site with thousands of tombs and temples and concentrating on the Valley of the Kings. The website states that, sadly, "Treasure-hunters and curio-seekers plundered it in the past; pollution, rising ground water, and mass-tourism threaten it in the present." The new version of this site had as its goal scaleable tomb plans, zoomable photographs of tomb and temple walls, historical images as well as new photography, descriptive details and explanations. The user guide has information on browsers, Adobe Acrobat and javascripting for increased usability. There are also articles "regarding the history and development of the Valley of the Kings and the cultural practices that have influenced and shaped the construction and utilization of the tombs in it. Copious photographs, maps and drawings illustrate each of these articles, authored by the Theban Mapping Project." The Atlas of the Valley of the Kings transports you to the site in dramatic fashion.

The photography makes your trip to the tombs and temples startlingly immediate while the sections on funerary equipment impart an elaborate view of preparing for the next world, if there is one.

Yahoo: Genealogy: Yahoo's genealogy page has all the resources for a search: the boards, tips, links, organizations, regional and ethnic resources, commercial companies and lineage's and surnames.