When President Warren G. Harding died suddenly in 1923, the newsboys of Massachusetts jumped into action. The newsboys had considered the president a friend; before Harding was president, he was a newspaperman and he had supported the causes of newsboys while in office. To honor the late president, the newsboys pledged to have a bronze statue commissioned of Harding’s beloved dog, Laddie Boy, paid for and made by the donated pennies of newsboys from across the United States.
Lintoypes brought speed to a new level of the newspaper printing process and ruled the composing rooms for 100 years. Read more about these incredible machines and take a look at how they worked!
The following is a guest post from Meg Metcalf, a reference librarian in the Main Reading Room, currently on detail in the Serial and Government Publications Division. “Margaret Jessie Chung has Aspirations,” the Los Angeles Herald headline read on October 10, 1905. Margaret was a 16-year-old, first-generation Chinese American who was teaching English in the …
Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1997) was a Chinese-born American physicist who worked on the covert Manhattan Project developing the first nuclear weapons for the U.S. during WWII and later conducted a landmark experiment that established her as one of the premier experimental physicists in history.
Only recently have the exploits of Negro Leagues players been officially recognized by Major League Baseball (MLB). These players along with their statistics, records, and teams are now considered Major League. A wrong has finally been righted, so let’s get to know some of these greats and have some fun at the same time with a trivia quiz!
Happy Birthday to the Newspaper & Current Periodical Reading Room! The reading room, located in the James Madison Building of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, opened to the public on May 11, 1982.
What do whale hotels, cat pianos, and malaria pills all have in common? They represent an era when medicine was less of a science and more of an art (for better or for worse). One of the things I do as a reference librarian is answer questions from researchers all over the world. This tends to be rewarding work and sometimes, I even stumble across articles throughout history riddled with fun facts. So today, I'm going to share some stories I've found featuring some of the strangest medical (mal)practices of the past few centuries.
How did U.S. newspapers report on the events of the Holocaust? What is History Unfolded? Read more about it and how you can contribute, become a researcher, and learn how to use the historic newspapers in Chronicling America!
