This week’s interview is with Bacilio Mendez II, an intern in the Public Services Division of the Law Library of Congress. Describe your background. I’m a gay, first-generation, Puerto Rican from Reading, Pennsylvania. Most people recognize the name of my hometown because of the long-defunct railroad that lives on Monopoly boards, but thanks to my […]
The following is a guest post by Brock Thompson, chair of LC GLOBE, the gay and lesbian employee association at the Library of Congress. Brock is also a former editor of In Custodia Legis. This spring, the Library of Congress added two small but important pieces of gay and lesbian legal history to the “Creating […]
In May, a lot of people learned about the actual date of Mexico’s Independence Day, in what turned out to be our most popular post of the month, Cinco de Mayo is Not Mexican Independence Day? We also celebrated with Law Day, Jewish American Heritage Month, Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, and Eritrean Independence Day this month. It must be because […]
Monday, May 30, 2011, is Memorial Day. As our sister blog, In the Muse, wrote last year, Memorial Day is observed on the last Monday in May. Memorial Day was originally established as Declaration Decoration Day in 1868, three years after the Civil War ended, as a time for the nation to decorate the graves […]
I had never really looked at the map in my office until Andrew pointed it out one day. I was surprised at how old it was! And how small the territory of the United States was! I thought I’d share with you images from it. For those that are curious, yes, it appears we all […]
You may or may not be aware that The Hangover Part II is coming out this weekend. You also may or may not be aware that there is a copyright battle heating up over one particular aspect of the movie. As in the first movie, the character played by Ed Helms wakes up to something […]
This week’s interview is with Mike Newman, an Information Technology Specialist at the Library of Congress. Mike works with Tammie in Information Technology Service of the Library. He knows all the technical ins and outs of THOMAS.gov. Chances are if I get a call about how THOMAS works that I can’t answer, I can ask Mike […]
Today, Eritrea, Africa’s youngest nation (at least until next month, when South Sudan is expected to declare its formal independence), celebrates its 20th Independence Day. Eritrea, like all of its African brethren, is a colonial creation. Although Turkey, Egypt, and the local Ethiopian rulers controlled different parts of what later became Eritrea at different times, […]
The following is a guest post by Robert Newlen, the Assistant Law Librarian for Collections, Outreach and Services in the Law Library of Congress. Last month I spent a week in Russia in my favorite city in the world, Moscow. One of my guilty pleasures while there was roaming the wonderful flea markets on the […]
Yesterday was New Zealand’s Budget Day – the day that the Minister of Finance tables various documents and makes a statement in Parliament relating to the Government’s economic policies and spending proposals for the next fiscal year, which starts on July 1. While the proposals in the Budget are interesting and have a large impact […]