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Archive: August 2016 (12 Posts)

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Headlines from America’s Earliest Days

Posted by: Erin Allen

Want to read how an 18th-century newspaper covered the inauguration of George Washington? How about learning what issues divided Congress in the early 1800s? Going back into early American history is now possible due to new digital content that has been added to Chronicling America, the open access database of historic U.S. newspapers that is …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

World War I: Bad Romance — Gibson’s Chilling Personification of War

Posted by: Erin Allen

(The following is a guest post by Katherine Blood of the Prints and Photographs Division.) Illustrator Charles Dana Gibson was already a celebrity when tapped in April 1917 to lead the federal government’s Division of Pictorial Publicity — an arm of Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information. He was enlisted by Committee head George Creel, …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Rare Book of the Month: “I Am Anne Rutledge…”

Posted by: Erin Allen

(The following is a guest blog post written by Elizabeth Gettins, Library of Congress digital library specialist.) This week, we not only celebrate the birthday of author Edgar Lee Masters (Aug. 23, 1868) but also observe the untimely death of Ann Rutledge (Aug. 25, 1835), who figured in his best-known work. Masters spent his childhood …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Letters About Literature: Dear Anne Frank

Posted by: Erin Allen

We wrap up our Letters About Literature series with the second tie-winning National Honor Award letter for Level 3 (grades 9-12). The national reading and writing program asks young people in grades 4 through 12 to write to an author (living or deceased) about how his or her book affected their lives. Winners for 2016 were announced …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Curator’s Picks: Signature Sounds

Posted by: Erin Allen

(The following is from the July/August 2016 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. You can read the issue in its entirety here.) Matt Barton in the Library’s Motion Picture and Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division discusses some of the nation’s most iconic radio broadcasts. DATE OF INFAMY SPEECH President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed a Joint …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

World War I: When Wurst Came to Worst

Posted by: Erin Allen

(The following post is by Jennifer Gavin, senior public affairs specialist at the Library of Congress.) In the United States, a century ago, there were more than 8 million citizens of German origin or with German ancestry – the largest single group among those of foreign birth or ancestry, but still less than 10 percent …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Letters About Literature: Dear Marie Lu

Posted by: Erin Allen

We continue our spotlight of letters from the Letters About Literature initiative, a national reading and writing program that asks young people in grades 4 through 12 to write to an author (living or deceased) about how his or her book affected their lives. Winners for 2016 were announced in June. Nearly 50,000 young readers …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

New Online: More Presidents & Newspapers

Posted by: Erin Allen

(The following is a guest post by William Kellum, manager in the Library’s Web Services Division.)  July was a relatively quiet month for the Library’s websites, highlighted by the long-planned retirement of THOMAS, covered in this excellent blog post from the Law Library’s In Custodia Legis blog. New in Manuscripts The William Henry Harrison Papers have recently …