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Archive: December 2017 (15 Posts)

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

Veterans on the Homefront: A Wasp Born to Fly

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by Megan Harris, a librarian with the Veterans History Project. It is one of four profiles that make up “Veterans on the Homefront,” published in the November–December 2017 issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine. This profile recounts the way in which Violet Clara Thurn Cowden was affected by …

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

Inquiring Minds: Raising a Curtain on Amy Beach, Musical Pioneer

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Amy Beach (1867–1944), whose musical accomplishments changed the way Americans understood the possibilities for women in music. Born in New Hampshire to a prominent New England family, Beach was a child prodigy: by age four, she was composing simple waltzes; at seven, she began giving …

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

Update on the Twitter Archive at the Library of Congress

Posted by: Gayle Osterberg

In 2010, the Library of Congress announced an exciting and groundbreaking acquisition—a gift from Twitter of the entire archive of public tweet text beginning with the first tweets of 2006 through 2010, and continuing with all public tweet text going forward. The Library took this step for the same reason it collects other materials – …

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

Featured Item: Let’s Go Sledding!

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

To celebrate the season, we’re highlighting a historical advertisement for Star Toboggans on our home page this month. The colorful sledding scene is part of the Library’s Popular Graphic Arts Collection, which contains more than 15,000 historical prints published between 1700 and 1900. The prints depict images from everyday life, historical events, celebrities, popular destinations …

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

World War I: Injured Veterans and the Disability Rights Movement

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by Ryan Reft, a historian in the Manuscript Division. Fans of the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire” may remember that World War I veterans grappling with disability occupied a critical place in the show’s story. Fictional vet Jimmy Darmandy (Michael Pitt) struggled as much with PTSD as he did with a …

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

Trending: Who Invented Electric Christmas Lights?

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Thomas Edison, inventor of the first successful practical light bulb, created the very first strand of electric lights. During Christmas 1880, strands of lights were strung outside his Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory, giving railroad passengers traveling by their first look at an electrical light display. But it would take almost 40 years for electric …

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: Caldecott for Christmas

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by digital library specialist Elizabeth Gettins. This December, the Rare Book and Special Collections Division is revisiting the lively and whimsical illustrations of Randolph Caldecott (1846–1886), who customarily published works at Christmastime, giving his young readership a special holiday treat. This tradition started as the result of a lucky circumstance …

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

Pic of the Week: Happy Holidays!

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

The Library of Congress honored Christmas and Hanukkah on December 13 with a program in the Great Hall of the Jefferson Building. Here, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, who started her career as a children’s librarian, reads “The Night Before Christmas” to children of Library staff and the public.

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

This Day in History: Wright Brothers Take Flight

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

On a dark and windy morning on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, 114 years ago this Sunday, Orville Wright took flight in a tiny airplane he and his brother Wilbur had painstakingly constructed. The 605-pound craft flew all of 120 feet and remained airborne only 12 seconds. After Orville’s first success, Wilbur set the …