Pennsylvania's Big Pat Bane, a cheerful man standing some 6 feet 9 inches, was almost certainly the tallest soldier in the Civil War. His feet came out of his shoes. Crowds swarmed. Children ran and laughed and gaped. He led parades. Fellow soldiers, particularly at reunions, gawped and guffawed. All this earned him an almost mythical place in pop culture of the late 19th century.
The Library’s Free to Use and Reuse sets of photographs and prints are copyright-free, yours to use anyway you like. This set of winter photos offers a window in the worlds of lost arts of ice harvesting, snowshoe-making and finally, the society set of snowbirds in Palm Beach, Florida, in the 1950s.
Because George Washington and King George III were on opposite sides of America’s war of independence from Britain, we have learned to think of them as opposites. Our research for an upcoming Library of Congress exhibition, “The Two Georges: Parallel Lives in an Age of Revolution,” however, has turned up something much more interesting: They were surprisingly alike in temperament, interests and, despite the obvious differences in their lives and experiences.
Mac Barnett, the bestselling author of more than 60 children's books, including “Twenty Questions,” “Sam & Dave Dig a Hole,” “A Polar Bear in the Snow” as well as the “Mac B., Kid Spy” series, will be inaugurated today as the 2025-2026 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.
This is a guest post by Zach Klitzman, a writer-editor in the Library’s Publishing Office. “All we want are the facts, ma’am,” from “Dragnet.” “Book ’em, Danno,” from “Hawaii Five-O.” David Caruso flipping on his sunglasses before offering a pithy line in “CSI: Miami.” These and other cop-show catchphrases have their roots in Lawrence Treat’s …
A family Bible in Washington, looted by a British soldier during the War of 1812 and kept in his family for generations, was eventually returned to the nation more than a century later. It is now preserved by the Library, an artifact of two nations of war and then in peace.
The personal world atlas of Louis XIV of France, the absolutist Sun King, was a doozy: a large two-volume set of more than 120 maps now held in the Library’s Geography and Map Division. It was the first world map to show the mythical Sea of the West, a supposed inland sea in the Pacific Northwest, and was the first world map in more than a century to show California as a peninsula, not an island. The creator of the map, Jean-Baptiste Nolin, was later successfully sued for plagiarizing its greatest cartographic innovations, but Louis never let go of his copy.
Kelsey Corlett-Rivera, an international language librarian for the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, received a 2024 Librarian of Congress Award for expanding acquisition and discoverability of accessible books. Here, she discusses her background and work at the Library.
George Washington made his living as a land surveyor from ages 17 to 20, an enterprise that took him deep into the Blue Ridge Mountains in what is now Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia. His diaries and surveying field notebooks are preserved at the Library, along with the rest of his papers, and are featured in a new exhibit, "The Two Georges."