(The following is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division.) Could George B. McClellan have become the seventeenth President of the United States? It certainly appeared to be a possibility as Abraham Lincoln assessed the military and political landscape of the United States in the summer of …
Aug. 15, 2014, marked the centennial of the completion of the Panama Canal, a 48- mile waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The canal is a key conduit for international maritime trade. Plans by the Panamanian government to celebrate the historic event began more than a year ago. A Panama Canal mobile app was launched …
(The following is an article written by Rosemary Girard, intern in the Library of Congress Office of Communications, for the Library staff newsletter, The Gazette.) After weeks of researching, curating and unearthing some of the Library of Congress’s millions of artifacts, members of the Junior Fellows Program had a chance to present their most interesting …
For most of two decades, a future president carried on an affair with a family friend. For 50 years, the love letters they wrote each other – discovered in a closet, sealed by a court order and, finally, locked in a vault at the Library of Congress for safekeeping – have been closed to the …
The Library of Congress will open a collection of approximately 1,000 pages of love letters between 29th U.S. President Warren G. Harding and his mistress, Carrie Fulton Phillips, on Tuesday, July 29. The collection has been locked in a vault in the Manuscript Division since its donation in 1972. The letters were written between 1910 …
The story of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” for many decades, seemed as murky as the smoky haze over Fort McHenry on the morning two centuries ago when Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics that still inspire a nation. No one knew for sure who wrote the music. No one fully understood the circumstances of the tune’s creation (but, no, it wasn’t a …
Schools were from at-risk communities, and Spencer shared her own personal story growing up with dyslexia in a very small town in Alabama. The actress won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Minny in the 2011 film “The Help.” “Randi Rhodes, Ninja Detective: The Case of the Time-Capsule Bandit” is …
Several years ago I took a whirlwind tour of Ireland, which included a few days in Dublin. One of my most memorable experiences was taking a literary pub crawl through the city. Throughout the evening, the actor tour guides led us in the footsteps of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde, among others. While …
Last week, the Library hosted the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Foundation for its annual “We Write the Songs” concert, featuring the songwriters performing and telling the stories behind their own music. Carly Simon, Randy Newman and Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart joined others in performing some of their most popular tunes. “We used …
