The Library’s newly digitized gallery of African American portraits from the late 19th and early 20th centuries showcases the lives, hopes and dreams of the famous and the forgotten of the era. Here are stories of Robert Church, Gertrude Mossell and William Pettigrew.
After the Union victory at Gettysburg in the Civil War in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln asked the nation set aside the fourth Thursday of November as a national holiday of thanksgiving. Congress made it official in 1870.
The Library’s collection of Lynd Ward’s works includes a first-edition copy of “Gods’ Man,” a 1929 wordless novel that is credited as the precursor of the graphic novel.
Mark Dimunation, the head of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, writes about the famous last seance that attempted to reach the ghost of Harry Houdini, atop the Knickerbocker Hotel on Halloween, 1936.
We first ran this piece last year at Halloween. It proved so popular year-round that we reprint it this Halloween season. It was co-researched and co-written by digital library specialist Elizabeth Gettins, who also had the brilliant idea for the piece. An ancient tome delving into the dark arts of witchcraft and magic…a book […]
The Library has a pair of the 15th century’s most influential books on the alleged practices of witchcraft, both from the era when alleged witches were tortured and killed.
The Library’s newest crowdsourcing campaign are the vast notebooks of Frederick Hockley, a 19th century British Spiritualist who believed he could communicate with the dead.
The Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division holds a dazzling array of 15th-century woodcuts. Taken together, they display the experimentation of artistry and design in the years following the invention of the printing press.
In 1619, German astronomer Johannes Kepler wrote “Harmonices Mundi” (“Harmony of the Worlds”), a book that tried to understand the mystery of the polyhedral designs of viruses. Four centuries later, the same designs are seen in the building blocks of COVID-19. The Library has copies of Kepler’s work in the Rare Books and Special Collections Division.
Nearly 50,000 title pages that accompanied copyright registrations dating back to the foundation of the country are now online for the first time, featuring works by some of the nation’s most famous authors.