The moon always has been an object of fascination for mankind, but once President John F. Kennedy pledged in 1961 that the U.S. would send a manned spacecraft there within a decade, one of the first questions was entirely practical: Where would they land? An extraordinary map, the USAF Lunar Wall Mosaic, produced the year after Kennedy's speech, helped provide the answer. The 1969 Apollo 11 mission landed safely in an area called the Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility). Today, a copy of the map is preserved at the Library as one of the most important -- and practical -- maps in human history.
Only traces remain of Salomon August Andrée’s 1897 attempt to reach the North Pole. From a base on the Svalbard archipelago, the engineer and his two companions had hoped to float a hydrogen balloon gracefully over the pole, drop a Swedish flag and claim the glory of first discovery. Their friends never saw them alive again. Their remains were found in 1930 on a small island in the Arctic Ocean and the story became internationally famous. The Library preserves several artifacts from the expedition, including fabric samples from the construction of the balloon.
Marie Tharp was an American geologist and marine cartographer whose groundbreaking studies into ocean floors and discovery of the mid-Atlantic rift valley challenged the widely accepted geological views of the time. Her papers are preserved at the Library, a window into the thinking of a scientist who changed the understand of the world we live in.
From the vast reaches of outer space to the depths of the Mariana Trench, the Library’s collections chronicle some of the Western world’s greatest voyages of discovery and exploration. These are journeys that crossed time and space, shattering the old realms of myth and superstition and revealing the known world, a place of maps and charts and taxonomic tables. Giants and dragons did not exist, it turned out, but a whole new universe filled with strange and wonderful things did.
Library conservators have been carefully cleaning and restoring a small trove of papyrus writings from ancient Egypt. The writings are mostly decrees, contracts and other pragmatic records, but still offer a window into a world long gone by.
Maria Sibylla Merian, a 17th-century natural scientist, artist and engraver, gained lasting fame for her pioneering scientific illustration techniques, enabling her to bring a soft, delicate touch to her brilliantly shaded work.
How well do you understand your dog? Probaly not quite as well as you think. Alexandra Horowitz is the author of "Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know," which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list when it was published in 2009. An updated version of the book has just been released and she'll be at the National Book Festival on Sept. 6 to discuss her work. We caught up with her for a few questions beforehand.
We're talking today with David Baron, author of “The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America,” who will be at this year’s National Book Festival on Sept. 6. It’s about the public fascination between 1890-1910 with what looked to be the very real possibility of life of Mars. The main cultural artifact of this belief might be H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel, “The War of the Worlds,” which imagined hostile Martians invading Earth in spectacular fashion. But as Baron writes, most of the views were utopian, picturing Martians as a far advanced, heroic people.
Jessica Fries-Gaither, an elementary school science teacher from Columbus, Ohio, is serving as an Albert Einstein distinguished educator fellow at the Library this year. We caught up with her to ask her about her work and some favorite projects.
