In 1982, former United States Marine Corps historian H. C. L. Merillat published a history of the Guadalcanal Campaign based largely on his wartime diaries, but he left out entries that showed him struggling with his role in the military and in the war. Unpublished excerpts reveal Merillat’s thoughts and insecurities during the campaign and reveal some of the burdens of recording history as it happened.
In summer 1861, William J. Rhees, chief clerk of the Smithsonian Institution, wrote to his wife about Professor Thaddeus Lowe’s balloon experiments on the National Mall . . . including the reason one ascent never got off the ground. Because (almost) nothing in Washington happens without first securing a purchase order or an appropriation.
Supplementary items from the Manuscript Division’s Walt Whitman Papers in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection are newly available for transcription through the Library of Congress By the People program.
The Milagros Gonzalez Jamias Family Photograph Album portrays aspects of Philippine society during the American colonial period, including social and economic reforms implemented by President William S. Taft, and the private life of a wealthy family.
Staff Favorites is a new interview-based series in which staff members share favorite items from Manuscript Division collections. This guest post is by Manuscript Division cataloging librarian Joy Orillo-Dotson.
Guest author Janet Lindenmuth, Reference Librarian at Delaware Law School, uncovers the story of labor and suffrage activist Ruza Wenclawska in Manuscript Division collections.
Wendell Cannon, a high school teacher from Illinois, toured Europe during his summer break in 1936. His journal, photographs, and other souvenirs capture familiar tourist activities such as a visit to Paris’s Arc de Triomphe as well as the unique experience of visiting Nazi Germany and witnessing Jesse Owens win gold in the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics.
Join Rachel Gross, author of Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America, to learn more about the surprising military origins of your favorite outdoor gear.
