June is the birth month of Bedonkohe Apache leader Geronimo. The Library of Congress Manuscript Division holds what it believes to be is an example of his autograph on an unattributed drawing of a horse, reminders of a challenging history and relationship with the federal government, including President Theodore Roosevelt.
On September 25, 1910, in Aotearoa New Zealand, a stunning Maori kite caught Alexander Graham Bell's eye. His journals show Bell's brief encounter with an indigenous scientific tradition and reveal his own obsession with transporting human beings through the air in enormous tetrahedral kites.
In 1792 Spanish-Peruvian naval officer Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra sailed up the coast of North America to meet with George Vancouver and the leaders of the Nuu-chah-nulth people of Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island. His journal is in the Manuscript Division.
Attendance sheets signed by actors trained at the Actor Studio in 1955 were originally a routine record of who was there each day, but are now a useful resource for research into the history and influence of the Actors Studio as well as entertaining artifacts for fans of movies, television, and theater.
In 1864, Anson Burlingame, an American diplomat in China, received a telegram from his counterpart in Russia with a simple message: Abraham Lincoln had been reelected president. Yet there was a complexity behind the simplicity.
Excerpts from a letter written November 27, 1864, by Lieutenant Samuel E. Nichols of the Union Army provide insight into the surprise contingencies that afflicted soldiers in his unit on Thanksgiving Day during the Civil War.
The notes exchanged between baseball fans Harry A. Blackmun and Potter Stewart during the 1973 American League Championships and the 1975 World Series show how notes exchanged between justices of the Supreme Court provide insight into their informal relationships, allowing us to understand better the individuals who serve on the nation's highest court.
In 1797 Vice-President Thomas Jefferson learned that the perpetrator of the Yellow Creek Massacre was not the man he had named in his Notes on the State of Virginia. A letter newly acquired by the Manuscript Division tells the story.