April 25, 2015, marks 100 years since the first landing of Australian and New Zealand troops (known as the ANZACs, for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) at the Gallipoli peninsula (Gelibolu in Turkish) in Turkey during World War I. A few years ago I wrote about the significance of April 25th, ANZAC Day, which […]
When the Library of Congress was founded in 1800, the institution could not yet boast an established Music Division; in fact, it would be nearly a century before the Library formally created a Music Division. That decision was not so much a philosophical reflection of music’s importance in our culture but rather a necessary course […]
This is a guest post by Jim Martin, senior legal information analyst at the Law Library of Congress. Jim has written some of our most popular posts over the years including The Articles of Confederation. On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Hapsburg presumptive heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his […]
As a student of history, I often wonder how many people understand the significance of the date of Veterans Day and why it is always celebrated on the day of the holiday and not, like Labor Day or Memorial Day, observed on a Monday. The holiday began originally as a commemoration associated with World War I […]
The following is a guest post by Carlos Martinez III, Office of Strategic Initiatives. The centennial of World War I gives the American public the opportunity to learn about and commemorate the sacrifices of our country’s war heroes. The digital collections of the Library of Congress offer a broad range of materials related to World […]
From time to time, I’d like to blog about notable historical events or otherwise interesting advents in our nation’s past, courtesy of Today in History, which mines the American Memory collections to discover what happened in our nation’s history on each date throughout the year. Today’s “TIH” marks the day in 1917 the United States […]
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. From Laurence Binyon’s poem, For the Fallen (1914) Today, April 25, is Anzac Day – a public holiday in […]
I was saddened yesterday by the news that one of the last two known living U.S. veterans of World War I, Harry Landis, had died at age 108. That leaves 107-year-old Frank Buckles of Charles Town, W. Va., as the sole surviving American veteran of the “Great War” that began more than 90 years ago. […]