(The following is a guest post by Beverly Brannan, curator of photography in the Prints and Photographs Division. Helen Johns Kirtland must have been a very persuasive person because only a few U.S. women obtained credentials to report in countries actively fighting in World War I. Both she and her husband Lucien Swift Kirtland secured […]

(The following is a guest blog post by Mark Diminution, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, and Elizabeth Gettins, Library of Congress digital library specialist.) There are the occasional stories that one hears about a book saving a life due to an informational or even spiritual message, but how many people can claim a […]

(The following is a guest post by VHP Reference Specialist Megan Harris, reprinted from the Folklife Today blog.) One look at Irving Greenwald’s diary is all it takes to bring to mind the old adage “good things come in small packages.” This World War I diary, written by Pfc. Irving Greenwald, was donated to the Veterans […]

(The following is a guest post from Ryan Reft, modern U.S. historian in the Manuscript Division.) “No son has ever left home whose family had greater pride in him than we have in you,” wrote prominent Washington D.C. lawyer and African American civic leader William LePre Houston to his son, Charles Hamilton Houston in September […]

(The following is a guest post by Margaret Wood, a legal reference librarian at the Law Library of Congress.) Six weeks after the declaration of war against Germany on April 6, 1917, ch. 1, 40 Stat.1, Congress passed the Selective Service Act. Initially, President Woodrow Wilson and Congress had hoped the needed 1 million men […]

(The following is a guest post by Katherine Blood of the Prints and Photographs Division.) Illustrator Charles Dana Gibson was already a celebrity when tapped in April 1917 to lead the federal government’s Division of Pictorial Publicity — an arm of Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information. He was enlisted by Committee head George Creel, […]

(The following post is by Jennifer Gavin, senior public affairs specialist at the Library of Congress.) In the United States, a century ago, there were more than 8 million citizens of German origin or with German ancestry – the largest single group among those of foreign birth or ancestry, but still less than 10 percent […]

(The following is a post by Arlene Balkansky, reference specialist in the Serial and Government Publications Division, and Will Elsbury, military history specialist in the Humanities and Social Sciences Division.) The Library of Congress’ historical newspaper collections are extensive in their coverage of World War I. From the beginning of the war to America’s involvement to […]

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 […]