Please enjoy this countdown of our most popular blog posts of 2021. Thank you for continuing to read the Text Message and we hope you join us for more stories, insights, and highlights from the textual records of the National Archives in 2022!
#5 “Lucy, I’m Home!”… from the Army
Christen Brown, from the Special Media Division at the National Archives in College Park, MD wrote about Desi Arnaz’s military service during World War II.
#4 Remembering Tony Dedman
Cody White, the Subject Matter Expert for Native American Records, wrote a fitting post for Memorial Day about Tony Dedman, a Navajo soldier who fell during Operation Hardihood in Vietnam.
#3 The Iran-Contra Affair: Faded in Time, But Not Forgotten
Lynn Nashorn, from the National Archives at College Park wrote about the Reagan administration’s scandal involving Nicaragua, Iran, and arms for aid, forty years after the start of the Sandinistas/Contras conflict.
#2 Now Available Online: Department of State Records, 1789-1906
Throughout the year David Langbart has written many posts detailing the records from the Department of State as they have been made available online in the National Archives Catalog. This was the first post in a series of six (so far)
#1 Shutting Down the Sky: The Federal Aviation Administration on 9/11
2021 marked the twentieth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11th. Megan Dwyre of the Special Access and FOIA Program wrote about the first ever unplanned shutdown of US airspace and the inner workings of Air Traffic Control.
The remaining most viewed blogs from The Text Message last year: