Music, Movies, Television, Celebrities, Fine Art, Artists, Comics, Cartoons, etc.
Today's post is written by archivist David Pfeiffer Yes, spring is here. Major League Baseball’s opening day is Monday, April 6. Finally. It has been a long cold winter. As Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby once said “People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. … Continue reading Baseball Patents
Today’s post is written by Cody White, an archivist at the National Archives at Denver. Strolling the two Western American Art galleries at the Denver Art Museum one can see several examples of famed western artist Charles Marion Russell’s depictions, in both paint and bronze, of the American West, but Russell’s work can also be seen … Continue reading How The West Was Drawn: the Art of Charles Marion Russell in the National Archives at Denver
By David Langbart “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” is considered one of the great motion pictures produced by the American movie industry. In 1989, the Library of Congress added this masterpiece to the United States National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” The movie, starring James Stewart as Jefferson Smith (the “Mr. … Continue reading “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”: Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy as Movie Critic
Today's post is written by Cody White, Archivist at the National Archives at Denver “This is only one more step in our national disintegration, a loss of respect for things sacred to our history. This guardianship has been entrusted to you and it’s high time you did something about it.” It was August 1959 and an … Continue reading “North by Northwest” Starring…Mount Rushmore?
Today's post is written by Dr. Greg Bradsher. Elizabeth Hamer, the chief of the National Archives Exhibits and Publications staff, maintained a very detailed daily diary of everything she and her staff did between 1946 and 1951. While conducting research for an article on the 1946 accessioning and exhibiting of Adolf Hitler’s Last Will and … Continue reading 13 Rue Madeleine and the National Archives
By David Langbart Jazz great Dave Brubeck died on December 5, one day short of his 92nd birthday. Since then, there have been many retrospectives – in print, on television, on radio, and on line. Almost all of those remembrances mention the goodwill tour of Poland and the Far East that Brubeck and his quartet … Continue reading Remembering Dave Brubeck
By Jason Clingerman Political cartoonist Clifford Berryman made use of Thanksgiving throughout his career to highlight timely political issues near the holiday. Below are two examples of his Thanksgiving-themed cartoons: Delegates of the allied powers met in Washington after World War I to conduct peace negotiations. In this 1921 cartoon, Berryman utilizes the day before … Continue reading Cartoonist Clifford Berryman on Thanksgiving
By Jason Clingerman Marines skateboarding into combat... sounds like something out of a Back to the Future sequel, right? Well, as a matter of fact, the U.S. military experimented with using skateboards in combat situations. In the March 1999 exercises known as Urban Warrior '99, the military experimented with the potential use of skateboards to … Continue reading Skateboarding into Combat
Today's post is written by Liz Caringola, who works on our ancestry.com digitization project. February 22, 2012, marks the 25th anniversary of the death of American pop artist Andy Warhol. The Pittsburgh native rose to fame in the 1960s as one of the most prominent members of the American pop art movement. He remained a … Continue reading Remembering Andy through the Archives
By Jason Clingerman What do Walt Disney, Ernest Hemingway, and Whitney Houston have in common? They all served with the American Red Cross! Disney served as a Red Cross ambulance driver in France during World War I. Likewise, Hemingway served as an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I. In fact, Hemingway's service was … Continue reading Uncle Walt, Papa, and The Prom Queen of Soul
