To celebrate our new exhibit "What's Cooking, Uncle Sam?" we are featuring a food-related blog post every Wednesday. Today's post comes from Christopher Zarr at the National Archives in New York City. The National Archives maintains the primary source documents of the U.S. Food Administration (USFA). Thousands of documents illustrate the local sacrifices and quality … Continue reading What’s Cooking Wednesdays: Eat your peas in NYC
If you have watched the movie Glory, you saw a recreation of the assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, by the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry. But a real-life hero from that battle was Sgt. William Harvey Carney, who was awarded the Medal of Honor on May 23, 1900—37 years after the assault on Fort Wagner. The Medal of Honor is … Continue reading A record of valor
Earlier today, I was searching for images with "bicycles" to create a Facebook album after being inspired by the commuters of DC, who took to the streets on their bikes to celebrate DC Bike to Work Day. I was thrilled to see this image, which is not only a fine example of a nineteenth-century velocipede, … Continue reading Friday Facial Hair: It’s Date Night!
Congratulations to Jenny, who has won 15% off in our eStore! Out of 25 entries, your caption sounded right to guest judge and Supervisory Motion Picture Preservation Specialist Christina Kovac and her fellow staff in the Audio/Video Preservation Lab. If you listen carefully to this photograph, you may still hear National Archives employees J. W. … Continue reading Thursday Photo Caption Contest
Today on "What's Cooking Wednesday," we are excited to share a special guest post and recipe from food writer Joan Nathan, who will be speaking at the National Archives on May 25 with Chef Spike Mendelsohn about Jewish holiday traditions and cooking. In all the years I have been writing about food, I thought that … Continue reading Kuchem-Buchem just like Grandma used to make
Our new exhibit "What's Cooking, Uncle Sam?" opens on June 10 and has over 100 original records about food. But what if you could do more than just look at the records? What if you could taste them—and taste history? Chef Jose Andres—the 2011 Outstanding Chef at the James Beard Foundation Awards, host and executive producer … Continue reading The Archivist and the Chef
If you are planning to attend our event next week on crowdsourcing, you will hear a presentation by Jessica Zelt from the U.S. Geological Survey’s North American Bird Phenology Program. My colleague here in the office was editing the text for this event. She thought her husband, an avid bird watcher, might be interested in the … Continue reading It’s a bird, it’s a beard, it’s Audubon!
Congratulations to RexAnn! Your caption about bingo was the winning combination to win the contest and 15% off at the National Archives eStore. These ladies aren't letting a lack of cars, love of bingo, or age stop them from enjoying life! This photograph is from the 1970s DOCUMERICA series. The caption reads "Tricycle club of … Continue reading Thursday Photo Caption Contest
The National Archives has over 3,000 employees, but not all of them are archivists. There are educators, social media writers, preservationists, security personnel, and Federal Records Center workers. Some of us handle records all day, but for many of us, our jobs do not bring us into direct contact with the records. That's why it is so exciting … Continue reading Inside the Treasure Vault
It's very rare to have an example of a recent beard, and even more rare to have a bearded President after, oh, 1890. So I was shocked when John Keller, an archivist at the Clinton Library, sent a link to this picture of President Clinton. He explains the unusual find in this guest post: Here … Continue reading Thor? Is that you?
