Prologue: Pieces of History

It’s finally time to announce the randonly chosen winner of our Potatriots contest! But first, a big thank you to the visitors who participated in our Potatriots activity–and a big thank-you to our staff and interns who put out those potatos, pipe cleaners, and historic backgrounds every day. We had lots of fun posting our Potatriots online [...]

Today’s “What’s Cooking Wednesdays” guest post comes from Kimberlee Ried, public programs specialist at the National Archives in Kansas City. Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed, I lift my lamp beside the golden door. These words, [...]

Today’s guest post for “What’s Cooking Wednesdays” comes from Acting Director Patrick Connelly with Education Specialist Christopher Zarr of the National Archives at New York City. Sometimes walking down the stacks of the National Archives can be like walking down the aisles of your local supermarket. Names like Heinz, Anheuser-Busch, Hershey, Sara Lee, and Perrier line the shelves of the National Archives. [...]

“What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam?,” our current special exhibition in Washington, DC, examines the Government’s effect on what Americans eat. Government influence was especially visible during wartime, when many food products were reserved for feeding the troops and our Allies. During World War I, the U.S. Food Administration, headed by Herbert Hoover, urged the American people [...]

Sometimes sharing a good meal is the best way to resolve the differences you may have with another. For the United States and China, this strategy helped normalize relations during the peak of the Cold War. Today, the U.S. and China share a public relationship, but after Mao Tse-tung’s Chinese Communist Party founded the People’s [...]