Prologue: Pieces of History

Once upon a time, space was quiet. This was before satellites had cluttered the orbit of the earth, beaming TV shows and text messages and GPS coordinates. Before 1958, space was very quiet. On December 18, 1958, the Air Force placed the first communications satellite, a Project SCORE relay vehicle, into orbit. And then, on [...]

Today’s post comes from Sam Anthony, special assistant to the Archivist of the United States. When President Obama visited Thailand on Sunday, he brought a piece of the National Archives as a diplomatic gift. In preparation for the President’s trip to Asia, the Protocol Office of the State Department asked for facsimiles of photographs of [...]

Today’s post was written by Pamela Loos-Noji, a former volunteer with the Civil War Widows Pension Project. The National Archives holds 1.28 million case files of pension applications from family members of deceased Civil War Union soldiers. A team of more than 60 volunteers, led by National Archives staff, is digitizing the files and placing [...]

Rick Blondo, management and program analyst at the National Archives, reflects on the logistics of maintaining records in the sweltering humidity that is summer in Washington, DC. Summer in Washington can be a wilting experience for tourists and locals alike, but not so for the holdings maintained in the National Archives. The National Archives was [...]

This is part of a series, written by Jim Zeender, devoted to letters written by the Founding Fathers in their own words and often in their own hand. Jim is a senior registrar in Exhibits. Shortly after the diplomatic break between John Adams and Count de Vergennes, Adams left for Amsterdam. Once there, he worked [...]