Prologue: Pieces of History

Today’s blog post comes from National Archives social media intern Anna Fitzpatrick. Nine months before President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he signed a bill on April 16, 1862, that ended slavery in the District of Columbia. The act finally concluded many years of disagreements over ending ”the national shame” of slavery in the nation’s [...]

Why were neck beards ever socially acceptable? In my humble opinion, they are the facial equivalent of mullets or bowl cuts. Unlike bad haircuts, however, they may have had some useful characteristics. Maybe they kept cold wind from blowing in men’s collars. Maybe their wives objected to prickly beards and mustaches but the husbands still [...]

Today’s blog post comes from Jennifer Johnson, curator at the National Archives. The National Archives is known as the nation’s record keeper. But you may be surprised to learn that we also have a vast collection of gifts, given to Presidents, Vice Presidents, and their wives, that is astonishing in its variety. At the National [...]

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 blog post comes from National Archives social media intern Anna Fitzpatrick. During the Civil War, the government moved slowly but steadily from an affirmation of the Constitutional protection of slavery to its complete abolition with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment. This change was in part forced on the Federal government by the [...]