Prologue: Pieces of History

The National Archives holds many records that tell the story of the attack on Pearl Harbor. To commemorate the 70th anniversary of that day, we’ve gathered links from across our blogs and on Tumblr to show you some of these moving documents that we hold in safekeeping. Memo to the President This memorandum was one of the [...]

In the early afternoon of December 7, 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt was just finishing lunch in his oval study on the second floor of the White House, preparing to work on his stamp album. The phone rang, and he was informed that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, shortly before 1 p.m. Washington time, [...]

Last week’s image may have sparked some of our best captions yet! Apparently a giant roll of paper makes our readers think of their experiences in the National Archives research room, Twitter, and toilet paper at the State Department. But it reminded us of another enormous rolled document featured on Pieces of History: a 1954 [...]

The work the National Archives Preservation staff does every day is hardly “everyday.” A recent post about Hawaii’s petition for statehood on the Preservation Program’s Facebook page demonstrated this fact. This preservation project stemmed from a request from our Center for Legislative Archives. Each archival unit creates annual and long-term preservation plans, and the Center’s [...]