Prologue: Pieces of History

The results are in! Our guest judge Tim Walch, director of the Hoover Presidential Library in Iowa, decided that Shannon’s caption takes the prize. “This a wonderful, unexpected, quirky caption-and a great plug for a funny film. Also, we don’t think about Rosemary Clooney enough these days!” he said. Congratulations, Shannon, you’ve won 30% off at the National Archives eStore! [...]

The story of Tokyo Rose is the stuff of legends—an English-speaking Japanese woman who seduced the airwaves of the South Pacific with tales of Japanese success, Allied failures, and honest encouragement to give up the fight and return home. The trouble is, there never was a Tokyo Rose, the name was a GI term used [...]

In 1885, Munich’s Oktoberfest was celebrated under the glow of the electric light for the first time. Who was responsible for that feat? None other than Albert Einstein himself. Granted, it may have been his father and uncle who are truly due the credit (Albert was a teetotaling six-year-old at the time), but the math [...]

They say you can’t put a price on freedom, but you can put a price on savings bonds! Watch this compilation of famous celebrities plugging savings and stamp bonds, from Mr. Ed and Lassie all the way to the Duke and Bugs Bunny.

Long before the push to make high-speed Internet available across America, Samuel Morse was tap-tap-tapping information across America. By 1838, his telegraph machine was using a dot-and-dash system to send messages of up to 10 words a minute. He even convinced Congress to come to up with $30,000 to help him wire America. Morse was [...]