Prologue: Pieces of History

Are you ready to return to captioning? Can you rewrite history with a humorous twist? Well, we’re back! We’ve been scouring the digital archives looking for the finest photographs. We’re lining up guest judges. We’re setting aside the wacky, the wonderful, and the wordless images from our holdings. And we’re looking forward to all your entries! The winner [...]

We enjoyed the many old fashioned names that our captioners suggested: Ellie Mae, Mildred, Ethel, and Frances! I wonder what the subject of our photo would say in response to the captions that suggest she is in the clutches of an OCD attack or is cooking up something  explosive? This week’s judge knows something about cooking up [...]

We had a hard time choosing this week between captions that suggested ill-fated monkey-navigated flights or included the phrase “monkey hairdo.” Finally we turned to a man of impeccable taste, Brian Barth, who is the man behind the art direction and graphic design of the recipe book Eating with Uncle Sam: Recipes and Historical Bites from the [...]

Congratulations to Jenny, who has won 15% off in our eStore! Out of 25 entries, your caption sounded right to guest judge and Supervisory Motion Picture Preservation Specialist Christina Kovac and her fellow staff in the Audio/Video Preservation Lab. If you listen carefully to this photograph, you may still hear National Archives employees J. W. [...]

Congratulations, Teresa Martin Klaiber, for bringing a smile to the face of Gwen Granados, our guest judge from the National Archives at Riverside. She shared this photograph with us, and we all agreed it was eminently caption-worthy. (Teresa, if you send an e-mail to prologue@nara.gov, I can send you your 15% discount code to use at [...]