Prologue: Pieces of History

Jan Wilson, it’s been a long wait, but you can now claim the honor of being our last captioner of 2010 and our first declared winner of 2011. President Truman was a practical (and frugal) guy, so why wouldn’t he be able to step up and give tips on Christmas tree gadgetry? As far as [...]

Lynn Ansfield, with her short, historically on-the-nose caption took the top honors in the last photo caption contest. Congrats, Lynn, you’ve won 30% off at the National Archives eStore just in time for the holidays! The Truman Library contains this photo of President Truman receiving a Thanksgiving turkey from members of the Poultry and Egg [...]

Rebecca, it may be time to quit your day job. You have wowed another one of our guest judges, Kathleen Williams, Executive Director of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. The actual caption for this fund-raising fanatic? “The ‘Human Squirrel’ who did many daring ‘stunts’ in climbing for benefit of War Relief Funds in [...]

Ladies and Gentlemen, you have astounded your judge with your caption compositions. Words and phrases like “historical sub-context” and “ingenuity” were used. Also used was the word “shibboleth,” which I had to look up. For the uninitiated, it refers to “any distinguishing practice that is indicative of one’s social or regional origin,” and it was [...]

Zebras, Fruit Stripes gum mascot, firing squads, post modernism . . . what a compendium of cunning captioning! Mr. Tom Mills was up all night last night poring over each comment with a keen eye toward hilarity and utter genius and has selected last week’s winner. In the end Keith Ramsey was dubbed the Captionista [...]