Today marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. This photograph is part of the presidential records available at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, CA.

Today, in 1884, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn was published.  I searched for “Mark Twain” in the National Archives’ Online Public Access tool today and discovered a picture of Mark Twain’s house, pictures of the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri, and a picture of the “Mark Twain Stump.”  Enjoy these three photos and look for [...]

Happy Birthday, Bess Truman!  She was born on February 13, 1885.  The picture below is her at about age 4 1/2. In anticipation of Valentine’s Day, you might also want to check out love letters from Harry Truman to Bess Truman spanning 1910 to 1957, available on the Truman Presidential Library website at http://www.trumanlibrary.org/bessltr.htm.  I [...]

In the series, “Photographs Relating to the Administration, Family, and Personal Life of Harry S. Truman,” we’ve found online a photograph from February 12, 1947 at a commemoration of Lincoln’s Birthday with a large crowd of African American school children on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Photograph of a large group of black children [...]

Although the significance and importance of the 15th Amendment probably trumps all other documents we could possibly find for February 3rd, we have found the accident report of Buddy Holly’s deadly plane crash in Iowa on February 3, 1959. The Accident Report is from the Civil Aeronautics Board, and includes details of the weather, a [...]