What the White House Looks Like Completely Gutted
In the late ’40s, the executive mansion was in a condemnable state. To save it, everything had to go.
A short piece in the September/October 2012 issue of Archaeology magazine highlights the presence of spherical magnetic shards—remnants of the D-Day operations of World War II—found hidden amongst natural sand grains on the beaches of Normandy. “Up to 4 percent of the sand is made up of this shrapnel,” the article states; however, “waves, storms, and rust will probably wipe this microscopic archaeology from the coast in another hundred years.”
speaking of Fancy Dress parties
Gee whiz it’s like this guy time traveled to Right Now and went on the internet and asked what people think is funny. Because the answer is bacon, for reasons I know not.
But since he won first prize I guess they were all hip to the future back in ‘94. 1894.
—William Cronon, president of the American Historical Association. Also:
Perhaps most importantly, Wikipedia provides an online home for people interested in histories long marginalized by the traditional academy. The old boundary between antiquarianism and professional history collapses in an online universe where people who love a particular subject can compile and share endless historical resources for its study in ways never possible before. Amateur genealogists have enabled the creation of document databases that quantitative historians of the 1960s could only fantasize. In my own field of environmental history, I’ve long told students that gardens and cooking, which have only recently begun to attract the academic attention they deserve, have been studied for generations by serious antiquarians and amateur scholars (many of them women) whose interests were marginalized by a male-dominated academy. In the wikified world of the Web, it’s no longer possible to police these boundaries of academic respectability, and we may all be the better for it if only we can embrace this new openness without losing the commitment to rigor that the best amateurs and professionals have always shared more than the professionals have generally been willing to admit.
His advice for historians? “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”
1940: Lady Bird shoots the first film of what we would later call Mrs. Johnson’s Home Movie Collection. She had a degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, after all. How lucky are we at the LBJ Library to have a First Lady who made her own documentary films?
We’ll post one later today, and you’ll see many more as we move through time. She typically did the narration much later, so you’ll also get to hear her voice describing what she sees as she remembers the people and events she filmed. Stay tuned!
LBJ Library photo 41-6-84. This image may be used free of charge as long as credit is given to the source, the Austin American Statesman.
(via ourpresidents)
From November 28 to December 1, 1943, the “Big Three”—Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill—met at Teheran, Iran to discuss the progress of the war and plans for what would become the D-day invasion of June 6, 1944.
Read FDR’s Fireside Chat on Teheran and Cairo Conferences and visit the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
The CIA is releasing a collection of more than 200 declassified documents provided to the Reagan Administration during the Cold War-
The release will include intelligence assessments, high-level memos, and briefing materials provided to the Administration. Also included are never-before-seen video briefings prepared by the CIA on the Soviet space program, the Andropov succession, the Chernobyl disaster, and the Moscow summit.Today, The Reagan Library will host a CIA symposium to discuss how the Reagan Administration used intelligence in making policies to end the Cold War. Featured guest speakers include Kenneth Adelman, Former Director, Arms Congrol and Disarmament Agency, and Oleg Kalugin, Former Major General in the Soviet KGB.
The event is at capacity, but the Reagan Library will be live-streaming the event which starts at 3:30 ET. Watch it here.
Pictured, President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev in Red Square during the Moscow Summit. 5/31/88.
More- Ronald Reagan, Intelligence, and the End of the Cold War
Hey Tumblrers, this is starting in about half an hour. Let me know how it goes!
The original story of Times New Roman’s genesis goes like this: Morison wrote a blistering article in 1929 arguing that Times Old Roman, the font of The Times of London, was dated, clunky, badly printed and in need of help — his help. The paper listened and charged Morison with directing the creation of a new suite of letters. He did, and on Oct. 3, 1943, Times New Roman debuted on the bright white broadsheets of the London daily.
Here’s the problem with this tidy account: Evidence found in 1987 — drawings for letters and corresponding brass plates — suggests that the real father of the font wasn’t a typographer at all, but a wooden boat designer from Boston named William Starling Burgess.
(via laphamsquarterly)
