Archive for December, 2010
Top Ten Pieces of History for 2010
Since April 2010, we’ve brought you more than 100 Pieces of History. Nothing too small, too strange, or too obscure has escaped the spotlight of our blog or the scalpel of your clever comments. And we are still discovering new pieces of history every day here at the National Archives! But before we go forward into [...]
Posted by Hilary on December 30, 2010, under - Civil Rights, - Civil War, - Constitution, - Exploration, Facial Hair Fridays, Myth or History.
Tags: 2011, abraham lincoln, facebook, Gettysburg, Horace Greeley, Jeanette Rankin, lincoln, mole skin, moleskine, neard, Pieces of History, POH, teddy roosevelt, Top Ten, West Virginia, wine
Comments: none
A hot dog for the King
Following upon the spate of movies in recent years about British female royalty (the Elizabeths and Victoria), we now have one about British male royalty, The King’s Speech, starring Colin Firth as George VI. It focuses on George VI (the current monarch’s father) and his struggle to overcome stuttering and stammering, especially when he spoke [...]
Posted by Jim on December 27, 2010, under - World War II, Uncategorized.
Tags: american history, Colin Firth, George VI, hot dogs, King of England, NARA, National archives and records administration, Roosevelt Library
Comments: 2
The must-have Christmas gift of 1776
In 1864, Savannah, Georgia, was offered to Abraham Lincoln as a Christmas present. But in 1776, George Washington delivered one of the greatest gifts in American history: the United States. Winter was a bad season for Washington. His Continental Army had been driven out of New York, and then it was driven out of New [...]
Posted by Rob Crotty on December 23, 2010, under - Revolutionary War.
Comments: 2
The CIA’s catalog of covert conundrums
In 1992, George Washington University’s “National Security Archive” submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), soliciting information from the Central Intelligence Agency. Their request was inspired by a 1973 memorandum issued from then-CIA Director James R. Schlesinger, who requested that all CIA employees, past or present, “report to me immediately on any activities now going [...]
Posted by Rob Crotty on December 23, 2010, under - Cold War, - Spies and Espionage, - The 1960s.
Comments: none
A temporarily insane Congressman
The first use of the temporary insanity plea to beat a murder charge happened in 1859 and was employed in the defense of a man named Dan Sickles, who had killed his wife’s lover. A story such as this might be relegated to the footnotes of law review books were it not for the fact that [...]
Posted by Rob Crotty on December 22, 2010, under - Civil War, Uncategorized.
Comments: 1