A national “melting pot museum” telling the story of the immigration and migration that formed the United States has been proposed by several members of Congress. Legislation was introduced to study the creation of a National Museum of the American People. A least one congressman has been a critic of building individual ethnic museums on [...]
Monday, January 31, 2011
The first map to be copyrighted and printed in the United States, published six months after the end of the Revolutionary War, has been loaned to the Library of Congress. David Rubinstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group, purchased the map at a Christie’s auction late last year. The boundaries of the new American nation and [...]
Monday, November 1, 2010
An audit released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office shows that nearly 80 percent of federal agencies are at risk of illegally destroying public records. The audit was prompted in part by the loss of the Wright Brothers’ original patent and of maps for the atomic bomb missions in Japan. The report cites “significant weaknesses” in [...]
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Former Los Angeles Times political cartoonist (and Rancho Palos Verdes resident) Paul Conrad died today at the age of 86. In a 50+ year career, Conrad won three Pulitzer Prizes and incurred the wrath of such figures as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Working for the Denver Post and the Times, Conrad took on presidents from [...]
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
At New York’s Polo Grounds on Oct. 3, 1951, outfielder Bobby Thomson of the Giants hit a game-winning home run off Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca for the National League championship. The home run was immortalized as “the shot heard ‘round the world.” Thomson died yesterday in Savannah, Georgia at the age of 86. His [...]
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
April 27 will mark the 188th birthday of former President and General Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885). Grant, the son of an Ohio tanner, graduated in the middle of his West Point class and fought under General (and later President) Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War. Grant became the dominant military figure of the American Civil War (1861-1865) and political leader [...]
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Lt. Col. Lee Archer, a member of the U. S. Army Air Forces fighter group of African Americans known as the Tuskegee Airmen, died last Wednesday at the age of 90. Archer flew 169 combat missions, and was considered the sole black American “ace” of World War II, having shot down five enemy aircraft. Archer [...]
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
The U.S. Department of the Interior today announced a settlement involving mismanagement of Native American trust fund accounts. If approved by a federal court and Congress, the agreement will distribute $1.4 billion in royalty claims to over 300,000 individuals and $2 billion to buy back tribal lands. Tribes charged that the Interior Department had swindled Native [...]
Monday, September 14, 2009
Among the many words attributed to Benjamin Franklin– and widely cited on the Internet– are these: “Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.” There are several websites using this “quotation” as if it were, well, gospel. A number of them seem to be atheist sites, and none corroborate the citation from any print sources. Sylvia, one of our reference librarians, [...]
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Edward Kennedy, the senior U.S. senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, died yesterday at the age of 77. Kennedy had been ailing with a malignant brain tumor since last year. During his long Senate career, the Democrat championed such issues as health care, and rights for women, minorities, and the disabled. But he was also vilified [...]
Saturday, July 9, 2011
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