October 16, 1962 - Day One of the Cuban Missile Crisis
A declassified map of the Western hemisphere showing the full range of the nuclear missiles under construction in Cuba, used during the secret meetings on the Cuban crisis.
(source: jfklibrary.org)
October 16, 2012 is Ada Lovelace Day — a day to celebrate the achievements and contributions of women in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology
These women display some old-school coding skills as they work on ENIAC, the “World’s First Computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator”
What do you know about Ada Lovelace and her contributions to computer science?
Hey, is that Peter Sagal of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” in front of the Constitution? Why, yes! Just another day here at the National Archives for our press officers… (We hear he was very funny!)
Why is this image so dark? No flash photography is allowed in the Rotunda in order to preserve the fragile documents on display: Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence.
October 16, 1962 - Day One of the Cuban Missile Crisis
President Kennedy’s schedule for October 16, 1962. Note that several of JFK’s meetings are off the record, so as not to arouse concern about the impending crisis.
(source: jfklibrary.org)
Happy Birthday Angela Lansbury - October 16, 1925
Photograph of movie stars Angela Lansbury, Charles Coburn, and Constance Moore, seated at a table during a Roosevelt Birthday Ball function in Washington, with a portrait of the late President in the background., 01/28/1946
@JFK1962 Live-Tweets the Cuban Missile Crisis
Today marks the first day of the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, one of the most perilous moments in American history, and certainly the greatest test of John F. Kennedy’s presidency. To mark this momentous occasion, we will be tweeting archival documents, audio and video clips, and quotes from the Kennedy administration with our historical Twitter account, @JFK1962. Follow every crucial moment from the #13days here!
Photograph of Three Marine Corps Women Reservists, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, 10/16/1943
American Indian women too have joined the fighting forces against Germany and Japan. These three are members of the U.S. Marine Corps. They are [left to right] Minnie Spotted Wolf of the Blackfeet, Celia Mix, Potawatomi, and Violet Eastman, Chippewa.
via DocsTeach
“We Negroes are American Citizens - First Class tax payers, but so often we are treated as second class citizens, if there is such. In our hearts, we would like to know what it is that the White man has against the Negro. What can we do to make peace with the White man? We have to live on this earth together. We can not do without each other. We as a group, want your friendship, won’t you accept?”
Letter to President Dwight D. Eisenhower from Mrs. Floy J. Anderson Regarding Racial Disputes, 10/15/1957
In this letter, Mrs. Floy J. Anderson, who describes herself as Negro, writes about racial disputes including the recent Little Rock School Integration Crisis, being treated as a second class citizens and an incident where she was refused a ride on a Trans-contentintal Railway Bus.
via DocsTeach
Drawing of Hat to Prevent Drowning, 10/14/1840
Because water safety and proper attire shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.
MRBM Field Launch Site San Cristobal No. 1 & 2, 14 October 1962
On October 14, 1962, United States military surveillance aircraft took hundreds of aerial photographs of Cuba, including these two. Working around the clock, CIA analysts would determine that the photos showed conclusive evidence that a Soviet missile base was under construction near San Cristobal, Cuba, just 90 miles from the coast of Florida. The most dangerous encounter in the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union had begun.
The National Archives’ latest exhibit: “To the Brink: JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis” covers the 13 days when the world teetered on the brink of thermonuclear war.
United States Navy Memorial Dedication
Dedicated 25 years ago today, our neighbor, the United States Navy Memorial, opened on October 13, 1987.
An elevated view of the dedication ceremonies for the US Navy Memorial on Pennsylvania Avenue at Eighth Street, 10/13/1987
(If you’ve been to Washington lately, you’ll notice that the neighborhood around the National Archives looks quite a bit different now.)
This confidential cable to RFK from the State Department is just one of almost 3,000 pages of records released to the public this week.
Seven boxes of material (more than 2,700 pages) from the Robert F. Kennedy Papers, housed at the Kennedy Library in Boston, are now online. These digitized documents are mostly related to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
What are you doing to celebrate Day of Digital of Archives?
October 12 is Digital Archives Day
We thought we’d take this opportunity to invite all you digital citizen archivists to try your hand at a tagging mission on our Online Catalog!
We Can Tag It!
We need your help tagging photos and documents in the online catalog for the National Archives.
With every tag you add, you’re doing your part to help the next person discover that record. Go ahead and give it at try.
Visit the catalog. Do a search for your favorite topics or events. Create a login and start tagging!
See some of the painstaking and dedicated work by our amazing National Archives volunteers as they prepare Civil War Widows’ Pension Files for digitization.
Celebrating Our Volunteers
This week we had an opportunity to honor volunteers who contributed more than 100 hours of their time to the National Archives this year in our Washington and College Park locations—295 volunteers who contributed 42,284 hours! These amazing numbers demonstrate their love of history and the work that we do.
A parade of staff supervisors took the stage to brag about the work of their volunteers who wrote hundreds of item-level descriptions, created thousands of photo captions, scanned tens of thousands of files, indexed tens of thousands of records, inventoried rows of stacks, answered researchers’ questions, improved access to our online holding, and even used social media to broadcast information about our records. Some wrote articles for our Prologue magazine as well as blog posts about the records and some presented lectures to the public.
Read the full post on the AOTUS Blog.