Did you know…… about 91% of holiday long distance travel is by personal vehicle the average long-distance trip length over the Christmas/New Year’s holiday is 275 miles about 50% of us make same-day trips, the other half averages about 4 nights away the average age of the Christmas/New Year’s holiday travelers is slightly above 36 …
Ever thought about starting your own business or maybe doing something out of your home? This seems to be a topic on the minds of many people recently. The number of questions about starting a business that have been received through our Ask a Librarian service has increased, and there have also been other blog …
December 17 marks the date of the Wright Brothers’ “First Flight” at Kitty Hawk in 1903. This notable milestone in the history of aeronautics is well documented in the collections of the Library of Congress. If you are curious about the Wright Brothers or the history of flight, then the Library of Congress has many …
Brrr…winter is approaching!! For those of us in the northern hemisphere, the temperature drops and the landscape begins to be covered in frost, ice, and snow. I used to dread this time of year. The trees are bare, the flowers are gone, and more time is spent indoors. But this year, I am opening my …
In an earlier post I mentioned that the bronze doors greeting our patrons depicted the history of the written word through the sculpted figures. Perhaps, like me, you wondered how those figures actually represented the history of the written word and whether they were mythological or real. While researching this building we ran across an …
Yesterday I watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from beginning to end for the very first time. I’ve always caught parts of it, but when I lived in California it just started too early for me. There were bits of trivia about the parade provided throughout the broadcast that piqued my curiosity so I went …
At the Thanksgiving table, some reach for dark meat, others reach for white meat- my grandfather reaches for the neck! In the sprit of Thanksgiving, and for all the inquisitive minds out there, I thought it might be helpful to explain why turkeys have dark and white meat. Generally speaking, the meats we eat are muscles …
No, not the financial crisis of 1869*, but what is considered by many to be the biggest shopping day of the holiday season! The day after Thanksgiving, often referred to as “Black Friday,” is a day that many retailers kick off their holiday sale season. One myth is that this day is when retailers begin …
Have you ever wondered what the difference is between a sweet potato and yam? I have. I found myself in a market looking for fresh sweet potatoes for a sweet potato salad recipe. I searched the produce aisle, without success. So I asked the produce manager for help. He told me to use the garnet …
I bet most people don’t know that an estimated 40% of the Library’s books and journals are science and business materials. The significance of this can be traced back to our founding father, Thomas Jefferson, who sold his personal library to Congress in 1815 for $23,950. Jefferson collected titles from around the world in all …