Today’s post and other posts in this series are written by Robert Fahs, a processing archivist who works with civilian textual records. This blog entry begins an occasional series of descriptions intended to introduce names and keywords useful for searching ARC entries from RG 469: Records of U.S. Foreign Assistance Agencies, 1942 – 1961. Established [...]

Today’s post is written by Lloyd Beers, a processing archivist who works with U.S. Navy records. Wartime has many faces and all of them are revealed in the records held by the National Archives and Records Administration.  The April 17, 1944 issue of Life magazine featured a more relaxed face with an article picturing U.S. [...]

Our pals over at Prologue:  Pieces of History have “Facial Hair Friday;”  here at The Text Message, we give you “Beauty Queen Monday.”  The document featured in today’s post is from the January – February 1960 issue of “The Shield,” an employee newsletter published by the International Cooperation Administration (ICA).  You can find issues of  [...]

Yesterday, I posted about Department of Justice press releases.  Today, I’d like to share a few of my favorites!  One early press release, dated November 6, 1933, details the establishment of a federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island, which according to the release, “is a necessary part of the Government’s campaign against predatory crime.”  Three years [...]

What do John Dillinger, Al Capone, Bruno Hauptmann, and Frank Sinatra’s son have in common? You can find a press release (or in some cases, more than one!) relating to them at the National Archives!  Recently, I processed and described the series “Press Releases, Speeches, Testimonies, and Other Records, 1933-1984” (ARC ID 5605357) in RG [...]

In 2001, seemingly secretive government documents were “found in locked safes and filing cabinets in a barn near Culpeper, Virginia.” After investigation, the records were turned over to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for review. The files turned out to be the records of a highly secretive intelligence organization led by John V. Grombach which [...]