Prologue: Pieces of History

This story originally appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of Prologue magazine. Herman Melville’s classic American novel, Moby-Dick, was first published in the United States on November 14, 1851. In Moby-Dick and his earlier books, Melville called upon his own experience aboard whaling ships, most notably his 18 months spent aboard the Acushnet, sailing out [...]

If you are planning to attend our event next week on crowdsourcing, you will hear a presentation by Jessica Zelt from the U.S. Geological Survey’s North American Bird Phenology Program. My colleague here in the office was editing the text for this event. She thought her husband, an avid bird watcher, might be interested in the [...]

When Robert Peary wrote “The pole at last!!!” into his diary on April 6, 1909, he had no idea that his claim would be disputed for the next several decades by experts who doubted that he and Matthew A. Henson were the first men to reach the North Pole. Marie Peary Stafford had no such doubts, [...]

In the summer of 1942, the Allies’ war against Japan was in dire straits. China was constantly battling the occupying Japanese forces in its homeland, supplied by India via the Burma Road. Then Japan severed that supply artery. Planes were flown over the Himalayan mountains, but their payloads were too little, and too many pilots [...]

If you have been reading Pieces of History, you know that the National Archives holds many unusual records. But when I started working here, I was excited to learn that we hold the papers of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, at the Hoover Presidential Library. The childhood adventures of Laura Ingalls Wilder, especially her first [...]