Description: On January 16, 1907, a man carrying packages asked a carpenter for directions to a former colleague's office in the U.S. National Museum. Minutes later, that man pulled a rifle out of one of the packages and murdered an illustrator working for the Smithsonian.
Description: Here at the Smithsonian we love to observe. So of course on August 23, 2011, at 1:51 PM, when a 5.8 magnitude earthquake shook the Washington, DC region and many of us with it, we immediately started to observe what happened and how we could document it. As the Institution's historians, inevitably we needed to know, had this happened before and what were the effects? After
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_13918,size=350,right] Postcards, as we are familiar with them today, have taken a considerable amount of time to develop. First restricted by size, color, and other regulations, postcard production blossomed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Postcards were popular because they were a quick and easy way for individuals to communicate with each other.