Description: Long ago and far away, before gray hairs and creaky knees, before history became my passion, I was an undergraduate physics major. Physics seemed fascinating and beautiful, if difficult. Later, after career paths led into history and science policy, I learned that physics, however elegant, did not reside in a cultural vacuum. Its people and discoveries coexisted with
Description: Back in December, I wrote a post about Emory University’s efforts to make the writer Salman Rushdie’s digital files available to fans, researchers, and interested parties. A couple of days ago, I came across an interesting report about a gathering, an “unconference,” that was sponsored by the University of Virginia’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, which
Description: Yesterday, we celebrated MayDay2019 by reviewing the contents of Nora’s PRICE team go-bag, which you can explore in this Facebook Live, courtesy of the Foundation for the Advancement of Conservation!This MayDay post comes to you at a time when cultural heritage disasters on a mass scale are fresh in people’s minds. Paying attention to high visibility events offers opportunity
Description: Happy National Trivia Day! January 4th is the perfect day to break out all those endless bits of knowledge stored in your noggin and share them with others. As for the history of National Trivia Day, it's thought that the creation of the game Trivial Pursuit in 1979 sparked the beginning of our fascination with trivia, and everythinge else is history, as they say. To feed our
Description: In July 1925, two photographers were among the crowds of people (including, of course, many other photographers) who descended upon Dayton, Tennessee, to witness the "Trial of the Century." Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes was a test trial to overturn the newly-passed state law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in schools.
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="221" caption="Uniformed Letter Carrier with Child in Mailbag, by Unidentified photographer, c. 1900, National Postal Museum."][/caption] Since the Smithsonian began uploading photos to the Flickr Commons, there have been some clear crowd favorites. The photo above, for example, is by far our most popular photo on the Flickr Commons,