This year, Martin Luther King Jr. Day falls on January 18, the anniversary of a march that Dr. King helped lead from Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church to the Selma Courthouse for the purpose of voter registration. The marchers were not allowed to register, but this was just one skirmish in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s … Continue reading From Selma to Montgomery: The Selma Voting Rights Movement
Film Preservation 101 is an occasional series in which we answer our most frequently asked questions. Please submit your burning questions about film preservation in the comments below! What is Color Fading? Why are old films sometimes pink? The simple answer is color fading. This might seem a little confusing, since it looks like the film … Continue reading Film Preservation 101: Why are old films sometimes pink?
This post was written by Criss Kovac. Criss Kovac is the supervisor of the Motion Picture Preservation Lab. On January 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the nation in the 153rd State of the Union Address. Known more popularly as the “Four Freedoms Speech,” he proposed four fundamental freedoms that all people should have … Continue reading FDR’s “Four Freedoms” Speech
This Christmas Eve, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) will have tracked Santa Claus's journey around the world for 60 years. Colonel Harry Shoup began the tradition in 1955, after receiving a phone call from a child expecting to reach Santa Claus. The misdirected call was the result of the child reversing two numbers of a Santa … Continue reading Vintage Footage Reveals How NORAD Tracks Santa
This post was written in collaboration with Kelsey Noel. Kelsey is an Archives Technician with the Still Picture Branch in College Park, MD. This week we are highlighting images from RG 111-CCS, the General Subject Photographic Files of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, which documents non-combat activities in the United States and abroad. These photos, taken … Continue reading Christmas on Base: 13 Images of Our Soldiers at Christmas
It’s the time of year when fireplace mantles are filling up with holiday cards and brown-wrapped parcels are delivered to doorsteps. The packages, letters, and cards we drop into mail-slots across the country contribute to an annual crescendo in the activities of the United States Postal Service (USPS). In the 2015 holiday season, the USPS … Continue reading Holiday Mail Call! A Package’s Path to You
In the past year, staff in the motion picture preservation lab handled nearly three million feet of film. Films might come to us for inspection and repair, photochemical duplication, or digitization. To follow up last year's list, we've identified a handful of films that were digitized in 2015 and found their way to our list of favorites. This year's list … Continue reading Favorite Film Finds of 2015
One century ago, San Francisco's 1915 World’s Fair closed its doors, ending one of the most unique events in American history. For 288 days, the fair brought together an odd array of individuals that seemingly belong in different chapters of the history textbook. Civil War veterans could watch as Henry Ford produced a car every … Continue reading A Fair to Remember: Colored Lantern Slides at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition
Guest blogger Jan Hodges became interested in World War I combat art as a result of her involvement as a volunteer in a holdings maintenance project for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) documents at the National Archives at College Park. This article is part seven of the series about World War I Art and Artists. … Continue reading World War I Combat Artists – Ernest Peixotto
While it is generally understood that venison graced the table of the first Thanksgiving celebration, the idea of Pilgrims chowing down on turkey is solidly enshrined in the American imagination. The 1930 film The Turkey Business (Local Identifier: 33.364)shows how the "early explorers" of America hunted and prepared wild turkeys. The Turkey Business begins by establishing … Continue reading Gobble Gobble: America’s Thanksgiving Turkey Tradition
