America's Story from America's Library
American history homework just got easier, and also more entertaining, thanks to this upbeat multimedia celebration of American heroes and heroines from the Library of Congress. We watched original footage of San Francisco after the 1906 quake, listened to a 1939 recording of "Little Sally Walker," and perused fascinating biographies of Buffalo Bill and Harry Houdini, Harriet Tubman and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. A rich menu of quizzes, scavenger hunts, and learning modules make this site a natural for the classroom.
From the Film Study Center at Harvard University, DoHistory is an experimental, interactive case study of Martha Ballard, an 18th century midwife who left behind a detailed diary of her life. This isn't just a historical investigation, it's an examination of how history is created through fragmentary source materials. Learn how to piece together journal transcripts, genealogy records, original maps, and newspaper articles in order to learn about an ordinary person living in an extraordinary time in American history.
The Edible Monument: The Art of Food for Festivals
The Getty Research Institute Gallery presents images of pageants, banquets, street fairs, and other mouth-watering occasions of mythic proportions. Consider an 18th century etching of the Bolognese Feast of the Roast Pig, a free-for-all in which citizens chased down pork on the hoof; or marvel at 17th century Viennese theatrical sets depicting an Olympian feast. Did you know that sugar used to be sold at the drugstore? Have you ever seen the Garden of Paradise sculpted in sugar? Food as performance art and architecture -- what a delicious concept!
"Good neighbors keep their noise to themselves" is the guiding principle at the web headquarters of this national non-profit organization. Here's a clean, comprehensive library of resources for combating noise and fostering the growth of "civil cities." We clicked quietly through the noise news database, read the articulate essay titled "Protecting the Commons," learned that 10 million Americans are affected by noise-induced hearing loss, and chortled silently at the agendas of activist organizations with acronyms like BLAST, HORN, and ROAR.
This New York Times special report includes a classified C.I.A. document detailing the 1953 covert operation that toppled Iran's nationalist regime and returned power to the Shah, who's portrayed as a pawn of oil-hungry British and American Cold War interests. In addition to the "lost" document (in .pdf format), there's abundant background on the causes of the coup, major players, timelines, and photos. A series of articles analyze how events in the fifties set the stage for the fall of the Shah and the 1979 hostage crisis. (Free registration is required to access this feature.)
"Relational architecture" is the term Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer uses to describe his "large-scale interactive events that transform emblematic buildings through new technological interfaces." This site chronicles the artist's millennial project, which used 18 robotic spotlights to transform Mexico City's Zocalo square into a collaborative light sculpture that danced by night over the cityscape from December 26, 1999 till January 7, 2000. Stills and video records of the event are accessible here in Spanish and English; there's also a java applet that lets you simulate a light show of your own.
A few quick facts: More than 260,000 people are buried in Arlington National Cemetery. The buried veterans span the breadth of American warfare, from the Revolution to the Gulf War and Somalia. On average, there are 20 burials a day. The Tomb of the Unknowns is guarded by the U.S. Army 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The U.S. Capitol police officers who were shot on July 24th, 1998, are buried in Arlington. Find out more at the official site, including the biographies of several explorers and historical figures who are buried in Arlington.
Junior Doughty, a cultural anthropologist from Tullos, Louisiana, presents a moonshine-soaked look at the Delta Juke Joint. As Junior puts it, "You're about to take a trip inside the places where the blues began. I'm not talking about white people blues bars filled with college students. I'm talking about edge-of-a-cotton-field juke joints filled with real Delta folks." You'll find plenty of photographs, journal entries, maps, and interviews at this online labor of love. And the recipe section features Southern favorites like gumbo, fried fish, hushpuppies, and pork neckbones. Dig in.