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Peek in the Stacks: photographs

Dr. Tatiana Belitsky Collection

The Old China Hands Archives holds many collections from individuals living and working in China in the early 20th century, all of which serve to document the various ways in which foreigners experienced the unique cultural issues and historical events that occurred in pre-Communist China. One such individual is Dr. Tatiana Belitsky, a Russian woman who worked as a...

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20th Anniversary of the Northridge Earthquake

The 6.7-magnitude Northridge Earthquake occurred at 4:31am on Monday, January 17, 1994. Its epicenter was around Wilbur Avenue and Arminta Street in Northridge, about a mile from campus. The earthquake and subsequent aftershocks caused extensive destruction to the Northridge and Sherman Oaks areas. Numerous buildings on the California State University, Northridge ....

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Beautiful Downtown Burbank

In the United States, there are nine cities or towns named "Burbank." Though the botanist Luther Burbank is well known in his adopted state of California, the City of Burbank in the San Fernando Valley is named after Dr. David Burbank. He was trained as a dentist on the east coast and migrated to San Francisco in the early 1850s. By the early to mid-1860s, he had established...

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Early 20th Century Shipping in the Far East

The Old China Hands Archives in the Special Collections and Archives Department holds materials from a variety of individuals that lived and worked in China during the early 20th century, including two small collections of materials from Scandinavian ship captains who moved to China and worked with international shipping companies...

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Natural Disasters

Natural disasters, as most of us know, are inevitable and can sometimes cause a lot of damage. In Los Angeles, we often experience earthquakes, fires, and occasionally, floods. In recent years, we have had tsunami scares, tornados touching down, and major fires in the area. Special Collections and Archives holds several collections that document various disasters...

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The Great War

World War I, also called the Great War, took the lives of more than 9 million people, and devastated millions more. It also brought invention, destroyed long standing empires, redrew some political borders, and created new ones. Like all wars before and since, it separated families, and had a dramatic impact on the social welfare of all involved nations...

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From Myth to Metropolis: Los Angeles at the Turn of the Century

Special Collections and Archives holds many books and collection materials that illustrate the unique history of Los Angeles in the years surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. The Los Angeles "Booster Myth," an outgrowth of Manifest Destiny, was largely perpetuated by real estate investors, commercial industry, and civic leaders in an effort to bring more settlers to Los Angeles and prolong the real estate boom of the 1880s...

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The Bess Lomax Hawes Student Folklore Collection

Bess Lomax Hawes (1921-2009) was a folk musician, folklorist, and professor of anthropology at San Fernando State College (now California State University Northridge). During her time as a musician she wrote many songs, including the Kingston Trio hit “M.T.A.” She also performed and collaborated with such American folk luminaries as Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Her father, John Avery Lomax, and brother, Alan Lomax, were famous folklorists and musicologists who traveled across the United States collecting thousands of folk songs and interviews for the Archive of American Folk Songs in the Library of Congress...

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China Marines

The China Marines were originally defined as those who served as part of the 4th Marine Regiment assigned guard duty at the International Settlement in Shanghai from 1927 to 1941. Another group of Marines from the 1st and 6th Marine Divisions who were members of the U.S. occupying army in north China would also become known as China Marines. These Marines were stationed in China from 1945 to 1948...

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Happy 100th Birthday, Los Angeles Aqueduct!

November 5th, 2013 marks the one hundred-year anniversary of the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Special Collections and Archives celebrates this achievement with the release of the digital collection, Water Works: Documenting Water History in Los Angeles, and the opening of the Catherine Mulholland Collection, donated by author and historian Catherine Mulholland, granddaughter of the Aqueduct’s chief engineer, William Mulholland...

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