Primers were a type of textbook used to teach beginning students how to read. Early examples of primers date back to the 15th and 16th centuries, at which time they bore little resemblance to textbooks used for the same purpose today. Their contents typically consisted of word lists, catechisms ...
Special Collections and Archives holds a fragment of a Torah scroll. Although difficult to date, the scroll most likely dates from 1800 to 1950. On 10 sheets of parchment sewn together, the section runs from Numbers 2:22 to 32:131. Although the segment is no longer Kosher...
Japanese incursions into China began as early as 1931, shortly after the Mukden (or Manchurian) Incident. The following six years saw several smaller incursions, both military and political. For the Far East and Southeast Asia, the war began with the full-scale Japanese invasion of China in 1937; two years later it would become World War II...
This week's blog post explores several cookbooks from our Culinary Collections, focusing on one main ingredient – corn. Corn is a coarse grain with origins in the Americas. Although its birth place is debated, Mexico is often cited with a date range of 5,000 to 25,000 years ...
Found in the Arnold Court Collection on Polar Exploration within Special Collections & Archives are two official reports of USRM Corwin, one from 1881 and the other 1884. Both are essentially ship’s logs that report information including weather conditions, navigation coordinates, reports on ....
The US Constitution originally left the determination of who should be eligible to vote up to the states, and as a result the question of which Americans should have voting rights has been debated throughout US history. Over the years five constitutional amendments and a number of federal, state, and local ...
Jesse James is one of the most infamous American outlaws of the nineteenth century Wild West. Beginning in 1866 and based in Missouri, James and his James-Younger Gang robbed and murdered dozens of people in Missouri, Kentucky, Iowa, Texas, Arkansas, Kansas, and West Virginia. After being killed by Robert Ford in 1882, James’s fame grew among the American public. In 1907, The Arthur Westbrook Company...
Playing the classical guitar is an art that many people appreciate and enjoy. However, an often overlooked but equally important art form is the building of the guitar itself. The craft of making string instruments, or lutherie, requires extensive knowledge of the many properties of wood and the ability to utilize and manipulate...
Sex and gender play important roles in our culture and daily lives. Sex is a biological difference based on the primary sex characteristics which include the traits essential for reproduction. Gender is the socially-created and learned distinction that specifies the physical, behavioral ....
The route for the transcontinental railroad, constructed between 1863 and 1869, crossed the distance from Omaha, Nebraska to Sacramento, California, but before construction could begin, land surveys had to be performed. In 1853, the United States Congress appropriated $150,000 to fund land ....
