NYC's Department of Records has officially announced the debut of its photo database, releasing 870,000 photos of the city and its operations to the public. Here are some of the best ones. Here is the link to the gallery itself (though good luck getting in right now). [more inside]
posted by Phire on Apr 25, 2012 - 29 comments

London Lives 12 London archives – digitised, marked up and tagged – to "create a comprehensive electronic edition of primary sources on criminal justice and the provision of poor relief and medical care in eighteenth-century London". The Lives page is a good place to start browsing. [related]
posted by unliteral on Jun 8, 2010 - 8 comments

The NAVIS project is a multilevel international database for ancient ships of Europe. The database has very detailed information and pictures of ships from the 2nd millenium BC to the 12th century AD (found whilst trying to answer this AskMe). [more inside]
posted by tellurian on Jul 16, 2009 - 5 comments

Canadian War Poster Collection at McGill University. And if that doesn't strike your fancy, the list of digital collections include such time-honoured favourites as Expo '67, and the award-winner for unexpected collection, Gynaecology in Traditional Chinese Medicine. (previously)
posted by flibbertigibbet on Jun 26, 2009 - 7 comments

"With Germany arming at breakneck speed, England lost in a pacifist dream, France corrupt and torn by dissension, America remote and indifferent... do you not tremble for your children?" ― Winston Churchill, 1935. The World War II Database connects people, events, photographs, and other elements of history in relational db form to tell the story of the 20th century's 2nd great war.
posted by netbros on Mar 13, 2009 - 13 comments

Sacco and Vanzetti et al. The amazing Famous Trials website, compiled as a labor of love by University of Missouri law professor Douglas Linder, is a motherlode of information on historically significant trails, ranging from Galileo to the Amistad to Lenny Bruce. It features not only official transcripts, but also equally intriguing details such as a map of the railroad cars in the Scottsboro Boys trial, Klan documents from the Mississippi Burning case, and opinion polls related to the My Lai courts martial.
posted by foxy_hedgehog on Nov 30, 2004 - 8 comments

Homicide in Chicago: 1870-1930
July 25, 1899 Murphy, James, 28 years old, shot dead, saloon 1210 Wabash Av., by Lorezo Sodini, proprietor. Murphy refused to pay for drinks and ran out of saloon and threw stone through window. Sodini ran out and fired at him, killing him instantly. Harrison St. Station. Held by Coroner's Jury, July 29. Acquitted Dec. 9, 1899, by jury in Judge Baker's court. Case number: 1498
posted by tcp on Jul 2, 2004 - 1 comment

Online collection of children's literature circa 1850 and up. Primarily American and British, from thrilling stories of the ocean to a peep at the beasts. Every page (and even the spine) digitized in both JPEG and PDF format, and in some cases color-corrected. (Similar collections have been posted here previously)
posted by schoolgirl report on Apr 4, 2004 - 10 comments

The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive from the University of St. Andrews' School of Mathematics and Statistics.
posted by wobh on Dec 30, 2003 - 3 comments

National Register of Historic Places Travel Itineraries. Virtual American travel - Detroit, the Underground Railroad, utopian communities in Iowa, Pipestone, Minnesota, Shakers, Indian mounds of Mississippi, etc.
posted by plep on Oct 26, 2003 - 8 comments

Got roots? The American Family Immigration History Center has made available online the passenger manifests for all the ships that docked at Ellis Island from 1892 to 1924. It's searchable by name, and you can look at a photostat of the actual page of the manifest. I found my great-uncle (Demetrios Calisperis, from Samos, Greece, debarked Ellis Island Nov 1907, at age 11 -- hiya, Uncle Jim!). Free to register and search. Paid membership lets you build a family scrapbook about your ancestor that can be searched by other researchers.
posted by BitterOldPunk on Jul 14, 2003 - 9 comments

Wow. Spartacus Educational is a masterwork of hyperlinked history with a rather eclectic list of focus topics that can suck you in and never let go. Start anywhere, and then just click, and click, and click...

In light of recent events, you might begin, if you wish, with a brush-up on the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, and from there go on to find out more about the Black Hand secret society responsible for the killing. You may attempt to sidestep politics by going to cartoonists, or U.S. novelists and poets, but you will find that the site is organized against a backdrop of world politics (viewed chiefly from a British perspective), a point of view that weaves its own endlessly looping and mesmerizing mesh.
posted by taz on Mar 14, 2003 - 9 comments

"The gremlin in Falling Hare (who, let us reiterate, is *not* Wendell Willkie) has an elegant flying helmet/plane tail design and a Benny Rubin-like laugh." The Warner Bros. Cartoon Companion covers the heyday of Merrie Melodies and Loony Toons, with capsule biographies of Warner Brothers animators, explanations for no-longer-obvious cultural references, and brief notes on the characters. No design to speak of, but a wonderful resource for anyone searching for a list of WB cartoons that parody Cab Calloway, arguing about whether Elmer Fudd predates Yosemite Sam, or just wondering what the heck Marvin the Martian's given name was.
posted by snarkout on Aug 29, 2001 - 29 comments

Gendex: A Family History Database For some time, I have been casually researching ways to store and query complex kin relations. I may have found just the model I want, developed by none other than the CJC-LDS (Mormons!) Specifically by the family history department.
The FAMily record is used to record ... family unions caused by two people becoming the parents of a child. There can be no more than one HUSB/father and one WIFE/mother listed in each FAM_RECORD. If, for example, a man participated in more than one family union, then he would appear in more than one FAM_RECORD.
And thank God they thought of a bigamy data model! Now, will it export XML?
posted by rschram on Apr 25, 2001 - 6 comments