National Register Photostream — Authorized under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the
U.S. National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect our historic and archeological resources. Properties listed in the Register include districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that are significant in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture.
posted by netbros
on Dec 23, 2011 -
6 comments
During the US Civil War, metal monies were hoarded for their value, resulting in a shortage of available coins. The Union government issued
official "paper coins" that weren't backed by by gold or silver. This "faith paper" lost value quickly, and for a short while,
stamps were official currency. That didn't take, either, so enterprising individuals took it upon themselves to mint their own coinage. These are now known as
Civil War Tokens (CTWs), and were made and used between late 1862 and mid 1864. On April 22, 1864,
Congress set the weight of coins and
set punishment for counterfeiting coins of up to one thousand dollars and imprisonment up to five years.
Yet there are over ten thousand varieties of tokens, representing 22 states, 400 towns and about 1500 individual merchants.
Melvin and his son Dr. George Fuld wrote
key books in the CWT field, creating the
rarity scale and composition key used by most numismatists. Given sheer number of CWTs, starting a collection might be daunting. Enter
collector Ken Bauer, whose
method breaks down the vast world into
smaller collections, from
anvils to
watches and
so much
more.
posted by filthy light thief
on Dec 20, 2011 -
9 comments
"The Western Soundscape Archive [...] features audio recordings of animals and environments throughout the western United States." "The project's geographic focus includes eleven contiguous western states - Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming - as well as baseline sound monitoring in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska."
[more inside]
posted by OmieWise
on Dec 14, 2011 -
4 comments
"Every day in the U.S., about 500 people lose a limb. About 1,800 amputation surgeries are performed each year in Oklahoma. More than 1,600 of those — about 90 percent — are lower body amputations. So every day in Oklahoma, four people lose part or all of a leg." (Nationally, the most common procedure is toe amputation.) "These are the stories of four people living in Oklahoma — a mother, a senior, a Marine and a student — all living life on at least one prosthetic leg":
Standing Tall [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 7, 2011 -
21 comments
Final Salute. Between 2004 and 2005, "Rocky Mountain News reporter Jim Sheeler and photographer Todd Heisler spent a year with the Marines stationed at Aurora's Buckley Air Force Base who have found themselves called upon to notify families of the deaths of their sons in Iraq. In each case in this story, the families agreed to let Sheeler and Heisler chronicle their loss and grief. They wanted people to know their sons, the men and women who brought them home, and the bond of traditions more than 200 years old that unite them. Though readers are led through the story by the white-gloved hand of Maj. Steve Beck, he remains a reluctant hero. He is, he insists, only a small part of the massive mosaic that is the Marine Corps."
The full story ran on Veteran's Day, 2005 and won two Pulitzer Prizes: one for
Feature Photography, another for
feature writing in 2006. A nice single-page version of one section:
Katherine Cathey and 2nd Lt. James J. Cathey (
via.) The Rocky Mountain News closed in 2009.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Oct 12, 2011 -
12 comments
These Americans is a diverse collection of public archive photographs:
1980s Wrestling,
Warhol Polaroids,
1970s NYC gangs,
Jayne Mansfield,
polygamists,
Al Capone,
the KKK, FSA photographer
Russell Lee, civil rights photographer
Jim Peppler, early 20th century Mexican border town photographer,
Gertrude Fitzgerald,
&tc. It is a project from
American Suburb X. Many links are NSFW.
posted by xod
on Aug 30, 2011 -
5 comments
Although the
sculptor Hiram Powers (1805-73) enjoyed considerable success with his
portraits and more
allegorical works, he is now almost entirely remembered for one of nineteenth-century America's most hotly-debated sculptures:
The Greek Slave. Powers was a
little vague about the inspiration for the statue--longstanding dream, or response to the Greek War of Independence (see
previously)? Understood
at the time as a major leap forward in establishing America as a serious force in the art world, the statue was an international hit (appearing at the
Great Exhibition of 1851), and was
endlessly copied and
daguerrotyped. (Some of the copies turn the statue into a much more ambiguous
bust, or
hark back to one of its major influences, the
Venus de Milo.) However, some observers, including
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and,
much more pointedly, the illustrator and caricaturist
John Tenniel, suggested that an American sculptor might wish to think about
other slaves.
posted by thomas j wise
on Aug 17, 2011 -
9 comments
Where Federal taxes are raised and spent. "Some American states receive more in federal spending than they pay in federal taxes; others receive less. Over twenty years these fiscal transfers can add up to a sizeable sum."
A graph of the United States, color-coded to indicate surplus or deficit.
posted by dubold
on Aug 6, 2011 -
52 comments
The Declaration of Independence is perhaps the most masterfully written state paper of Western civilization. As Moses Coit Tyler noted almost a century ago, no assessment of it can be complete without taking into account its extraordinary merits as a work of political prose style. Although many scholars have recognized those merits, there are surprisingly few sustained studies of the stylistic artistry of the Declaration. This essay seeks to illuminate that artistry by probing the discourse microscopically -- at the level of the sentence, phrase, word, and syllable. The University of Wisconsin's Dr. Stephen E. Lucas meticulously analyzes the elegant language of the 235-year-old charter in a distillation of
this comprehensive study.
More on the Declaration: full transcript and
ultra-high-resolution scan,
a transcript and scan of Jefferson's annotated rough draft,
the little-known royal rebuttal,
a thorough history of the parchment itself,
a peek at the archival process, a reading of the document
by the people of NPR and
by a group of prominent actors,
H. L. Mencken's "American" translation,
Slate's Twitter summaries, and
a look at the fates of the 56 signers.
posted by Rhaomi
on Jul 4, 2011 -
72 comments
A wave of powerful storm cells swept the southeastern United States this week, spawning
hundreds of tornadoes that wreaked havoc from Texas to Virginia. While damage was widespread throughout the region, the most terrible toll was seen in Alabama, which has accounted for two-thirds of
the more than 300 reported deaths -- the deadliest since the Great Depression -- and where
many small towns were simply wiped from the map. Especially hard-hit was the university town of Tuscaloosa, the state's fifth-largest, where a monstrous F5 tornado (seen in
this terrifying firsthand video) tore a
vicious track through entire neighborhoods and business districts -- narrowly missing the region's primary hospital -- and continuing a path that rained debris as far as Birmingham, over sixty miles away. The disaster
prompted a visit from President Obama today, who declared
"I've never seen devastation like this" after surveying the area with Governor Robert Bentley, Senator Richard Shelby, and
Mayor Walter Maddox. More: photos from
In Focus and
The Big Picture,
aerial footage of the aftermath,
"before and after" sliders, the path of the Tuscaloosa twister
on Google Maps,
People Locator,
local aid information,
MetaTalk check-in thread
posted by Rhaomi
on Apr 29, 2011 -
102 comments
Captured: A Look Back at the Vietnam War on the 35th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. (The following photo collection contains some graphic violence and depictions of dead bodies.)
posted by docgonzo
on Apr 21, 2011 -
18 comments
A Tragedy of Errors. On Feb. 21, 2010, a convoy of vehicles carrying civilians headed down a mountain in central Afghanistan and American eyes in the sky were watching. "The Americans were using some of the most
sophisticated tools in the history of war, technological marvels of surveillance and intelligence gathering that allowed them to see into once-inaccessible corners of the battlefield. But the high-tech wizardry would
fail in its most elemental purpose: to tell the difference between friend and foe."
FOIA-obtained
transcripts of US cockpit and radio conversations and
an interactive feature provide a more in-depth understanding of what happened.
posted by zarq
on Apr 10, 2011 -
59 comments
Adults With College Degrees in the United States, by County. Sort by available years (1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 200, 2005-2009), zoom in on counties, and sort the data by the available fields. Uses the U.S. Census Bureau as the primary data source.
posted by cashman
on Jan 30, 2011 -
61 comments
In 1999, psychologist Robert A. Fein and Executive Director of the US Secret Service's
National Threat Assessment Center, Bryan Vossekuil,
published a study of 83 persons who had attempted or succeeded to assassinate a public figure (Google HTML view of pdf). Those 83 were all the people who were known to have attacked, or approached to attack, a prominent public official or public figure in the United States since 1949. The goal was to better understand the motives behind such actions, and included interviews with some of the subjects.
NPR covered the report today, interviewing Fein and discussing the findings. The summary was that the attacks were not political in motive, but attempts at gaining fame.
"They experienced failure after failure after failure, and decided that rather than being a 'nobody,' they wanted to be a 'somebody,' " Fein said. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jan 14, 2011 -
31 comments
Think your taxes are high now? A list of the top ten salaries in the US in 1941, and the taxes they paid (spoiler: 65-73% tax rate! but, still doesn't include total compensation, though, which makes it a little sketchy). Interestingly, the NYTimes couldn't figure out two of the names, C.S. Woolman (who is probably
C.E. Woolman, one of the founders of delta airlines) and another mysterious name, J.C. Owsley, that seems to be
unidentifiable...
posted by yeoz
on Dec 1, 2010 -
91 comments
Robert F. Gallagher served in the United States Army's 815th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion (Third Army) in the European Theater during WWII. He has posted his memoir online:
"Scratch One Messerschmitt," told from numerous photos he took during the war and the detailed notes he made shortly afterwards.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 23, 2010 -
7 comments
