Pieces of History Blog » World War II
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Pieces of History brings you strange-but-true stories from World War II. Pieces of History brings you the latest "discoveries" from the vast holdings of the Archives - more than 15 billion pages of records, miles, miles of tape and film, and a growing number of electronic records. We also bring to you information about the agency itself, from our creation in 1934 to the establishment..
Pieces of History Blog » World War II
1w ago
On Saturday a new exhibit opened in the National Archives Building, Power & Light: Russell Lee's Coal Survey. It will run in the Lawrence F. O’Brien Gallery until July 6, 2025. This exhibit features more than 200 of Russell Lee’s photographs of coal miners and their families. Russell Lee, 1935. (Photo courtesy of the Library ..read more
Pieces of History Blog » World War II
3w ago
Today’s post, from Alyssa Moore in the National Archives History Office, is in honor of Women's History Month and looks at the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service program, or WAVES, during World War II. Advertisement poster to join the WAVES. (National Archives Identifier 514649) Less than one year after the United States entered World ..read more
Pieces of History Blog » World War II
1M ago
Today’s post comes from Thomas Richardson, an expert archives technician at the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis, Missouri. Far out in the New Mexico desert, the largest government-funded scientific endeavor culminated in the first nuclear detonation at the White Sands Missile Range. The bright flash followed by intense heat and billowing mushroom ..read more
Pieces of History Blog » World War II
5M ago
October is Filipino-American History Month, and we’re commemorating it with a post on Manuel Quezon and Philippine Independence from Alexandra Villaseran, an archivist with the Center for Legislative Archives. Today there are six nonvoting members in the U.S. House of Representatives: a Resident Commissioner representing Puerto Rico and one Delegate each for the District of ..read more
Pieces of History Blog » World War II
9M ago
Today’s post, from Alyssa Moore, in the National Archives History Office, looks at the Calutron Girls in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, during World War II. Calutron was an acronym for “California University cyclotron,” named after the University of California, Berkeley, where the devices were developed. The highly anticipated July 21 release of Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer ..read more
Pieces of History Blog » World War II
1y ago
This month’s hashtag party is all about music—from instruments to marching bands, from R&B singers to orchestra leaders, from record players to boomboxes, let’s make a beautiful noise together. Join the conversation Friday, March 3, 2023, on Instagram and Twitter by using #ArchivesHashtagParty and #ArchivesMusic! During World War II, as part of an effort to ..read more
Pieces of History Blog » World War II
1y ago
Carlton Chapman was born in Pembroke, a small town in Southwestern Virginia, in 1912. He was working for the Norfolk and Western Railway when the United States entered World War II. In 1942 he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as a machine gunner with the 761st Tank Battalion. "Cpl. Carlton Chapman...is a machine-gunner ..read more
Pieces of History Blog » World War II
1y ago
February is Black History Month. Visit the National Archives website for more information on our resources related to African American History. Charles Richard Drew (June 3, 1904–April 1, 1950) was an American surgeon, educator, and pioneering medical researcher on blood transfusions. He discovered that plasma had a longer shelf life than blood and could be separated to ..read more
Pieces of History Blog » World War II
1y ago
In this Facial Hair Friday photo, Coast Guardsman Kent C. Pompella displays both a bushy beard and shark teeth earrings. His is just one of the many beards featured in a series of Coast Guardsmen at Work in the Records of the U.S. Coast Guard that have been digitized and made available in the National ..read more
Pieces of History Blog » World War II
1y ago
Today’s post from David Smollar is a follow-up piece to his 2015 Prologue article, "Hard, Bitter, Unpleasantly Necessary Duty: A Little-Known World War II Story of the Philippines." David is a history tutor and retired Los Angeles Times journalist. My graduate school adviser at UCLA likened a quest into the past to an explorer’s dig ..read more