Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker

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Photo, Anne Sullivan stands with Helen Keller, c. 1893, AFB
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This website is dedicated to the life and legacy of Anne Sullivan Macy, who, in the words of the site's authors "was a pioneer in the field of education." The exhibition tells her story through an introduction and five galleries, each focused on a different period in the inspiring story of Macy's life, including galleries on her childhood and her work teaching Helen Keller that became the basis for the play The Miracle Worker. The galleries feature excerpts from Macy's correspondence and writings, quotes contained in various biographies, and passages about Macy from Helen Keller's Teacher: Anne Sullivan Macy. The full-text of many of Macy's letters are available. All 47 images can be viewed in a larger size and are accompanied by descriptions. The site also offers a brief, one-page biography of Macy; a chronology of her life; and a recommended reading list with 10 books (two for children). An outstanding introduction to the life of this extraordinary teacher.

18th-Century Surgery

Description

Sharon Cotner, a medical historian at Colonial Williamsburg's Pasteur and Galt Apothecary, describes 18th-century medical practices, including basic operations, lacking in antiseptics, antibiotics, and anesthesia; battlefield surgery procedures; bloodletting; and understandings of infection at the time.

Discover more about the apothecary at Colonial Williamsburg by clicking here.

On This Day

Description

Colonial Wiliamsburg Librarian Juleigh Clark describes her research into the events described in Revolutionary-War-era newspapers, both in articles and advertisements.

Note: this podcast is no longer available. To view a transcript of the original podcast, click here.

Born in the USA

Description

According to BackStory:

"To mark the rebirth of BackStory as a weekly program, the History Guys set out to explore the earliest stages of life in America. They begin with a few of the basic assumptions we have about birth in America today, and spend the hour exploring how those assumptions came into being. How is it that hospital doctors moved in on what had been midwife’s exclusive territory? Why did Puritans think their newborns were damned from the outset? When did courts start ruling that fetuses had legal rights? Why have generations of Americans resisted the notion of birthright citizenship?"

Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands

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Photo, Class on coconut growing. . . , Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands
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This website offers more than 50,000 slides and photographs that document the history of the American period in Micronesia from 1947 to 1988. The image collection can be browsed or the visitor can sample the types of images in the collection through 12 short animated image tours. The topics of the image tours give an idea of the variety of images available in the collection: parades, dancing, voting, agriculture, stone money, canoes, architecture, women, leaders, education and children, health and hospitals, and men. The only search capability on the site is a Google search of the photograph description files. Additional resources include a map of Oceania and a link to the Hawaii War Records Archive. This archive is a useful source of images for those researching, writing, or teaching the cultural history of the Pacific Islands.

The History Box

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Photo, Pushcart peddler in Lower East Side, NY, early 1900s, The History Box
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A gateway and an archive of numerous articles on New York history, this site "focuses a particularly long lens on the early history of political and economic events, panics, riots and other related matters affecting or contributing to New York City's development and growth." Its main feature is the New York state and New York City directories. (The U.S. directory is currently unavailable.) The New York state directory offers more than 700 links and more than 60 articles organized under 21 topics that include the arts, cities and counties, ethnic groups, military, societies and associations, transportation, women and their professions, and worship.

The New York City directory offers more than 5,200 links and more than 700 articles organized under 58 topics that include architecture, the arts, business matters, city government, clubs and societies, crime and punishment, education, ethnic groups, 5th Avenue, Harlem, immigration, New York City panics, real estate, temperance and prohibition, and Wall Street. The visitor can search the entire site or each directory by keyword. This site is a good starting point for researching the history of New York. It should also be useful for literary scholars, writers, and historical societies.