Hiroshima Peace Site

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Photo, A-Bomb Dome
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This is a somewhat random collection of material designed to inform visitors about the effects of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to encourage discussions about world peace. The Hiroshima City University Department of Computer Science produced the site, which is divided into twenty pages. Pages that address the effects of the bomb include interviews of 700 to 900 words with five survivors and a survey of attitudes of second-generation Hiroshima citizens and children towards the bombing. There are 13 images of objects in the Peace Memorial Museum and 12 photographs that portray the effects of the bomb on Hiroshima. A 600-word essay describes the bomb and its physical effects. Pages that focus on peace include a tour of Peace Park, messages from the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the 19-page transcript of the Hiroshima Peace Forum, attended by Shimon Peres, Kenzaburo Ooe, and Takeshi Hiraoka. A bibliography provides titles for 37 books about the bomb and links to 30 other bomb related sites. Site may be useful for discussion of the cultural legacy of the bomb.

After the Day of Infamy

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Day of Infamy website screen shot
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More than 12 hours of audio interviews conducted in the days following the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor and in January and February, 1942, are included on this site. Interviews include the voices of 200 "ordinary Americans" recorded in 10 places across the U.S.

December recordings were made by fieldworkers contacted by the Library of Congress Radio Research Project to gather opinions of a diverse group of citizens regarding American entrance into war. In the 1942 recordings, produced by the Office of Emergency Management, interviewees were instructed to speak their minds directly to the President. Interviewees discuss domestic issues, including racism and labor activism, in addition to the war. Related written documents and biographies of the fieldworkers are also presented. The interviews are available in audio files and text transcriptions, and are searchable by keyword, subject, and location.

World War I Sheet Music

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Image, Introductory graphic, World War I Sheet Music
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This website offers an archive of nearly 2,000 pieces of sheet music printed during the First World War (1914-1918). The collection includes such diverse subjects as African-American soldiers, democracy, flags, marriage, and Woodrow Wilson, and it includes the work of such musicians as Irving Berlin, Eddie Cantor, and John Philip Sousa. The collection can be browsed by creator, publisher, subject, or titles; and both basic and advanced searches are available. A general introduction and a historical essay are forthcoming. This website is a useful resource for historians of early 20th-century American culture or those studying material or visual culture.

Handbook of Texas Online

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two Texas militiamen from the Civil War
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With more than 25,000 articles and 3,000 authors, this website offers students and teachers a broad scope of topics, with in-depth analysis from scholars and amateur historians across dozens of universities and historical associations. Material on the site can be accessed alphabetically, or by browsing articles using the left-hand navigation column ("title", "what", "when", "where", and "who"). In addition, the site contains three major subsections: "The Handbook of Civil War Texas," "The Texas Lighthouse Series," and "The Handbook of Texas Music." Visitors can also subscribe to the site’s RSS feed to receive a "Texas Day by Day" feature.

The Education section offers teacher resources and more than 20 lesson plans. Most of these materials are for grades four and seven (state history), but they have applications across grade levels. Lesson plans are arranged by topic, grade level, and state standards—useful for educators in Texas and across the country.

Due to the sheer volume of entries in this site, becoming familiar with the dozens of subcategories in the left-hand column is a good place to start. The search engine may also prove helpful when looking for a keyword or phrase.

Experiencing War: Stories from the Veterans History Project

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Logo, Veterans History Project
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This collection presents video and audio oral histories and additional material from American veterans of 20th-century wars. Materials include memoirs (some lengthy), letters, diaries, photo albums, scrapbooks, poetry, artwork, and official documents. The website currently provides digital materials from 4,351 veterans from World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, Afghanistan and the Iraq War, and other similar events. The 226 video interviews range from 25 minutes to two hours in length.

The material presented is part of a rapidly growing archive, the Veterans History Project, created by Congress in 2000 to collect stories from the 19 million living veterans. Other sections highlight World War I; World War II's forgotten theaters in China, Burma, and India; and 37 other unique war experiences.

Recipe for Victory: Food and Cooking in Wartime

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Poster, Know your onions. . . , 1941-1945, Office for Emergency Management, NARA
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Recipe for Victory: Food and Cooking in Wartime literally encapsulates the flavor of an era. Between 1917 and 1919, it became clear that feeding U.S. and European troops was crucial. This required a sacrifice on the part of individuals in the English and U.S. homefronts. As a result, the period birthed a great quantity of literature on nutrition, replacing scare ingredients with those readily accessible, garden growth, and international food-related statistics.

This website collects 45 textual sources published between 1917 and 1919. Simply choose "browse," and enjoy everything from Preserve Eggs for Winter Use or Best War Time Recipes to Why Not Buckwheat?.

Guampedia

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Illustration, Landing Place at Guam, Jan-July 1863, T. Coghlan, Flickr Commons
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Don't let Guam be forgotten in your classroom! After all, it is one of only 16 non-self-governing territories worldwide that are recognized by the UN. As such, leaving Guam out of history is to ignore a rather remarkable political exception.

Guampedia offers a range of short articles on everything from architecture to World War II. These pages also feature relevant photographs and further resource listings. Additional sections offer basic facts on Guam (motto, population, etc.) and its major villages. Be sure to check out the history lesson plans to see if there's any ready-made content appropriate for you to introduce to your classroom.

Additional ways to explore include a selection of media collections including photographs, illustrations, soundbites, and video; MARC Publications, including issues of the Guam Recorder, lectures, and additional e-publications on topics such as archaeology and stonework; and traditional recipes.

Digital Library of Georgia

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Postcard, 270 Peachtree Building, Historic Postcard Coll., Digital Library of Ga
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Bringing together a wealth of material from libraries, archives, and museums, this website examines the history and culture of the state of Georgia. Legal materials include more than 17,000 state government documents from 1994 to the present, updated daily, and a complete set of Acts and Resolutions from 1799 to 1995. "Southeastern Native American Documents" provides approximately 2,000 letters, legal documents, military orders, financial papers, and archaeological images from 1730–1842. Materials from the Civil War era include a soldier's diary and two collections of letters.

The site provides a collection of 80 full-text, word-searchable versions of books from the early 19th century to the 1920s and three historic newspapers. There are approximately 2,500 political cartoons from 1946-1982; Jimmy Carter's diaries; photographs of African Americans from Augusta during the late 19th century; and 1,500 architectural and landscape photographs from the 1940s to the 1980s.

Kentuckiana Digital Library

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Image for Kentuckiana Digital Library
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These historical materials come from 15 Kentucky colleges, universities, libraries, and historical societies. There are nearly 8,000 photographs; 95 full-text books, manuscripts, and journals from 1784 to 1971; 94 oral histories; 78 issues of Mountain Life and Work from 1925-62; and 22 issues of Works Progress Administration in Kentucky: Narrative Reports.

Photographs include collections by Russell Lee, who documented health conditions resulting from coal industry practices; Roy Stryker, head of the New Deal Farm Security Administration photographic section; and others that provide images of cities, towns, schools, camps, and disappearing cultures. Oral histories address Supreme Court Justice Stanley F. Reed, Senator John Sherman Cooper, the Frontier Nursing Service, veterans, fiddlers, and the transition from farming to an industrial economy. Texts include Civil War diaries, religious tracts, speeches, correspondence, and scrapbooks. Documents cover a range of topics, including colonization societies, civil rights, education, railroads, feuding, the Kentucky Derby, Daniel Boone, and a personal recollection of Abraham Lincoln.

Union Army Project

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Image for Union Army Project
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This site presents medical and mortality statistics and records related to 35,747 white males who served in the Union Army during the Civil War. All were eligible for Federal pensions later in life. These materials a part of a larger study attempting to create "lifecycle datasets" to explore the effects of lifestyle and biomedical interventions on the human life span.

The website presents three datasets based on different sources of information: Military, Pension, and Medical Records. These are compiled from wartime and pension application records; Surgeon's Certificates, with information from detailed physical examinations; and Census Records from 1850, 1860, 1900, and 1910. Individual soldiers were tracked through various data sources with unique Army identification numbers. The site includes a 2,000-word essay that discusses the scientific and historical background for the study and a 700-word summary of significant results.