Homepage for Mt. Vernon Estate and Gardens, George Washington's Virginia estate, this site offers valuable sources for researching the life and home of the first U.S. President. An exhibit contains more than 50 images of furniture, art, documents, and other Mount Vernon household objects. Each image is accompanied by a 150-word description of the artifact and its location or significance to the estate. A virtual tour of Mt. Vernon's mansion takes visitors through every room with a photograph and 350-word description of the room and its furnishings. An archaeology section describes digs at eight sites on the estate, a 500-word description of a current excavation of Washington's distillery, and a 1500-word essay on the Mt. Vernon mansion's restoration beginning in 1858. An Educational Resources section offers a fifth-grade lesson plan, complete with trivia about Washington, excerpts from his Rules on Civility, and anecdotes from his military career and presidency; a 2000-word essay on Washington's attitude toward slavery and information on his slaves' lives, including links to a facsimile copy of Washington's 1798 slave census and 18 images of paintings and artifacts depicting the everyday lives of Mt. Vernon's slaves. This site is ideal for researching Washington's life and home, and it could also be useful for those studying material culture and archaeology.

This site explores the not-so-obvious relationship between Richard Nixon's interest in sports, his politics, and his reputation as a public figure. Professional historian Nicholas Sarantakes designed the site as the electronic version of a forthcoming book. A timeline from 1969 to 1974 provides descriptions (5-20 words) on sports-related and other important events in Nixon's presidency. Watergate events, for instance, are intertwined with Nixon's interest in relocating the San Diego Padres to Washington, D.C. In 16 photographs and six cartoons, Nixon is shown as spectator and participant at sporting events. He is quoted talking about sports on 13 different occasions. The site refers visitors to two articles by Sarnatakes on the topic of Nixon and sports. The site may be interesting to cultural historians in general and useful for research in sports history and the history of the presidency in particular.

This wealth of historical materials, in a variety of formats, addresses Abraham Lincoln's years in Illinois (1831–1860) and Illinois history during the same period. The website provides more than 2,300 transcriptions of documents, including correspondence, speeches, treaties, and other official papers. In addition, there are 295 images of Lincoln, his family, friends, associates, and contemporaries, as well as Illinois towns, homes, and businesses, and 63 recordings of songs.

Materials are organized into eight thematic sections: African American Experience and American Racial Attitudes; Economic Development and Labor; Frontier Settlement; Law and Society; Native American Relations; Politics; Religion and Culture; and Women's Experience and Gender Roles. Each theme includes a background essay, relevant documents and images, video discussions by prominent historians, and narrated slide shows. "Lincoln's Biography" divides his life into eight segments with a summary and biographical text by scholars, as well as a bibliography.

This is a companion site to a 1999 National Museum of American History exhibit of Fred J. Maroon's photographs taken during the last four years of Richard M. Nixon's presidency. Maroon, a freelance photographer known for his images of Washington's monuments and landscapes, recorded Nixon's presidency from 1970, through the 1972 reelection campaign and the Watergate controversy, to the impeachment hearings and Nixon's resignation in 1974. The site is divided into four chronologically-arranged sections. The "White House" contains photographs taken in 1970 and 1971 while Maroon worked on a behind-the-scenes book about the White House Staff; "Reelection" records images of Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign; "Hearings" offers photographs of the White House staff during the Watergate crisis and impeachment hearings; and "Final Days" captures the events leading up to Nixon's resignation in 1974. The site offers more than 25 images selected from the museum exhibit as well as a timeline of the Nixon presidency from 1968 to 1974 and a 200-word biography of Maroon. For those interested in Watergate and the Nixon administration, this is a good site.

The Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs Division selected this set of 156 portraits of presidents and first ladies from those items in the division's file of popular demand images for which no copyright restrictions are known.

Popular subjects, such as images of inaugurations and the White House, are included, as are such perennial favorites as Abraham Lincoln with Sojourner Truth, Calvin Coolidge at a baseball game, Warren G. Harding with his lively dog Laddie, and Dwight D. Eisenhower with American paratroopers in England.

The first ladies' portraits depict 36 wives of 35 presidents.

The collection is primarily illustrative.

The Library of Congress is a well-known and respected content source for the classroom. However, given the wide variety of collections, searching for items on a given topic can be time-consuming. This website links visitors to the library's September 11 resources by collection, so there's no need to run multiple searches.

First and foremost, the website is dated. However, this is no reason to assume that it is without worthwhile content. The exhibit and memorial events it advertises are long past, so the exhibition overview and public programs sections are only useful as primary sources. That said, the collection links are the heart of the site. The American Folklife Center offers a video presentation on the Library of Congress's personal account collection and three drawings by children. For a small collection of chapbooks, a poster, and newspaper clippings, try the Area Studies/Overseas Field Offices collection. The Geography and Map Division provides aerial and fly-through views of the Twin Towers site, while the Prints and Photographs Division's offerings are the most extensive, with posters, fine art, photography, architectural proposals for new World Trade Center designs, political cartoons, and comic book art. Rare Book and Special Collections houses only two photographs of Kitty Caparella's book art, The Message; while the Serial and Government Publications Division's page holds three U.S. newspaper pages announcing the attacks and a video on the Library of Congress's 9/11 newspaper collection.

While the resources are limited, educators who need to find 9/11 materials quickly should consider taking a few minutes on this Library of Congress portal site, particularly if they are interested in items from the Prints and Photographs Division.

Anytime you write a letter, you use the ZIP code. What is that code, and when did people start using it? More importantly for the postal service, how do you get an entire country's population to memorize and add a seemingly random string of numbers to their addresses?

The answer, in the 1960s, was Mr. Zip, a jaunty cartoon postman, designed to make the new ZIP code cause memorable and approachable.

This website discusses the ways in which Mr. Zip was deployed as an educational and advertising device. The majority of the content consists of an essay divided into smaller, more manageable subpages. However, sprinkled throughout, you'll find Mr. Zip comics; merchandise, such as board games and lunchboxes; promotional materials; PSA videos; a memo; photographs; and postage stamps.

This video describes what each number of the ZIP code represents, which could be a hook if you decide to introduce Mr. ZIP in the classroom. Ultimately, the content is not likely to be of direct use in the classroom but may be of more interest as trivia or to flesh out background knowledge for related lessons.

This website offers brief articles on roughly 65 topics within Minnesota history. Each article in turn consists of text, images pulled from the Minnesota Historical Society, a bibliography, and a list of references (divided into primary, secondary, and web resources) for those interested in further information.

The content can be filtered by category (such as event or structure), topic (from "African Americans" to "women"), or era, making it easier to find items of interest.

Currently, the site is in beta testing. The Minnesota Historical Society invites comments from all site users, and plans to greatly expand the number of available articles throughout 2012. In the meantime, there's a wealth of information available ranging in content from the oldest sauna in the state (and most likely the country) to a major 1800s African American newspaper.

This collection presents 1,395 photographs by the American photographer, music and dance critic, and novelist Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964). The site consists primarily of studio portraits of celebrities, most of whom were involved in the arts, including actors, such as Marlon Brando and Paul Robeson; artists, such as Marc Chagall and Frida Kahlo; novelists, such as Theodore Dreiser and Willa Cather; singers, such as Ethel Waters and Billie Holiday; publishers, such as Alfred A. Knopf and Bennett Cerf; cultural critics, such as H. L. Mencken and Gilbert Seldes; and figures from the Harlem Renaissance, such as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston.

More than 80 photographs capture Massachusetts and Maine landscapes and seascapes; others include eastern locations and New Mexico. Many photographs of actors present them in character roles. Searchable by keyword and arranged into subject and occupational indexes, this collection also includes a nine-title bibliography and background essay of 800 words on Van Vechten's life and work. A valuable collection for the documentation of the mid-20th-century art scene.

Featuring texts by and about Martin Luther King Jr., this regularly updated website currently contains more than 1,400 speeches, sermons, and other writings, mostly taken from five volumes covering the period from 1929 to 1968. (These are listed in the Published Documents section under Papers.)

In addition, sixteen chapters of materials published in 1998 as The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. are available. The website presents important sermons and speeches from later periods, including "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," the March on Washington address, the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, and “Beyond Vietnam.” Additional materials include an interactive chronology of King's life, two biographical essay, over twenty audio files of recorded speeches and sermons, and twelve articles on King. More than thirty photographs complete the website.

The King Papers Project is valuable for studying King's views and discourse on civil rights, race relations, nonviolence, education, peace, and other political, religious, and philosophical topics.