March 2009

Old Daguerreotypes

While browsing the internet the other day, I ran into a very interesting collection put together by The Library of Congress of some of the oldest known daguerreotypes in the United States. Some of the images include buildings in Washington DC while others are portraits of people and occupations. The...

Historiography Paper on Reinhard Gehlen Sources

The professor of the history class I am currently taking, in which I am doing research on Reinhard Gehlen, has assigned a historiography paper with a minimum of 20 secondary sources. This would not be a problem if that many secondary sources existed on Reinhard Gehlen. I have been able to only find ...

A Sad Reality about American Universities

This is an article that shows the incredibly sad reality about grade inflation in American universities and its consequences. It is definitely worth a read.

Cataloging with LibraryThing

So now that I have access again to my entire personal library, I have begun to catalog all of my books with LibraryThing. It is taking a while because I have quite a large number of books. Several of them are foreign which means that it is quite difficult to find them with LibraryThing. I...

It Happened in Colorado

Today I ordered a new book that looked really interesting. The book is called It Happened in Colorado by James A. Crutchfield. I am originally from Colorado and so I figured a book on the history of Colorado would be an interesting read. James A. Crutchfield always writes interesting books about the...

Last photo of Lincoln before his death?

Lincoln seems to be in the news a lot this week. Today CNN is reporting that a new photograph of Lincoln has emerged that is believed to be the last taken before his assassination in 1865. It was discovered in a photo album belonging to General Ulysses S. Grant’s great-great grandson, Ulysses ...

Message found hidden in Lincoln’s pocketwatch

I found a really interesting news article on CNN about a message left to President Lincoln on the inside of his pocketwatch by a watchmaker who was repairing it at the time Fort Sumter was attacked. Here is the article: A long-hidden message has been discovered inside Abraham Lincoln’s pocket ...

Original Shakespeare Theater Found

I just got through reading an interesting article from the BBC about archaeologists having found and partially excavated the foundation of the original theater Shakespeare would have used. It is believed that the premier of plays such as Romeo and Juliet and an older version of Hamlet were performed...

Mark Twain and 19th Century American History

As a student of history, I unfortunately do not have a lot of time to devote to reading fiction books of my choice. If I am reading generally it is either a specifically assigned book or text for a class or a book pertaining to something relavent to my studies (such as Der Dienst by...

Research Proposal Completed

I’ve finally finished my research paper proposal for one of my history classes. The research paper is going to be about Reinhard Gehlen, but I have discussed that in a previous post. I feel a lot better about the paper now though because I now have a clear direction in which I want to head...