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Historical Documents

John Hancock left this trunk of documents at a Lexington tavern. Paul Revere and fellow Bostonian John Lowell recovered the trove of papers and carried it across the village green.

America's 250th Anniversary

Everyone Remembers Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride. But His Forgotten Race to Secure a Trove of Documents Reveals How Government Records Helped Win the War

During the American Revolution, both the British and the patriots fought to keep sensitive papers out of enemy hands

Yasuyuki Aono kept track of bloom dates for Yamazakura cherry trees in Kyoto.

In Japan, a New Steward for 1,200 Years of Cherry Blossom Data Has Been Found, Sustaining a Climate Change Research Project

Climate scientist Yasuyuki Aono, who died last summer, learned to read ancient Japanese script to compile records on peak bloom dating back to the ninth century C.E.

Property plan of the parish of St. Ann Blackfriars

Cool Finds

Shakespeare’s House in London Was Lost to History. A Scholar Discovered a Map in the Archives That Revealed Its Exact Location

The Bard purchased the property three years before his death in 1616. Had he hoped to spend more time in the city where he wrote his best-known plays?

An 1818 John Trumbull painting of the presentation of the draft Declaration of Independence to the Continental Congress

In 1776, the Declaration of Independence Was Breaking News. Here’s How the Founding Document Reached the American Public

A new book by historian Emily Sneff records the journeys of the Declaration’s first printed copies, tracking their reception in the Thirteen Colonies and overseas

"By the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies," Abigail Adams wrote on March 31, 1776.

America's 250th Anniversary

Abigail Adams Asked Her Husband to ‘Remember the Ladies’ as He Drafted America’s Laws. Here’s What She Really Meant

She wrote the letter that would come to define her legacy on March 31, 1776. But 250 years later, Americans are misinterpreting her open-ended request

Prayers partially cover diagrams from On the Sphere and the Cylinder, a treatise written by Archimedes.

Cool Finds

Historians Say They’ve Discovered a Long-Lost Page From the Archimedes Palimpsest, a Treasure Trove of Rare Ancient Mathematical Treatises

Three leaves had been missing for more than a century. Researchers found one of them when they decided on a whim to check the archives of a French museum

A 1631 copy of the Bible that includes the text "Thou shalt commit adultery."

Typos Have Plagued Us for Centuries. Just Ask the Publishers Who Printed the Seventh Commandment as ‘Thou Shalt Commit Adultery’ in 1631

A new exhibition at Yale Library explores the history of typos across five centuries. Visitors will see corrections that were listed inside copies of works by James Joyce, Upton Sinclair and Nicolaus Copernicus

This rare broadside copy of the Declaration of Independence will be sold in May.

America's 250th Anniversary

You Can Buy a Rare Broadside Copy of the Declaration of Independence From July 1776

The document, which will head to auction this spring, is one of roughly 125 broadsides from July 1776 known to survive

The original scroll of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, up for auction in March, is 121 feet long.

You Can Buy Jack Kerouac’s Early Draft of ‘On the Road,’ Which He Typed on a 121-Foot-Long Scroll

The author taped pages together so he wouldn’t need to load paper into his typewriter. The original scroll of the Beat Generation classic is expected to fetch up to $4 million at auction

The exhibition features the last letter that Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, sent to Elizabeth I in 1588.

Read Love Letters From Royals and Romantics Across 500 Years of British History

A new exhibition at Britain’s National Archives features a letter to Elizabeth I, Jane Austen’s will and a plea to free Oscar Wilde from prison

The title page of the collection of Bartholomäus Vogtherr's medical recipes (left) and a page from another medical text called the Kreuterbu[o]ch (right)

New Research

Renaissance Readers Left Chemical Clues Inside These Medical Manuals. Were They Using Human Feces and Tortoise Shells to Treat Illnesses?

Researchers analyzed proteins extracted from “How to Cure and Expel All Afflictions and Illnesses of the Human Body” and “A Useful and Essential Little Book of Medicine for the Common Man,” both written by a 16th-century German eye doctor

Inky paw prints on a 15th-century Flemish manuscript

A Cat Left Paw Prints on the Pages of This Medieval Manuscript When the Ink Was Drying 500 Years Ago

An exhibition called “Paws on Parchment” tracks how cats were depicted in the Middle Ages through texts and artworks from around the world—including one example of a 15th-century “keyboard cat”

The Hornet's Nest, Jimmy Carter, 2003

You Can Buy President Jimmy Carter’s Paintings, Furniture, Mementos and a Love Letter to His Wife

Christie’s selected the items with help from the president’s daughter, Amy, for a special sale in celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday

An ogham stone in Cornwall, England

These Linguists Are Creating a New Dictionary of Ancient Celtic Languages—With Help From ‘Curse Tablets’ and Roman Records

The project aims to produce a record of the Celtic languages spoken in Britain and Ireland, though the majority of these words have already been lost to history

A letter from Jane Austen to her sister, Cassandra, discussing the publication of Pride and Prejudice in 1813

Jane Austen’s Letters Are the Closest We Can Get to Her. What Do They Reveal About the ‘Pride and Prejudice’ Author?

This year marks the English novelist’s 250th birthday. Her hundreds of surviving letters—both real and fictional—offer valuable insights into her imaginative wit and enduring appeal

Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, is leading a project to compile the names of as many Jewish Holocaust victims as possible.

Researchers Have Identified the Names of Five Million Victims Murdered in the Holocaust

Led by Israel’s Yad Vashem, the initiative has been underway since the 1950s. But it recently got a boost from artificial intelligence, which is helping humans search through the records

This 14th- or 15th-century aquamanile, a vessel for pouring water in domestic and religious settings, shows a sexual depiction of the legend of Aristotle and Phyllis.

See How These Medieval Artists Explored the Many Meanings of Love and Desire in a New Exhibition at the Met Cloisters

The show features more than 50 paintings, manuscripts, textiles and other artworks created in Western Europe between the 13th and 15th centuries

The National Archives is the permanent home of the United States Constitution.

America's 250th Anniversary

See the Entire U.S. Constitution on Display for the Very First Time in History

The National Archives in Washington, D.C. will be showcasing the four pages of the historic document, plus a rarely shown “fifth page,” the Bill of Rights and the 17 other amendments

The New York Public Library has one of Thomas Jefferson's handwritten copies of the Declaration of Independence in its collection.

America's 250th Anniversary

See Thomas Jefferson’s Handwritten Copy of the Declaration of Independence

The rare document will be on view for just three days at the New York Public Library next year in celebration of America’s 250th anniversary

Every page is stamped with the words "Pearl Harbor" at the top.

Cool Finds

She Found a Tattered Logbook in the Trash. It Turned Out to Be a Rare Record From the 1941 Pearl Harbor Attack

The National Archives has recovered the volume, which includes more than 500 pages of data from March 1941 to June 1942. It had been tucked away in storage for half a century

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