The pineapple, indigenous to South America and domesticated and harvested there for centuries, was a late comer to Europe. The fruit followed in its cultivation behind the tomato, corn, potato, more »
Author: Julia Blakely
Julia Blakely is a former Rare Book Catalog Librarian at Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. She has undergraduate and master's degrees in art history from the George Washington University and a M.S., with a specialization in rare books, from Columbia University. For many years she was a lab instructor at Rare Book School at the University of Virginia (formerly at Columbia). She served as the Libraries' representative for the Smithsonian's Material Culture Forum. Julia wrote the bibliographical descriptions for An Oak Spring Flora (1997) and has worked with several other private collections.
Oliver Byrne, in the introduction to his The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid of 1847, states that “the Elements of Euclid can be acquired in less than more »
By 1800, most Northern States had, or were about to, pass legislation that made slavery illegal. Following the Revolution, freedom of blacks had been a cause with legal cases brought more »
The patron saint of both printers and brewers is Aurelius Augustine, born in 354 CE in present-day Algeria. He studied and taught philosophy and rhetoric there and in Carthage, Rome more »
Publications detailing how to survive any given situation pop up everywhere. Some are serious and fearful, others practical and common sense, and then there are those tongue-in-cheek and humorous. Wilderness more »
The Smithsonian’s Annual Report of 1963, listing notable acquisitions and donations, included: The division of naval history acquired, from Capt. P. V. H. Weems, the Weems Memorial Library and its more »
The National Museum of African American History and Culture has in its collections a copy of Twelve Years a Slave: The Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped more »