Browse Items (29 total)

This photograph depicts a woman and a child sitting on a sofa. The woman is holding a book, presumably reading to the child. In earlier eras books were an expensive luxury only afforded by a very few. The advent of the printing press made it easier…

During the 1920s in America, a dramatic change in communication and entertainment occurred. Radio allowed people to connect with others across the country and eventually the world. The cover of the November 1924 issue of Wireless Age shows how new…

These two engravings by the Scottish-born artist William Charles (1776–1820) contrast the resistance—or lack thereof—to the British invasions of Alexandria, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland during the War of 1812. Having their cities under attack…

John Glenn was a veteran of World War II and the Korean War. In 1957, he set a new speed record for traveling from Los Angeles to New York. It was his involvement in the U.S. Space Program, however, that earned him the most fame and a place in…

CONTENT WARNING: Materials in the Library of Virginia’s collections contain historical terms, phrases, and images that are offensive to modern readers. These include demeaning and dehumanizing references to race, ethnicity, and nationality; enslaved…

In April of 1900,  the Seaboard Air Line Railway was chartered, consolidating several railroads into a system with twenty-six hundred miles of track from Virginia to Florida. It also offered mail service as far north as New York over other railroad…

On April 14, 1945, U.S. President Frankin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was buried in Hyde Park, New York following funeral services at the White House.  Roosevelt had been elected four times to the office of President, a feat never matched, and now…

The Planters Peanut Company opened its first mass-processing plant in Suffolk, Virginia, in 1913. Having gained popularity after the Civil War, peanuts became a major cash crop for the state. By the turn of the twentieth century, economic emphasis…

Touted as the largest and most magnificent exposition of all time, the New York World’s Fair opened at Flushing Meadows in April 1939. In the Court of States, one exhibition was strikingly different from the rest: the Virginia Room, “an island of…

CONTENT WARNING: Materials in the Library of Virginia’s collections contain historical terms, phrases, and images that are offensive to modern readers. These include demeaning and dehumanizing references to race, ethnicity, and nationality; enslaved…