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Archive: August 2024 (5 Posts)

Monochrome image of Ford at table in committee hearing room, speaking into microphone

The Nixon Pardon

Posted by: Ryan Reft

When President Richard M. Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, he departed for an exile in San Clemente, California, that began with depression and anxiety, but ended with a presidential pardon, a hospitalization, and eventually political renewal.

Nautical Almanac Office director Charles Henry Davis offers Maria Mitchell a position as a “computer,” at a time when computers were people and opportunities for professional work in astronomy were vanishingly few, for both men and women. Davis to Mitchell, August 10, 1849.

Maria Mitchell’s Enduring Legacy: From Astronomical Poetry to Liberty Ships

Posted by: Josh Levy

This post is coauthored by Morgan Black, librarian at the United States Naval Observatory, and Josh Levy, historian of science and technology at the Library of Congress Manuscript Division. When Maria Mitchell spotted a telescopic comet from the roof of her Nantucket home in 1847, a historic feat that helped make her a national celebrity, …