The year 2018 wasn’t just about a midterm election for the Offices of History, Art & Archives. We introduced a lot of content throughout the year, including 43 blogs! Here’s a few of our favorites from the past year.
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Shortly after noon on Friday, October 11, 1918, Martin D. Foster of Illinois anxiously asked for permission to speak on the floor. The six-term Congressman, who’d been a small-town doctor in down-state Illinois, was still digesting the latest grim reports about the rapid spread of the lethal Spanish influenza outbreak. What Foster had read alarmed him.
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The U.S. House of Representatives is governed by an ever-expanding matrix of rules and precedents, procedural compass points that have been accumulating every year since the very first Congress in 1789. The Constitution says little about the internal governing structure of the House other than that it “may determine the Rules of its Proceedings.” That vague allowance enables the House to create and maintain both its legislative processes and rules guiding the personal behavior of its Members.
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In the early 1920s, one Member of Congress flipped and looped over the Capitol in a biplane. But after famous pilot Charles Lindbergh took Representatives up for a ride in 1928, aviation soared in the Washington imagination.
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Art on November 9, 2018
For our second blog post highlighting military veteran-artists in the House Collection of Art and Artifacts, we look back to the 19th century, at the careers of two Civil War soldiers.
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On November 6, 1830, former United States President John Quincy Adams spent the day at his family’s farm near Quincy, Massachusetts, planting trees. On the edge of what would become the orchard, he laid out five rows of chestnuts, oaks, and shagbark hickories. The final, casual line in Adams’s diary that day: “I am a member elect of the twenty-second Congress.”
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Art on October 30, 2018
The modern congressional campaign poster is a familiar sight, but it is nothing like the ones plastered all over town a century ago.
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Representative John Philip Hill tried very hard to get arrested by the Commissioner of Prohibition.
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In the summer of 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed into law an act that expanded Hispanic Heritage Week, first created by Congress in 1968, into Hispanic Heritage Month. Sponsored by California Representative Esteban Torres and Illinois Senator Paul Simon, the new law created an annual month-long celebration of Hispanic-American culture and history.
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Doughnuts have long been a favorite Washington breakfast. Crullers cooked up debate both on and off the House Floor.
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Art on September 10, 2018
Reporters have covered the House from its earliest days, providing a vital link between the people and their Representatives.
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This Edition for Educators highlights the Presidency and its complicated relationship with the House of Representatives.
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