The golf resort and spa in Hot Springs, Virginia, known as the Homestead, has been host to visitors since 1766, including many presidents. Thomas Jefferson made the trek to the Allegheny Mountains to visit the springs in 1819, attempting to ease his rheumatism.
Read MoreThe Mexican Revolution was well underway by the time that Woodrow Wilson became the American president. When the government of Porfirio Díaz failed after thirty-five years in power with a botched attempt to rig elections in 1910, a revolt and then new elections the following year brought Francisco I. Madero to power.
Read MoreOne thing we often find ourselves doing at the WWPL Library & Research Center is helping people even when we do not have what they are looking for. Suppose you read that Woodrow Wilson met Harry Houdini. You might want to find additional information about what actually happened at such an exciting event.
Read MoreDuring the nineteenth century, Mayday was one of the few holidays in Germany without any religious significance, but workers still got the day off. Typically people would enjoy the spring weather with some beer and dancing.
Read MoreEllen Wilson’s brother, Edward Axson, who graduated from Princeton, wrote to the Wilson children in 1900 about his new job, but they were probably more interested in his reports about Christmas and about his puppy, Prince. “I think he will make a good hunting dog when he gets bigger.” Prince liked to steal shoes from the mine foreman. There are references to dogs scattered throughout the collections, but nothing on the Wilson family having a dog. Margaret Wilson wrote to her father a couple of years later about Cousin Mary having a dog with distemper.
Read MoreWhile President Woodrow Wilson was in Italy as part of his triumphant tour in Europe to mark the end of the war and the negotiations for peace, he is likely to have thought of his first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson.
Read MoreOne thing that scholars have been doing with all of the historical sources and literary works online these days is to apply tools of linguistic analaysis to the texts. For instance, if you take Woodrow Wilson’s Congressional Government from 1885 and look at weighted word frequencies through what is called a word cloud, you can see what sort of language he was using
Read MoreFor several years, beginning in the spring of 1918, a flock of sheep grazed on the White House Lawn. After America entered World War I, the sheep helped to save manpower by keeping the grass trimmed. We don’t exactly who came up with the idea, but Dr. Cary Grayson contacted his horseracing friend Wiliam Woodward about getting some sheep for the president. Woodward sent along a small flock from his farm in Maryland by wagon.
Read MoreAmerica celebrates Veterans Day on November 11 in order to recognize those men and women who have served in the armed forces.
Read MoreYou may have heard about the Great White Fleet of sixteen battleships, which President Theodore Roosevelt sent around the world in December of 1907 as a show of American naval strength. This was after Japan had defeated Russia in a Pacific war and just as the United States was preparing to complete the Panama Canal.
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