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This Portulan navigation chart on vellum was compiled by Samuel de Champlain (1567-1635), the founder of New France, and was originally intended as a gift to the King of France. As one of the great cartographic treasures of America, the map offers the first comprehensive delineation of the coasts of New England and Canada from Cape Sable to Cape Cod, showing Port Royal, French Bay, the St. John rivers, St. Croix , Penobscot and Kennebec; and Mount Desert Island
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Joan Vinckeboons (1617-1670) was a Dutch cartographer and engraver from a family of artists of Flemish origin. He was employed by the Dutch West Indies Company and made maps for over 30 years for use in Dutch commercial and military transport. He was a business partner of Joan Blaeu, one of the most important map and atlas publishers of the time. Vinckeboons drew a series of 200 handwritten maps
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The Bay Psalm Book as this work is known, is the first book printed in British North America. Reverend Jesse Glover imported the first printing press to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1638, some 18 years after the first English settlers landed on Plymouth Rock. A printer from London, Stephen Daye, came with the press and established a printing press in Cambridge.The following year, the residents of the colony asked John Eliot Thomas Welde to produce a new translation from the Book of Psalms
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Nicolas de Fer (1646-1720) was a French cartographer and editor of atlases. This 1720 hand-painted map by de Fer is actually a pirated copy of a 1696 handwritten map made by Father Eusebio Kino (1645-1711). Kino was an Italian Jesuit priest who trained as a cartographer. Best known for his work in establishing missions and defending the rights of Indians, he also made important geographical discoveries. In the 1680s and 1690s he explored Pimería Alta in what is now southern Arizona and Mexico
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This pen and ink handwritten map shows the disposition of the troops at the beginning of the Battle of Monongahela, which took place on July 9, 1755, in the second year of the Franco-Indian War. Determined to drive the French out of western Pennsylvania, the British had sent a force of 2,000 permanent soldiers and colonial militia under General Edward Braddock to capture Fort Duquesne, located at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, in what is now It is downtown Pittsburgh.
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This map shows the original Mason-Dixon line, which is traditionally considered the dividing line between the North and South of the United States and, prior to the Civil War, between the slave and non-slave states. In the 18th century, a dispute broke out over the borders between the British colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania. They agreed to resolve the dispute by having two English astronomers, Charles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779), study the border.
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In Boston in the late 1760s, movements for what later became the American Revolution began because residents were angered by heavy taxes. With the Townshend Acts of 1767, the British levied taxes on imported merchandise, including glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. To enforce the laws, they imposed a heavy military presence on the Massachusetts settlers, exacerbating tensions between the local population and representatives of the crown.
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This treaty, sent to Congress by American negotiators John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay, officially ended the American War of Independence. It was one of the most advantageous treaties ever negotiated by the United States. Two fundamental provisions were the British recognition of the independence of the United States and the delimitation of borders that would allow the American expansion westward, in the direction of the Mississippi River.
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David H. Burr (1803-1875) was a surveyor and cartographer, serving as a surveyor for the United States Post Office from 1832 to 1838 and as a geographer for the House of Representatives from 1838 to 1847. Under the direction of the director General Post Office, Burr collected information from postal administrators across the country about transportation routes (roads, railways, and post-route canals)
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Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the United States of America and one of the founding fathers of the republic. With a nation still in the process of solidifying its identity, political figures became a popular subject for contemporary artists, as were kings, aristocracy, and religious figures in the past. Portrait artists aspired to earn money by painting important political figures, either the subject himself or his most enthusiastic followers.
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This record of the Lewis and Clark expedition, published in 1814, is based on detailed diaries kept by Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, the expedition leaders. The book begins with the "Life of Captain Lewis", written by Thomas Jefferson, which reproduces Jefferson's detailed instructions to Lewis regarding the objectives of the expedition.
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Osceola was a Seminole war chief who led the resistance to the campaign by US federal troops to forcibly regain his tribe's territory west of the Mississippi River. Known as the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), it was one of the most destructive campaigns of the federal authorities against the American Indians. Despite outnumbering the Seminoles by ten to one, the US troops failed to secure a quick victory.
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Ioann Veniaminov (1797-1879) was a Russian Orthodox priest, who in 1823 volunteered to go to Alaska as a missionary. He settled with his wife and family in Unalaska, built a church and school, and began the life-long task of studying the native languages of the region. With the help of the Aleut chief, Ivan Pan'kov, Veniaminov invented an alphabet for the Unangan (Aleut) language which he used to create grammars and translate the Gospel of St. Matthew. Traveling throughout the Aleutian Islands
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The American poet Walt Whitman used this three-quarter portrait of himself as the frontispiece to the first edition of his most important work, Leaves of Grass, published in 1855. It shows a 37-year-old Whitman in laborer clothes. This image, known as «the carpenter», is an icon of the American poet as «one of the tough ones» or common man
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This panoramic map shows Titusville, Pennsylvania, as it looked in 1896. Located in western Pennsylvania, Titusville is known as the place where the modern oil industry began. In 1859, the Seneca Oil Company, a newly formed company, hired Edwin L. Drake, a retired railroad engineer, to investigate suspected oil fields near Titusville. Drake used an old steam engine to drill a well
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Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was the 16th President of the United States. He was born on a farm in Kentucky and moved with his family to Indiana at the age of eight. At age 21 he moved to Illinois, where he held various jobs and began studying law. He received less than a year of formal education, but reading the King James Bible and other English classics made him a skilled writer.
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In the entry made on March 10, 1876 in his own notebook, Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) described the first successful experiment with the telephone: he spoke through the apparatus with his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, who was in the adjoining room. Bell wrote: “I yelled at M [the microphone] the following sentence: 'Mr. Watson, come on, I want to see you. ' To my satisfaction, he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I had said.
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This poster depicting the head and shoulders of a coal miner was made in 1937 for the Federal Art Program for Work Projects Administration (WPA) in Pennsylvania. This was one of the New Deal programs launched by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to combat unemployment in the Depression era; Between 1936 and 1943, the WPA supported the creation of more than 2,000 posters by renowned artists.
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This photograph shows a launch of a space shuttle, the world's first reusable spacecraft, at the Kennedy Space Center on Florida's Atlantic Coast. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) developed the shuttle to reduce space travel costs and to support the construction of the International Space Station and other space missions.
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A virus has been struck that has caused what we know today as a global pandemic, until now, it is still being treated and it is about improving for a better experience
