The University of Missouri Digital Library has a range of digital collections covering much of the fine Show Me State, along with other regions of the United States and the globe. This particular collection brings together key documents that tell the story of British religious, legal, and political history from the 1600s to the 1800s. Visitors can browse at their leisure or perform complex searches across the entire collection. It is impressive indeed, as it contains over 20,000 items that were purchased by the university beginning in 1943. Many of these documents were published anonymously, due to their possibly inflammatory and controversial subject matter. It's fun to just look around, as visitors can find items like the 1642 pamphlet "What kinds of Parliament will please the King" and 1643's "A Second Complaint: being an honest letter to a doubtfull friend, about the rifling of the twentieth part of his estate." [KMG]

The University of Houston has increased its digital offerings in recent years to allow visitors to make their way through everything from home retail pamphlets from the 1920s to copper plate engravings from Theodor de Bry's "Grandes Voyages." This particular collection offers users access to 80 different menus from the 1850s and 1860s. The menus are taken from establishments that were located all over the country, such as the American Hotel in Buffalo and the Allyn House in Hartford. It's quite a revelation to learn that on March 5, 1859, the patrons at the Allyn House would have had access to over 35 menu options, including oyster fritters and halibut. Culinary historians and gastronomy types will have a field day with these menus, which might inspire a rather elaborate repast.

The transit of Venus is a rare astronomical event that has been well documented throughout history. The most recent transit occurred in June of 2004, and the one before that took place more than 100 years earlier in 1882. This site from the South African Astronomical Observatory provides information and first-hand observations of the 1882 event from Wellington, South Africa. Just prior to the event, an observatory was erected at the Huguenot Seminary for girls, and some of the historical observations made from that site in 1882 are provided here for your perusal.

Interviewee: Paul Lombardo DNAi Location:Chronicle>Trial of Carrie Buck>outcome Carrie's sterilization in context. Carrie's one-hour sterilization took place in 1927, the same year that Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs and Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic.

During the 19th century, the ever-popular trade card was a way for American businesses to effectively promote their goods and services. Some examples include a colorful business card depicting freshly caught mackerel in a net (appropriately enough for "Deep Sea Mackerel") and the Charter Oak Lawn Mower, which feature two Victorian women enjoying a leisurely mowing session in a pastoral setting. This online collection was created by Harvard Business School's Baker Library, which happens to have over 8000 of these cards. The online archive contains around 1000 cards which date from the 1870s to the 1890s. Visitors can search this archive via Harvard's Visual Information Access (VIA) union catalog which will allow them to focus in on subjects of particular interest. Finally, visitors can also avail themselves of the site's digital exhibition entitled "A New and Wonderful Invention: The Nineteenth-Century American Trade Card".

Over a century ago, Yiddish theater was all the rage in New York and other major American cities with a sizable Jewish population. A wide range of well known performers (such as Paul Muni and Leonard Nimoy) cut their teeth on these stages. Of course, the 2nd Avenue corridor in New York City held many of these Yiddish theaters and this site from the New York University Libraries seeks "to capture the memory and to convey the feel of 2nd Avenue as a living part of the history and culture of New York and America." Visitors to the site can browse around the Multimedia area to listen to oral histories or check out some video clips. The Photos area includes a history of Yiddish theater in New York along with several family photo albums. The site is rounded out by a collection of related radio programs and stations.

In this physics activity, learners build their own rockets out of film canisters and construction paper. Learners discover how a chemical reaction (from a mix of water and Alka-Seltzer) creates gas pressure to propel the craft. The activity explores the three states of matter and Newtonäóťs Laws of Motion.

In this activity, learners build small indoor paper rockets, determine their flight stability, and launch them by blowing air through a drinking straw. This lesson plan includes procedures for the two part activity, background information, diagrams for making Ares 1 paper rockets, discussion questions, extensions, and black-line masters for learners.

In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. traveled to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers. On the evening of April 3, King delivered his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech to strikers and their supporters. The very next day, he was assassinated. This site takes visitors through the experiences of those who were there and also through the words of Dr. King during his time in Memphis. Visitors can find video clips, a chronology of the 1968 strike, and a transcript of King's famous speech.

Born in 1828 in Nunda, New York, Andrew J. Russell worked as a portrait and landscape painter as a young man. In 1862, he organized a local militia unit for service in the Civil War and he learned the craft of photography along the way. Several years later in 1868, he began a project to document the construction of the Union Pacific railroad during its long march to its meeting point with the Central Pacific in Promontory Point, Utah. Russell made three trips west in 1868 and 1869, and he made several hundred plate negatives as part of his extensive work. The Yale Collection of Western Americana has a great deal of his work, and this digital collection brings together a diverse set of these materials for consideration by the public. On the site, visitors can browse through these images, which include bridge construction photographs, shots of the surrounding landscapes, and men at work.

A video from the Extreme Ice Survey in which Dr. Tad Pfeffer and photographer Jim Balog discuss the dynamics of the Columbia glacier's retreat in recent years through this time-lapse movie. Key point: glacier size is being reduced not just by glacial melting but due to a shift in glacial dynamics brought on by climate change.

While some may harbor antiquated and erroneous impressions of librarians, those in the know can attest that these invaluable professionals like to get out and about just like their kinfolk in other learned professions. There is ample historical proof of this fact offered by this website, which contains a selection of digitized documents from the American Library Association (ALA) Archives, housed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Currently, the digitized collections include the F.W. Saxon Photographs Collection and the Library Building Photographs Collection. The Saxon Collection includes over 170 group pictures of librarians attending the ALA conferences in the US and Canada from the period 1894 to 1932. The Library Building Collection is quite intriguing, as it contains 78 postcards of libraries from locales such as Gadsden, Alabama.

This activity lets you program your 'robot' (a willing friend) to pick up and dispose of some 'toxic waste' using as few commands as possible. Learners create command cards (Turn Left, Right, Forward 1, etc.), mark out a simulation area on the floor, and try to get the "robot" to dispose of something that serves as "toxic waste" into something that serves as a "containment vessel" - in as few steps as possible. Strategy, predication and cooperation are all part of this activity.

In this activity, learners will listen to as many radio stations as possible to discover that AM radio signals can travel many hundreds of miles at night. Learners log the call signs, locations, and quality of the transmissions on a data table. This resource includes information about how AM radio transmissions differ at day and night, the ionosphere, the history of call letters, and NOAA Weather Radio. Note: this activity must be completed during the evening or early in the morning before sunrise and learners must have access to an AM radio.

This web site hosts the materials for an annual middle school competition that consists of four physical science experiments centered on a mystery. The experiments are designed for small groups in a classroom or after school setting. Each of the experiments gives students a clue to solve the mystery. The current year's competition is available to join and the materials from previous years are available for download.

This web site has links to the materials for the 2006 Physics Quest middle school competition, hosted by the APS. The 2006 lesson covers static electricity, conductors and insulators, heat, and optics. These are connected to the life and science of Benjamin Franklin. The experiments are designed for small groups in a classroom or after school setting. Each of the experiments gives students a clue to solve the mystery.

Setting out on the Caribbean today on a large vessel might involve boarding a massive cruise ship in Fort Lauderdale or Nassau in the Bahamas. Things were a bit different when Aaron Thomas set off on those same waters back in 1798. Thomas served on the HMS Lapwing during the French Revolutionary wars and his journal contains first-hand accounts of naval operations, customs of the day, and humorous anecdotes involving shipmates and superiors. This wonderful volume is physically located at the University of Miami Libraries Special Collections Division, but visitors can read the document on this site. One sample contains this chestnut of an observation: "Never stop at an Inn, nor go into a Shop to buy goods, if you see the Master has a Superfine Coat on." The document includes pen sketches, financial records, and graveyard epitaphs collected during Thomas's forays ashore. Visitors can click on the Biography area to learn more about Thomas and also use the Excerpts area to get a flavor for his prose style.

The abacus has been around for several thousand years, and it is an efficient and interesting counting machine. The standard abacus can be used to perform addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication, along with its use in extracting square roots and cubic roots. This site was created by Luis Fernandes, and it explores the wide world of the abacus through illustrations, thoughtful essays, and other items. On the site's homepage visitors can read a detailed introduction to the abacus, look over an interactive abacus tutorial, and learn about the history of the device. In the "Articles, Excerpts and Analysis" area visitors can read about an early encounter between the abacus and an electric calculator in 1946 and a hilarious encounter between famed physicist Richard Feynman and the abacus. The site is rounded out by the "All Things Abacus" area, which includes resources for teachers and photos of Fernandes' impressive abacus collection.

The complete Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress consists of approximately 20,000 documents. The collection is organized into three "General Correspondence" series which include incoming and outgoing correspondence and enclosures, drafts of speeches, and notes and printed material. Most of the 20,000 items are from the 1850s through Lincoln's presidential years, 1860-65. Treasures include Lincoln's draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, his March 4, 1865, draft of his second Inaugural Address, and his August 23, 1864, memorandum expressing his expectation of being defeated for re-election in the upcoming presidential contest. The Lincoln Papers are characterized by a large number of correspondents, including friends and associates from Lincoln's Springfield days, well-known political figures and reformers, and local people and organizations writing to their president. In its online presentation, the Abraham Lincoln Papers comprises approximately 61,000 images and 10,000 transcriptions

The Illinois Harvest Digital Collection presents a wide variety of cultural and historical materials related to the state of Illinois. The project began in 2006 and has resulted in many thousands of works being added to its rolls. This rather compelling corner of the collection presents over 1,400 publications related to Abraham Lincoln, with a discrete focus on biographies of the man, slavery, and the American Civil War. One particularly noteworthy title is the 1945 work, "Intimate Memories of Lincoln." This piece, a compilation of anecdotes from people who knew Lincoln well, is quite an intriguing read. Visitors, particularly those who love American history and related subjects, will find they can easily wander around this collection for hours.