It strikes me that, while history tends to peer around the hoopskirts of my posts, I haven’t written anything about online resources that address history head on! So here we go:
Footnote.com is an online archive of digitized historical documents and images that, well… I’ll let them say it:
Footnote.com is a place where original historical documents are combined with social networking in order to create a truly unique experience involving the stories of our past.
The Footnote.com collections feature documents, most never before available on the Internet, relating to the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWI, WWII, US Presidents, historical newspapers, naturalization documents, and many more.
Footnote.com is more than just an online repository for original documents. In addition to hosting millions of records, Footnote supports a community of people who are passionate about a variety of topics relating to history.
You’ll need a paid membership to do things like print and save the images, but the free membership still allows you to search and browse the entire archive. The documents are beautifully scanned and annotated and easily searched and linked to related images: in short, you can geek out with primary sources for hours. Apart from the extensive archive, Footnote.com definitely prides itself on being a community, and there is also a section where members can upload and discuss their own images.
I am far from a dedicated viewer of The History Channel, but I am delighted by their little animated shorts (available online), Great and Telling Tales. The Tales are animated by Benjamin Goldman and recounted by Timothy Dickinson. Who is Timothy Dickinson? Apparently, someone that everyone who’s anyone knows,
…an overflowing fountain of arcane and hilarious stories of true history, the result of a lifelong habit of voracious reading. A longtime resident of Georgetown, Timothy makes his living as a freelance “literary advisor”, helping out various unnamed authors and pundits with their articles and books and cadging the occasional free meal along the way. In his free time, he likes nothing better than holding court at his favorite Georgetown pub and choosing a favorite Great and Telling Tale from his never-ending supply.
The shorts are short indeed, edited down from hours of Timothy’s stories to a more than manageable minute or so. The narration and animation are well-matched in quirkiness and well worth a look.
GenDisasters bills itself as “a genealogy site, compiling information on the historic disasters, events, and tragic accidents our ancestors endured, as well as, information about their life and death.” I’m not entirely sure about the genealogy part, but disasters abound, and they are searchable — by type of disaster, by year, and by state or province (yes, the site covers all of North America).
I will admit to feeling slightly guilty having so much fun on a site about disasters. Perhaps it’s the old formula: Comedy = Tragedy + Time. Perhaps it’s the pert little Monopoly-esque fellows that populate the site, or the inclusion of text like “More Disasters Just Added!” That’s not to say that some of the stories didn’t feel like a punch in the gut; the 1928 Gurnsey disaster labeled “Eight Unknown Men Burned to Death When Trapped in Freight Train Wreck” was thoroughly horrifying (I think the “Unknown” is what really pushes it over the top). But surely we’re allowed to snicker a little at “Cheyenne, WY Circus Tent Blows Down, July 1912.” True, thirty people were injured, but none seriously. And what about the 1955 tornado, the most serious consequence of which were a few closed highways and “a minor league baseball game… suspended at Meridian, Miss., after high winds blew in the Buckwalter stadium fence”? Perhaps we should differentiate between disasters and tragedies after all.
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