My favorite #OTD sites

I often start the day reading on-this-date-in-history features, but don't often assign them to my students.  Instead, I look to learn something I didn't know before, or better still, find something that by coincidence relates to something we are or just finished studying.  Here are my two favorite sites.

The AP's site lists historical events that happened that day, like today's anniversary of the Mayflower Pilgrims going ashore for the first time, and President Nixon meeting Elvis Presley in the Oval Office.  (The National Archives says that its photograph of that meeting is one of its most popular.   It even has an online exhibit for people who want to learn more of that meeting,"When Nixon Met Elvis.")

The site also features one specific event and accompanies it with a photograph.  For today, the AP Highlight in History was about the 1988 explosion of Pan Am flight 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.



The Library of Congress has its own Today in History daily feature, but this one focuses exclusively on events from U.S. History.  It also is richer because each entry includes a mixture of explanatory commentary, images like photographs and drawings, quotations from primary sources, and links to audio files.

Yesterday, the Library reported, was the anniversary of the opening of Samuel Slater's mill in Pawtucket, R.I.  That water-powered mill brought the technology of Great Britain to America so that America's textile industry could develop.  The entry includes this photograph of Slater's mill along the Blackstone River.

Click here to open larger image in a new window.

Today's entry included selections on a jazz musician popular in the 1930s and 1940s (who was born today), and the Hoover Dam (whose construction was authorized today).