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More than 5,000 photographs, including these polaroids, from the archives of Mel Brooks will be donated to the National Comedy Center.

No Joke, Ahead of His 100th Birthday, Mel Brooks Donates His Hilarious Archive to the National Comedy Center

Thousands of notes, storyboards, early scripts and photographs belonging to the “2,000-year-old man” and EGOT winner will join material from Lucille Ball, Joan Rivers and George Carlin

Property plan of the parish of St. Ann Blackfriars

Cool Finds

Shakespeare’s House in London Was Lost to History. A Scholar Discovered a Map in the Archives That Revealed Its Exact Location

The Bard purchased the property three years before his death in 1616. Had he hoped to spend more time in the city where he wrote his best-known plays?

Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution quickly identified the recording as belong to a humpback whale. 

Listen to What Archivists Believe to Be Oldest-Known Whale Recording

The nearly 80-year-old disc resided in the archives of the the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for decades and may hold the secret to learning about changes in whale behavior over time

The YouTube watch page on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum's South Kensington location

Watch the First-Ever Video Uploaded to YouTube, a Grainy 19-Second Clip Called ‘Me at the Zoo’

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has acquired the site’s very first video, which went live on April 23, 2005

The exhibition features the last letter that Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, sent to Elizabeth I in 1588.

Read Love Letters From Royals and Romantics Across 500 Years of British History

A new exhibition at Britain’s National Archives features a letter to Elizabeth I, Jane Austen’s will and a plea to free Oscar Wilde from prison

Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid (1984), one of 25 movies added to the National Film Registry this year

Trending Today

From ‘The Karate Kid’ to ‘Clueless,’ These Are the 25 New Additions to the National Film Registry. See the Full List Here

“The Incredibles,” “Inception” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” join more than 900 titles preserved by the Library of Congress

Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, is leading a project to compile the names of as many Jewish Holocaust victims as possible.

Researchers Have Identified the Names of Five Million Victims Murdered in the Holocaust

Led by Israel’s Yad Vashem, the initiative has been underway since the 1950s. But it recently got a boost from artificial intelligence, which is helping humans search through the records

Every page is stamped with the words "Pearl Harbor" at the top.

Cool Finds

She Found a Tattered Logbook in the Trash. It Turned Out to Be a Rare Record From the 1941 Pearl Harbor Attack

The National Archives has recovered the volume, which includes more than 500 pages of data from March 1941 to June 1942. It had been tucked away in storage for half a century

The page was marked with a wax numbering system in the 1980s, which helped officials determine when it was stolen.

FBI Returns Long-Lost Manuscript Signed by Hernán Cortés in 1527 to Mexico’s National Archives

The document, which vanished decades ago, includes logistical details linked to the travels of the Spanish conquistador, who had conquered the Aztec Empire several years earlier

Bill Cunningham worked as a photographer for the New York Times for nearly 40 years.

Tens of Thousands of Stunning Images by Photographer Bill Cunningham Acquired by New York Historical

The museum will house photographs, negatives and slides belonging to the renowned photographer, who captured life in New York City for decades before his death in 2016

The box given to Brand contained records from the Dutch East India Company.

Cool Finds

Stolen Historic Documents Surface in Attic—Ten Years After an Employee Used Them as Collateral to Borrow Money

The thief likely took the trove when he worked for the Dutch National Archives in 2015. Recently, someone found them in storage and contacted art detective Arthur Brand

The National Archives Museum is undergoing a $40 million renovation.

America's 250th Anniversary

The National Archives Museum Is Using A.I. to Take Visitors on an Immersive Journey Through American History

Called “The American Story,” the new permanent exhibition will guide museumgoers through two million historic documents and artifacts

Tony Schwartz recording audio outdoors

When Midcentury New York Spoke, This Sound Archivist Listened—and Recorded Every Word

Armed with a tape recorder and open ears, Tony Schwartz turned everyday noise into lasting art. Now, his recordings live on at Smithsonian Folkways, where they continue to inspire new ways of listening to, remembering and understanding the world

Sarah Grandmother’s Knife, Apsáalooke (Crow), age 10, wearing an elk-tooth dress and sticking out her tongue playfully in Montana, 1910

See the Stunning Archival Photographs That Tell the Stories of Everyday Native Life and Communities

The Archive Center at the National Museum of the American Indian presents a new exhibition that can help “interrupt the romanticized, stereotypical images often shared of Native peoples throughout history”

Historian David Carpenter examines the digitized document.

Cool Finds

Harvard Bought This Stained Copy of the Magna Carta for $27.50. It Turned Out to Be an Original

Issued by Edward I in 1300, this version of the historic text is one of only seven known surviving copies. It’s been hiding in plain sight in Harvard Law School’s library since 1946

Roughly 230 film reels have been found in storage.

Cool Finds

London Zoo Discovers Hundreds of Old Film Reels Featuring ‘Zoo Oddities’ and Animal Celebrities

Zoo officials are looking for experts to help preserve and digitize the decaying film canisters, which date to between the 1960s and 1990s

Robert Caro, seen here in 1990, worked on a novel based on his time as a newspaperman.

We Rediscovered Robert Caro’s Abandoned Novel About an Intrepid Journalist Buried in His Archives

A deep dive into the legendary biographer’s papers leads to the surprising revelation of a work he has all but forgotten

Portrait of a Gentleman, His Daughter and a Servant at the Musée de la Chartreuse in Douai, France

Cool Finds

Expert Rediscovers Painting by Renaissance Master Lavinia Fontana, One of the First Professional Female Artists

The artwork had been hiding in plain sight in the archives of a provincial museum in France, where it will eventually go on permanent display

In the film, Lincoln agonizes over signing an execution warrant for a deserter.

Cool Finds

Intern Finds Only Known Surviving Copy of ‘The Heart of Lincoln,’ a Silent Film Thought to Be Lost to History

Released in 1915, the film was directed by Francis Ford, the brother of famed filmmaker John Ford. It had been listed in a record of 7,200 silent films classified as “lost”

Caro and Ina at home in New York. The couple shares a passion for the past. Ina studied French history and wrote two books on the subject. 

Rifling Through the Archives With Legendary Historian Robert Caro

Reams of papers, revealing how the scholar came to write his iconic biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson, are preserved forever in New York. But his work is far from over

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