Here’s something a little different in our ongoing look at famous or otherwise-historical diary entries. When most people think of a diary they’re probably not likely to picture a “Greffuhle” violin! But Civil War soldier Solomon Conn used such a...
Have you ever met anyone who so captivated you that you could declare them the “most impressive person you’d ever encountered”? Herman Melville, author of the great American novel Moby Dick, described such an encounter in the diary entry excerpted below. A...
Darwin forever changed the way we perceive both nature and ourselves. Below we have an excerpt – a single page – from one of his famed research notebooks. (Of possible interest to Darwin-notebook enthusiasts: Paperblanks has created a journal with...
Today’s entry in our ongoing look at famous diary entries is a dark one! In the 1840’s a group of pioneers who came to be known as the Donner Party found themselves trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 36 of...
George S. Patton was a larger-than-life WWII General famed for both his accomplishments as a commander as well as his colorful and strong personality. But despite these things he was considered politically unskilled. Below we’ve found an entry from his personal...
It’s always neat to get a peek at a famous artists’ upbringing. (What environments were they raised in? Were there any hints early on of their talents?) Today we wanted to share with you a look at a diary entry written...
Albert Einstein had an ongoing professional and personal relationship with Linus Pauling, another prominent twentieth century scientist. The two men greatly admired one another’s genius and spent much time together discussing world affairs. But because many of these conversations were...
A baby journal is a journal or scrapbook kept by a mother or father to record the first few years of a child’s life. The image below depicts a page from a baby journal kept by Mollie Fitzgerald – F....
If you keep a personal journal you probably have a “lost and found” note somewhere in the opening pages. (“If found please return this book to…”) Well, today we’ve got a treat for you care of the Harry Ransom Center:...
This week’s entry in our ongoing series looking at famous diary entries should be interesting to anyone who has an interest in movie history or the brainstorming processes of geniuses. It comes from the diary of Stanley Kubrick, the director...