Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected and published their first edition of fairytales in Germany back in 1812. The book, Children's and Household Tales, is more commonly known as Grimms' Fairy Tales. Many of the 86 folktales that were included in the book are still popular with children today, such as stories about Rapunzel, Cinderella, and Snow White.

This copy of Hansel and Gretel in our collection was published as a Little Golden Book, in 1945. Read more »

One hundred years ago, late in the evening of April 14, 1912, the supposedly unsinkable ocean liner known as the Titanic hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic. She sank within a few hours, in the early morning of April 15. St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Carlos F. Hurd and his wife, Katherine, had just embarked on a European vacation aboard the RMS Carpathia, which came to the rescue of the passengers who had safely evacuated the doomed Titanic and were adrift in lifeboats. Hurd recognized that he was about to get the newspaper scoop of his life. Read more »

Recently, a researcher requested an appointment to look at some clothing items that had belonged to one of his distant relatives but were since donated to the Museum’s collections. As we all oohed and aahed over a pair of beautiful late-19th-century silk and lace drawers, the researcher commented...

Photo at left: Satin corset, ca. 1895. Missouri History Museum. Read more »

 One of the things I appreciate most about being an employee at the Missouri History Museum is the enjoyment I get from working with history buffs like myself. As museum professionals we take any opportunity to share our own enthusiasm for historical artifacts with our co-workers. Read more »

It has been 100 years since the death of Joseph Pulitzer (Oct. 29, 1911), an individual who lived a rather remarkable life. Born April 10, 1847, Pulitzer immigrated to the United States from the Jewish community of Mako, Hungary, at the age of 17 in 1864, having been recruited to join the Union army. He served until the end of the war, and unable to find work on the East Coast, made his way to St. Louis, where after a string of odd, short-lived jobs, he found his calling as an investigative journalist for the Westliche Post, one of St. Louis's German-language newspapers. Read more »

The design team in the Missouri History Museum’s (MHM's) Exhibitions and Research division is composed of longstanding Apple users. All of what a visitor sees in the galleries of the Museum was started on the pages of a sketch pad and then some version of a Mac. Having been at MHM for nearly 15 years, I’ve worked on a number of computers in the Mac line and now travel to meetings with one in tow, it having become a vital tool in my day-to-day work and play. Like many other people, I am also amazed when reflecting on how this relatively small machine has changed my life over the years. Read more »

This November, the Missouri History Museum will host Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age, which comes to us from the Field Museum in Chicago. Ever since I joined the staff of MHM in 1997, I had heard stories of a mastodon tooth in our collections, but had not come across anyone who had actually seen it, or had reason or time to search for it. Curator Sharon Smith and I decided to track it down. Sharon first checked our database for a storage location. Read more »

As a conservation lab technician I have the privilege of working with objects from the Missouri History Museum’s collections, and each new day comes with another historically significant object. One of my responsibilities is assessing the condition of artifacts that are tentatively included in the Museum’s upcoming exhibit, The Civil War in Missouri (opening November 11, 2011). While examining several of these objects, I noticed that many of the pencil drawings were all signed by the same artist: Alex Simplot. Read more »

Museum professionals have to be creative in responding to the different types of challenges that arise in the workplace. For example, how do you move a museum artifact that weighs more than 200 pounds? The artifact in question is a mortar shell that will be included in the Missouri History Museum’s upcoming exhibit The Civil War in Missouri (opening November 11, 2011). During the Civil War, this type of shell could be launched more than two miles using a Model 1861 13-inch Siege and Seacoast mortar. These mortars could be used on either land or water. Read more »

Adam Burns Smith enlisted with Co. B of the 33rd Missouri Infantry Volunteers (Union) in Jefferson City on August 14, 1862. The next year Smith found himself in the midst of Gen. U. S. Grant’s protracted campaign to capture Vicksburg. Like many soldiers, Smith kept a journal to record the daily events of his life. His lengthy, and often detailed, entries described operations along the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi and around Helena, Arkansas, including skirmishes with rebel forces at Fort Pemberton near Greenwood, Mississippi, and gunboat maneuvers. Read more »