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In the 1880s, Italians started to migrate en masse. To begin with, it was mostly Southern peasants, and the United States became the main magnet, while Sicily and Campania were the location of the most numerous regional groups to emigrate.

On a perfect day in June 1937, Mrs F. W. Stone and her family left Ashtabula, Ohio, on the shores of Lake Erie and set out by air conditioned Pullman coach for California. Originally the trip was designed to visit a sister, who had long been neglected, but it was also a chance to really ‘see’ the West. As she put it, “For some reason American people do not take trips to see their own country in the same way they take European trips. They will go to the West to visit a friend or relative, spend two or three weeks with them, come back and apparently have not seen much of the country.”

How could you not love a musical which borrows equally from The Pirates of Penzance and Notorious B.I.G? Hamilton, if you haven’t heard yet, is a musical blending rap, jazz, blues and classic Broadway melodies to tell the story of an obscure Founding Father (‘Yo, who the eff is this?!’) and his attempts to get a radical debt plan passed by America’s fledgling government. Yeah, that old chestnut. I jest; Lin-Manuel Miranda’s occasionally swear-y, Pulitzer Prize-winning show has torn up the rulebook, and this weekend, stands to make history at the Tony Awards where it has earned a record-breaking haul of sixteen nominations.

It is widely acknowledged that many of our favourite everyday phrases were coined by Shakespeare: "Vanish into thin air" – Othello, "For goodness sake" - Henry VIII, “A wild goose chase" - Romeo and Juliet and "All's well that ends well" from (of course) All’s Well That Ends Well. It cannot always be determined whether these phrases were already in existence or if they were invented by the Bard himself but they are certainly the first recorded instances.

Before June springs into action I thought it important to honour the past month as the 62nd anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education verdict which overturned the Jim Crow Laws and marked a milestone in civil rights history. In May 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools violated the 14th Amendment

Adam Matthew Digital’s newest resource Eighteenth Century Drama: Censorship, Society and the Stage makes available the Larpent plays from the Huntington Library, California – as well as material from several other archives. The Licensing Act of 1737 was introduced by Walpole as a retaliation against the politically satirical nature of theatrical performances in the 1730s. This meant that new works of ‘serious drama’ performed at the patent theatres – designated by the crown – were required to apply for a licence in order to be performed. John Larpent was responsible for this practice, as the Examiner of plays 1778-1824.

This week sees the anniversary of the Sykes-Picot agreement. A secret agreement between the Triple Entente signed on the 16th May 1916, it would divide the Middle East and the surrounding areas that were currently controlled by the Ottoman Empire. The plan was exposed by the new Bolshevik government of Russia in 1917 and printed in the UK newspaper the Guardian the same year.

I’m going to be honest: there are no bear attacks or Leonardo DiCaprios in this frontier- related blog post. There is, however, the story of a modest Quaker husband and wife, Thomas and Hannah Symons, who, following their marriage in 1811, decided to migrate from their homes in North Carolina to settle in Indiana which at the time was still a largely unsettled territory. Initially, this doesn’t sound like a particularly exceptional story in keeping with the notion of American exceptionalism, but all ideologies aside, Hannah Symons’ recollections provide a fascinating and personal insight into the hardship, bravery and perseverance involved in sowing the seeds of a settlement on the American frontier.

Everyday Life & Women in America c.1800-1920 features a full run of the rare periodical Town Topics: The Journal of Society (1887-1923) from the New York Public Library. Town Topics was a weekly periodical offering literature reviews, short fictional stories, sporting news and financial advice. The periodical actually began as The American Queen but the name was changed to Town Topics when Colonel E.D. Mann assumed the editorship in 1891. As well as the name the success and the tone of the magazine were also set to change.

Back in 2016 the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, announced that some changes were being made to America’s paper currency. Chief among them was the replacement of Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill, to make way for the inclusion of Harriet Tubman, the former slave turned abolitionist who was dubbed “Moses” due to her work in guiding slave families away from their owners using the infamous Underground Railroad. Unfortunately due to administrative delays she has yet to appear on the bills, but her remarkable life is celebrated in American History, 1493-1945.

The Crystal Palace, an architectural wonder of glass and steel, housed a global array of exotic artefacts and would welcome over six million visitors during the Great Exhibition of 1851. For many, the exhibition represents the pomp and circumstance of the Victorian Age.

On a recent trip, I was lucky enough to take a detour and visit Niagara Falls, a tourist hotspot since the mid-nineteenth century. This stunning, natural phenomenon is one of the world’s most popular attractions, with more than 12 million visitors each year – and it’s not hard to see why.

2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising in Dublin, a rebellion which started on Monday April 24, 1916 and lasted until the following Saturday. The Irish Volunteers, the main nationalist military organization, and the Irish Citizen Army, a socialist militia, captured key points throughout the city and proclaimed the establishment of the Irish Republic for the duration of Easter week in an attempt to rid the island of British rule.

The Race Relations Department of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries was created by the American Missionary Association Division in 1942. The forum's debate was far-reaching, from racial and ethnic relationships to economics, education, and more.

Back in 2006, I was hot on the trail of Ernest Dichter’s report on “The Peacock Revolution.” The phrase, which fittingly described the flamboyant turn in men’s apparel preference, has become part of the fashion lexicon even though its origins with Ernest Dichter are largely unacknowledged. Dichter’s consulting business, the Institute for Motivational Research, wrote the report as part of the marketing effort for postwar chemical giant E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company.

Whilst working on Church Missionary Society Periodicals, Module II: Medical Journals, Asian Missions and the Historical Record: 1816-1986, I have been constantly entertained and intrigued by the photographs which illustrate the periodicals. The articles surrounding an image can often offer an interesting insight into its production and its significance to the CMS mission.

As March is Women’s History Month, it is a great opportunity to look back and highlight some inspiring women and the work they did. From Everyday Life & Women in America 1800-1920, discover the story of Emma Abbott, a prima donna born in 1850 in Chicago.

Summer 2016 will see the release of Adam Matthew’s History of Mass Tourism, a highly visual and searchable collection celebrating the growth of tourism from the mid-1800s to 1960s. One of the treasures found in this resource is a photograph album belonging to a young Alfred Ghirardelli, heir to the Ghirardelli chocolate empire, depicting a trip to Yosemite in the summer of 1903.

Excuse me - late to the party, as always - but last week, International Women’s Day, the annual celebration dedicated to championing 50% of the population for 0.27% of the year, rolled around once again.

An item I assessed back in 2014 provided a challenge in terms of how to digitise it; Spooner’s Perspective View of the Great Exhibition is a folding concertina peepshow. It is made of ten pieces of card, each with a different layer of a scene from inside Crystal Palace, where the 1851 Great Exhibition was held (widely regarded as the most influential single event in the history of design and industry). Folded out and viewed through the peephole, these pieces make up a three-dimensional perspective of a long architectural gallery.

On the afternoon of 26 January, 1788, a fleet of eleven vessels under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip entered what today is known as Sydney Harbour and started what was later described as ‘a new colonial experiment, never tried before, not repeated since’.

In 1971, the Shah of Iran threw a party the likes of which the world had rarely before seen. Featuring roasted peacocks, a city of silk, and Italian son et lumiere amusements, it celebrated 2,500 years of the Persian Empire, dating back to Cyrus the Great.

Newly arrived African-American migrants to St. Louis during the opening of the Great Migration became part of an established cosmopolitan community. But while a major centre of social welfare progressivism, St. Louis was also particularly wedded to residential segregation.

I think it’s fair to say we probably all need a little advice from time-to-time and in this modern world there seems to be no shortage of professionals, books, websites and television shows to turn to when we need a little guidance. But this is by no means a modern phenomenon; guides offering advice have been circulating for centuries.