America's Historic Documents On-Line

We've added a new feature to our website, an archive of some of the most important documents in the history of the United States. We make these public domain documents available for your research in plain text (that you can copy and paste into such things as, well, homework). You can also check what the brouhaha was about during the revolution—for example, we've posted the full text of the Stamp Act that everyone refers to but no one ever quotes (or even reads). You'll find the text of Thomas Paine's best-selling Common Sense, the first fifty Presidential addresses, and the complete Federalist Papers along with various charters, compacts, and constitutions.

Finding Early American Greenhouses

We didn't have room in our sources list in our February 2009 issue to give the locations of many of the early American greenhouses that we mentioned in our story "A Glassy Penthouse of Ignoble Form." If you want to go exploring, we've listed the locations of many of these greenhouses (or their ruins) in our Greenhouse Source page.

Folk Art Portraits for Christmas Ornaments

Whoops! We gave the wrong URL in our Christmas 2008 issue for our "Ornaments from Museums" story. In the magazine, we showed you how to use your computer printer to transfer artwork to ornaments. To get you started, we arranged with the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum to put samples of its collection on-line. Although the URL in the magazine won't let you see and download the paintings, we now have a number of images available for you to try.

What Happened to All Those Pirates?

In the story "The Pirates’ Penance," we followed the exploits of a group of English pirates up until they divided their booty, part of which went to fund the founding of the College of William and Mary. But author John Fitzhugh Millar tracked their exploits for years afterward and offers here his report on what happened to the major players after the adventures he related in the December 2008 issue.