April 8, 2025 • 20 mins
Shh! Today Will and Mango are exploring the Library of Congress, one of the world’s greatest repositories of literature, science, art, and… old cake? They also discover how this legendary institution came to be, and what the Librarian of Congress actually does all day (no, it doesn’t involve stamping books). Plus: The inside story of Thomas Jefferson’s short-lived pasta-making career.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope,
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Guess what, Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:12):
What's that? Will?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Actually, before I share something with you, I've got to
ask you. Are you a Spider Man fan?
Speaker 1 (00:18):
I think less and less with each movie, but I
was a Spider Man fan at one point.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah. Yeah, Well you obviously know. I have one kiddo that,
for probably a year or so, was wearing a Spider
Man costume into every local restaurant to where people working
at those restaurants would just know our kid as Spider Man.
And so it's pretty funny. We've been watching Spider Man
films for a long time now. But UH got a
fact for you, so you may be interested to know
(00:45):
that the Library of Congress has the original Spider Man drawings,
like from the very first time he appeared in print.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
That has to be the one where, like Peter Parker
is getting bitten by a radioactive spider I'm guessing right.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
The one and only. So in two thou and eight,
an anonymous Downer gave the library twenty four black and
white drawings. This was from the August nineteen sixty two
issue of Amazing Fantasy Now it's funny to look back
on because apparently Marvel wasn't sure people would like this
new character. The first page of the comic reads like
costume heroes. Confidentially, we in the comic mag business refer
(01:19):
to them as long underwear characters, and as you know,
they're a dime a dozen. But we think you may
find our Spider Man just a bit different. It's funny
how they were just like setting this up as though.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
It might selling him out.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
It's just so weird. But you know, what's particularly cool
about these drawings is that you can see some of
the back and forth artist Steve Ditko had with Marvel
publisher Stan Lee. For example, on one page where Peter
Parker has jumped out of the way of a car,
Stan wrote a note in the margins, quote, Steve, make
this a covered sedan, no arms hanging. Don't imply wild
(01:53):
reckless driving. It's pretty great.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
That's such a strange thing to be concerned about. I mean,
you've got this guy like slinging webs all over the place,
and you're worried about a driver with his arms out.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
That's pretty well.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
It is amazing that there's a copy in the Library
of Congress, though.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I know, and the library actually has over one hundred
and sixty five thousand original comic books, but that's just
a tiny part of its collection. It's considered the largest
library on the planet, with over one hundred and seventy
eight point two million items. Is of course include books, newspapers, music, maps, posters, photographs,
and more, which means these nine facts will barely scratch
(02:31):
the surface. But you got to start somewhere, so let's
dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius.
(02:57):
I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm here with my
good friend mangesh Hot Ticketer on the other side of
that booth. Hidden behind stacks and stacks. I mean, I
can't books. There are so many stacks of books. That's
our friend and producer, Dylan Fagan. He's also taped a
sign to the window. It says, down with Dewey, adopt
the Dylan decimal system. Always getting bald today.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I had no idea he'd been working on a system
of his own.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, I think he's I think he's trying to make
it a thing. We'll see how it goes. But I
have confidence in Delai.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, I obviously support Dylan and whatever he does. But anyway,
to kick off this episode about the Library of Congress,
let's talk about what it actually is. So, as the
name suggests, it is a library for Congress and the
rest of government, but it's also a library for the public.
In fact, anyone sixteen or older can go there to
(03:48):
do research. And the current Library in of Congress is
Carla Hayden. She's the fourteenth ever head and also the
first ever woman and the first person of color to
have that job. And besides running the library and leading
acquisition efforts, I had no idea about this, she's also
responsible for managing the US Copyright Office and for choosing
the Poet Laureate each year, which is amazing. I had
(04:11):
no idea that the responsibilities extended that far.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Either, these responsibilities didn't exist in eighteen hundred when the
library began. That year, President John Adams signed a bill
providing five thousand dollars to buy books that congressmen might
find useful, including histories of the Roman Empire and other
European countries, and the books were stored in a room
in the Capitol. So when the building was set on
fire by the British and this was back in eighteen fourteen.
(04:36):
Three thousand of those books were destroyed. Now that was
most of the collection. Thomas Jefferson was so upset that
he actually offered to sell his own personal library to
the government to help at restock, and Congress agreed to
pay him about twenty four thousand dollars for over six
thousand books. It was closer to six thy five hundred. Now. Unfortunately,
there was another fire in eighteen fifty one that actually
(04:58):
destroyed a lot of Jefferson's books plus others in the collection.
But it was built back up and finally put in
a fireproof room. That is until the library needed its
own building, which it got in eighteen ninety seven. And
that's now known as the Thomas Jefferson Building, which is
right near the Capitol.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah, and I've been in there before, and it truly
is just a gorgeous place.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah, it is. And it's just one of the Library's
five buildings. There are three on Capitol Hill and two
in the DC suburbs, but the Thomas Jefferson Building is
definitely the most famous one.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah, And it makes sense. So actually I read a
lot about this building. It is made up of four
hundred thousand cubic feet of granite, as well as fifteen
kinds of marble, gold, bronze, and mahogany. It was modeled
on the Paris Opera House and designed in the bows
Art style, which was very popular in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century. I think symmetry, opulence, lots of
(05:52):
columns with decorations, big halls, staircases, that sort of thing.
So when the building opened to the public in November first,
eighteen ninety seven, people lined up to enter, and within
minutes they began requesting books. You want to guess what
the first request.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Was, Dale Carnegie is How to win friends and influence people.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Very very very close. Actually not close at all. No,
the very first request in the new building was for
a book called Year Book by Roger Williams. But it
had just been published and the library hadn't actually secured
a copy yet.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
That is very embarrassing that the first first book requested
wasn't there. So was there a second request? There was,
and it was for a book called History of the
City of New York by Martha Lamb, which had been
published in eighteen seventy seven, So no problems there, and
actually how you requested the book back then was pretty cool.
Do you remember going through to like a drive through bank.
(06:48):
I actually think about this a lot, like how futuristic
it felt. And when you put that like you put
it like that stuff in a tube, and I just
like watching my mom. It felt like watching the Jetsons
or something.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
It was pretty much believe it or not. I actually
did this not too long ago, and yes I remember
going there as a kid. But they don't put a
sucker in there anymore. That's the downside once you get old.
It was the best part that was Yeah, that was
really the reason to go. But the library also used
the system of these pneumatic tubes for book requests. So
first you'd fill out a ticket with the book you
(07:20):
were looking for, and then the slip would be sent
via tube to the appropriate shelf where a staff member
would find the book and send it back via tube.
The whole thing took I don't know, maybe like five
minutes or so.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
That is pretty incredible and I had no idea. Another
way books have been delivered for years is through a
series of tunnels.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Ooh, whenever somebody says tunnels and I think libraries, I
feel like, this is the kind of secret I've been
waiting for.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Mega. So, as you mentioned, in eighteen ninety seven, the
Library of Congress made a big move from the Capital
to the Jefferson Building. But the problem was this new
building was about a quarter of a mile away, and
congressmen didn't have the time to work that far when
they needed a book, especially if Congress was in session.
So the Army Corps of Engineers built a special underground
(08:07):
tunnel to connect the two buildings.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
It was just six feet.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
High, four feet wide, and about eleven hundred feet long,
and it was made entirely of brick.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
I'm curious, so how does it help the members of
Congress get there faster?
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, it really didn't. The tunnel included telephone wires and
pneumatic tubes for conveying book requests from Congress to the
new library building, and most excitingly, there was a special
book carrying apparatus that carried books and other materials through
the tunnel via an electric conveyor system with tracks. Now,
the system could move books at around six hundred feet
(08:41):
per minute, which meant that a book could arrive at
the Capitol just a couple of minutes after a request
came in, though Congressmen did start complaining about it because
often it would take about twenty five minutes for a
request to be delivered upon.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
I mean that still seems pretty fast.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
It does to me too. And the tunnel was effective
enough that ninety another was built to connect the library
to the Supreme Court, and then another to connect the
main Jefferson building to the John Adams Library building across
the street.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
So do these tunnels still exist or rather, do they
still kind of whisk books back and forth between the buildings.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
So Sadly, when they were building the new Capital Visitors
Center in two thousand, the Capital section of the tunnel
was destroyed and the library section was sealed. But a
pedestrian tunnel that connects the library to the Capitol building
is still around and it's actually open to the public.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
All right, Well, there's a bunch of stuff that people
can obviously still see, and so we're going to talk
about some of those things right after a quick break.
(09:50):
Welcome back to part time Genius. Today, we're revealing nine
secrets about the Library of Congress. Although I use the
word secret sort of loosely. I mean, the mission of
the library is that their collection is a available to everyone.
But before I get to my next fact, I wanted
to ask, so are you a fan of pasta? And
I started out by asking whether they were a famed
Spider Man. Now I need to know are you a
fan of pasta?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
So I'm going to go back and say I actually
really loved Spider Man comics as a kid. So I
want to retrofit this episode to make sure no one
is angry at me. I'm also, of course a huge
fan of pasta. Are you Kiddingeah?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
I mean pasta is so good? And then you have
something in common with Thomas Jefferson. Here another noted pasta fan.
But back in the seventeen hundreds, pasta wasn't known that
much in America. Jefferson discovered it while he was serving
as the US Minister to France. This was from seventeen
eighty four to seventeen eighty nine, and to be honest,
that time in France made him a little bit fancy.
(10:44):
He developed a taste for French cooking, and also at
the time, pasta was all the rage in France. So
while he was in Europe, Jefferson either saw or read
about quote a mold for making macaroni, and being a
fan of macaroni, which was the catch all term for
pasta pretty much of any kind, he wanted a machine
of his own, so he sent one from Naples to
(11:04):
his home at Monticello, and unfortunately it didn't work for
very long, and nobody knows what happened to it.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
So I am very into all of this, but I
am curious, like, what does this stuff to do with
the Library of Congress.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
So Jefferson had pasta on the mind, and so he
drew up his own design for a pasta machine, complete
with instructions for making different shapes. And he noted that
the best pasta is made in Naples from a special
kind of flower called somola, but that any good, finely
ground flower would also do. And the Library of Congress
had these plans. I think you'd probably doubted I was
(11:36):
ever going to ride around to it, But there it is.
The Library of Congress has these plants.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
I love that you said. Jefferson and I are both
noted pasta lovers, so you too. That's the two most
well known things about what the.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I saw a Wikipedia entry about
pasta lovers and you and Jefferson when we're sort of.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Back to back. Yeah, just the two of us. But
I am amazed by this. Did he ever build his machine?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
He did not, unfortunately, so those plans in the library
are the only record of Thomas Jefferson's career as a
pasta machine designer. But he did serve fresh pasta at
dinners at Monticello, courtesy of course, of his kitchen staff,
rolling out dough and cutting it into different shapes. But
pasta was too adventurous for some of his guests. One
visitor actually complained that his pasta meal quote tasted very
(12:22):
strong and not agreeable.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
It feels like if your macaroni is strong and not agreeable,
you're not doing it right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I think that's probably true.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
So, speaking of food, did you know that the Library
of Congress has a piece of wedding cake that's over
one hundred and sixty years old inside of it? I
did not know this, and to be clear, and nobody
has tried to eat it. And the only reason it
survived this long is that it's likely a fruitcake soaked
in brandy. But this old cake has a pretty great story.
It's from the wedding of Charles Stratton aka General Tom
(12:54):
Thumb and Lavinia Warren. Both of them worked for Pt.
Barnum at a circus. Lavinia was thirty inches tall, Charles
was around thirty five inches, and in eighteen sixty three
when they got married, Tom Thumb was one of the
most popular stars in the country. So this wedding was
a huge, huge deal and also kind of a welcome
distraction from the Civil War which was going on at
(13:14):
that time. Now, the event took place in New York City,
and even the Astors and the Vanderbilts were jonesing for
an invite, and The New York Times wrote that there
were crowds for miles trying to get a glimpse of
the couple. The reception was at a downtown hotel and
five thousand guests paid seventy five dollars each. That's almost
two thousand dollars today to attend these festivities.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah, I was going to say, seventy five bucks was
a lot of money at that point. And let me
guess there was cake at the reception.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Definitely, so. According to the Barnum Museum, which also has
a piece of this cake, it was tradition at the
time to give a slice to female guests as they
left the reception. I had never heard of that. Apparently
that's true. Now. The Library of Congress got its piece
of cake from Harrison Fisk, a manager and editor of
at Theater magazine. In nineteen oh five, Lavinia, who had
remarried after Tom Thumb died, sent him a slice of
(14:03):
her wedding cake, which at that point was actually more
than forty years old. The library suspects she was trying
to publicize her autobiography or get cast in a role,
and so she was trying to carry some favor there.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Wow. Well, Mengo, I don't know if I can top
old cake, but I do have old flutes and a
lot of them. So we talked about all the stuff
that the library has, and it's an amazing collection. Do
you remember in twenty twenty two when Lizzo played James
Madison's crystal flute at her concert in DC.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, of course, it was such a big deal.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Well, it actually came from the Library's flute collection, which
is the largest in the world, and I'd had no
idea that this was the case. They're around seventeen hundred
flutes and wind instruments there. Most donated by a physicist
and amateur floutist named Dayton C. Miller. Now he came
by this honestly. His father played the fife and the
Union Army during the Civil War. Besides the crystal flute,
(14:52):
which Miller bought for two hundred dollars in nineteen twenty three,
the library has John Phillips SUS's piccolo, which Lizzo tried
out too, And there's also a flute that belonged to
Frederick the Great, a collection of Native American courting flutes,
and an instrument shaped like quote a horns toad climbing
a tree. You know, it's the whole range here.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
But going back to that crystal flute, did Madison actually
play it?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
He did not so, but it was it was somehow
important to his family. It was a gift from a
French flute maker named Charles Laurent, and the library has
seventeen crystal flutes from Lorent's workshop. Now, interestingly, the workshop
didn't use glass because it sounded better. It was because
glass handled heat and humidity better than wood or ivory.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
So another person who didn't play the flute, as far
as we know it was Amelia Earhart However, she was
the first woman and the second person ever to fly
solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Now, as you might remember,
she disappeared when her plane crashed in nineteen thirty seven
as she was attempting to fly around the world. The
Library of Congress has an amazing collection of Earhart Efemera,
(15:54):
including photos and even audio of a speech she gave.
But my favorite item is an autograph slide of her
palm print. So back in the nineteen thirties, palmistry was
really popular. It's this wu wu thing that claims that
your personality and interest can be seen in your hand.
And one of the world's foremost practitioners at the time
was a woman named Nellie Simmons Meyer, and in June
(16:17):
nineteen thirty three she analyzed Erhart's hence.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
And what did she find?
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Accord to Meyer, apparently, the aviator had a particularly large palm,
showing a love of physical activity and a strong will.
Her long finger showed her attention to detail and her
rational personality. Meyer also wrote, quote the diplomacy indicated by
the little finger enables her to conform to such restrictions
for a certain period, and then the urge for physical
(16:42):
and mental activity becomes so strong that she seeks escape
by a flight in her plane.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
I want somebody to compliment my little finger like that
one day, Mango.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I'm pretty sure your little finger indicates that you're from
Alabama and that you have our final factor of the day.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Nail it. That's exactly what it said. So I'm going
to end and done. Another person who has quite a
bit in the library archives in that is Abraham Lincoln. So,
as you'll recall, he went to Ford's Theater on April fourteenth,
eighteen sixty five, where he was shot by John Wilkes Booth. Now.
He died the following morning, and the contents of his
pockets were given to his son Robert. Now, these were
(17:17):
kept in the Lincoln family for more than seventy years
until Lincoln's granddaughter gave them to the library in nineteen
seventy six. Then Librarian of Congress Daniel Borston decided he
wanted to display them because he wanted to give back
a bit of humanity to a man he said, became
quote mythically engulfed.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Yeah, I imagine his like, so legend is looming very large.
But what did he have in his pockets? Was there
anything super secret.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Well, actually, I mean it's all pretty commonplace stuff, which
which weirdly I think makes it that much more meaningful.
So he had a linen handkerchief with a Lincoln embroidered
on it. There was a pyramid shaped watch fob, a
kind of pocket watch counterbalance. There was also two pairs
of glasses. Lincoln had a lot of vision problems, so
he often switched between pairs, and that evening he had
(18:02):
a small metal folding pair and a larger gold rim
pair that had been mended by Abe himself with a string.
There was also a lens polisher, a button, and a
pocket knife. And this got a bunch of stuff in
his pockets, and that pocket knife he probably had in case,
you know, he needed to repair his glasses. So back
to that idea as well. But he was also carrying
a brown leather wallet, and what's inside is also interesting.
(18:26):
So there was a pencil in eight newspaper clippings, including
an article about his recent successful re election campaign, and
strangest of all, he had a confederate five dollars bill.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
I mean, first of all, it's insane that he had
a wallet with like eight clippings of his recent election victories.
Crazy and in additioned like all these glasses. But why
Confederate money?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, it's weird, right, Well, we can only speculate why
he had it, but historians note that Lincoln had traveled
to Richmond, Virginia, about a week before his death, and
this was right after the city had been taken by
the Union army, so it may have been given to
him as kind of a souvenir. But on that Notemega,
We've made it. We reached nine facts, and I'm going
to give you this episode's trophy because you had secret tunnels,
(19:11):
you had old cake, which is just the shoe. And
when you get old cake, so what else did you do?
You do compliments to the pinky fingers, so you really
you've hit the full spectrum. I had a loss for words, Mango,
it's so amazing.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Well, I'm very honored, and I'll be sure to donate
this to the Livery of Congress when i'm done admiring it.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
That is perfect. Well, that's it for today's episode. If
you enjoyed it, make sure to subscribe to the show
on your favorite podcast app and leave us a nice
rating and review. Also, you can say hi to us
on Instagram at part Time Genius. This episode was written
by Marisa Brown. Thank you so much, Marissa, this was
a fun one, but from Dylan Gabe, Mary Mango and me,
thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongish
Heatikler and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy.
Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan
Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive
produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with
(20:27):
social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and
Viney Shorey. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
You're listening to part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope,
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Guess what, Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:12):
What's that? Will?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Actually, before I share something with you, I've got to
ask you. Are you a Spider Man fan?
Speaker 1 (00:18):
I think less and less with each movie, but I
was a Spider Man fan at one point.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah. Yeah, Well you obviously know. I have one kiddo that,
for probably a year or so, was wearing a Spider
Man costume into every local restaurant to where people working
at those restaurants would just know our kid as Spider Man.
And so it's pretty funny. We've been watching Spider Man
films for a long time now. But UH got a
fact for you, so you may be interested to know
(00:45):
that the Library of Congress has the original Spider Man drawings,
like from the very first time he appeared in print.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
That has to be the one where, like Peter Parker
is getting bitten by a radioactive spider I'm guessing right.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
The one and only. So in two thou and eight,
an anonymous Downer gave the library twenty four black and
white drawings. This was from the August nineteen sixty two
issue of Amazing Fantasy Now it's funny to look back
on because apparently Marvel wasn't sure people would like this
new character. The first page of the comic reads like
costume heroes. Confidentially, we in the comic mag business refer
(01:19):
to them as long underwear characters, and as you know,
they're a dime a dozen. But we think you may
find our Spider Man just a bit different. It's funny
how they were just like setting this up as though.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
It might selling him out.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
It's just so weird. But you know, what's particularly cool
about these drawings is that you can see some of
the back and forth artist Steve Ditko had with Marvel
publisher Stan Lee. For example, on one page where Peter
Parker has jumped out of the way of a car,
Stan wrote a note in the margins, quote, Steve, make
this a covered sedan, no arms hanging. Don't imply wild
(01:53):
reckless driving. It's pretty great.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
That's such a strange thing to be concerned about. I mean,
you've got this guy like slinging webs all over the place,
and you're worried about a driver with his arms out.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
That's pretty well.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
It is amazing that there's a copy in the Library
of Congress, though.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I know, and the library actually has over one hundred
and sixty five thousand original comic books, but that's just
a tiny part of its collection. It's considered the largest
library on the planet, with over one hundred and seventy
eight point two million items. Is of course include books, newspapers, music, maps, posters, photographs,
and more, which means these nine facts will barely scratch
(02:31):
the surface. But you got to start somewhere, so let's
dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius.
(02:57):
I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm here with my
good friend mangesh Hot Ticketer on the other side of
that booth. Hidden behind stacks and stacks. I mean, I
can't books. There are so many stacks of books. That's
our friend and producer, Dylan Fagan. He's also taped a
sign to the window. It says, down with Dewey, adopt
the Dylan decimal system. Always getting bald today.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I had no idea he'd been working on a system
of his own.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, I think he's I think he's trying to make
it a thing. We'll see how it goes. But I
have confidence in Delai.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, I obviously support Dylan and whatever he does. But anyway,
to kick off this episode about the Library of Congress,
let's talk about what it actually is. So, as the
name suggests, it is a library for Congress and the
rest of government, but it's also a library for the public.
In fact, anyone sixteen or older can go there to
(03:48):
do research. And the current Library in of Congress is
Carla Hayden. She's the fourteenth ever head and also the
first ever woman and the first person of color to
have that job. And besides running the library and leading
acquisition efforts, I had no idea about this, she's also
responsible for managing the US Copyright Office and for choosing
the Poet Laureate each year, which is amazing. I had
(04:11):
no idea that the responsibilities extended that far.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Either, these responsibilities didn't exist in eighteen hundred when the
library began. That year, President John Adams signed a bill
providing five thousand dollars to buy books that congressmen might
find useful, including histories of the Roman Empire and other
European countries, and the books were stored in a room
in the Capitol. So when the building was set on
fire by the British and this was back in eighteen fourteen.
(04:36):
Three thousand of those books were destroyed. Now that was
most of the collection. Thomas Jefferson was so upset that
he actually offered to sell his own personal library to
the government to help at restock, and Congress agreed to
pay him about twenty four thousand dollars for over six
thousand books. It was closer to six thy five hundred. Now. Unfortunately,
there was another fire in eighteen fifty one that actually
(04:58):
destroyed a lot of Jefferson's books plus others in the collection.
But it was built back up and finally put in
a fireproof room. That is until the library needed its
own building, which it got in eighteen ninety seven. And
that's now known as the Thomas Jefferson Building, which is
right near the Capitol.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah, and I've been in there before, and it truly
is just a gorgeous place.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah, it is. And it's just one of the Library's
five buildings. There are three on Capitol Hill and two
in the DC suburbs, but the Thomas Jefferson Building is
definitely the most famous one.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah, And it makes sense. So actually I read a
lot about this building. It is made up of four
hundred thousand cubic feet of granite, as well as fifteen
kinds of marble, gold, bronze, and mahogany. It was modeled
on the Paris Opera House and designed in the bows
Art style, which was very popular in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century. I think symmetry, opulence, lots of
(05:52):
columns with decorations, big halls, staircases, that sort of thing.
So when the building opened to the public in November first,
eighteen ninety seven, people lined up to enter, and within
minutes they began requesting books. You want to guess what
the first request.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Was, Dale Carnegie is How to win friends and influence people.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Very very very close. Actually not close at all. No,
the very first request in the new building was for
a book called Year Book by Roger Williams. But it
had just been published and the library hadn't actually secured
a copy yet.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
That is very embarrassing that the first first book requested
wasn't there. So was there a second request? There was,
and it was for a book called History of the
City of New York by Martha Lamb, which had been
published in eighteen seventy seven, So no problems there, and
actually how you requested the book back then was pretty cool.
Do you remember going through to like a drive through bank.
(06:48):
I actually think about this a lot, like how futuristic
it felt. And when you put that like you put
it like that stuff in a tube, and I just
like watching my mom. It felt like watching the Jetsons
or something.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
It was pretty much believe it or not. I actually
did this not too long ago, and yes I remember
going there as a kid. But they don't put a
sucker in there anymore. That's the downside once you get old.
It was the best part that was Yeah, that was
really the reason to go. But the library also used
the system of these pneumatic tubes for book requests. So
first you'd fill out a ticket with the book you
(07:20):
were looking for, and then the slip would be sent
via tube to the appropriate shelf where a staff member
would find the book and send it back via tube.
The whole thing took I don't know, maybe like five
minutes or so.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
That is pretty incredible and I had no idea. Another
way books have been delivered for years is through a
series of tunnels.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Ooh, whenever somebody says tunnels and I think libraries, I
feel like, this is the kind of secret I've been
waiting for.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Mega. So, as you mentioned, in eighteen ninety seven, the
Library of Congress made a big move from the Capital
to the Jefferson Building. But the problem was this new
building was about a quarter of a mile away, and
congressmen didn't have the time to work that far when
they needed a book, especially if Congress was in session.
So the Army Corps of Engineers built a special underground
(08:07):
tunnel to connect the two buildings.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
It was just six feet.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
High, four feet wide, and about eleven hundred feet long,
and it was made entirely of brick.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
I'm curious, so how does it help the members of
Congress get there faster?
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, it really didn't. The tunnel included telephone wires and
pneumatic tubes for conveying book requests from Congress to the
new library building, and most excitingly, there was a special
book carrying apparatus that carried books and other materials through
the tunnel via an electric conveyor system with tracks. Now,
the system could move books at around six hundred feet
(08:41):
per minute, which meant that a book could arrive at
the Capitol just a couple of minutes after a request
came in, though Congressmen did start complaining about it because
often it would take about twenty five minutes for a
request to be delivered upon.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
I mean that still seems pretty fast.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
It does to me too. And the tunnel was effective
enough that ninety another was built to connect the library
to the Supreme Court, and then another to connect the
main Jefferson building to the John Adams Library building across
the street.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
So do these tunnels still exist or rather, do they
still kind of whisk books back and forth between the buildings.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
So Sadly, when they were building the new Capital Visitors
Center in two thousand, the Capital section of the tunnel
was destroyed and the library section was sealed. But a
pedestrian tunnel that connects the library to the Capitol building
is still around and it's actually open to the public.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
All right, Well, there's a bunch of stuff that people
can obviously still see, and so we're going to talk
about some of those things right after a quick break.
(09:50):
Welcome back to part time Genius. Today, we're revealing nine
secrets about the Library of Congress. Although I use the
word secret sort of loosely. I mean, the mission of
the library is that their collection is a available to everyone.
But before I get to my next fact, I wanted
to ask, so are you a fan of pasta? And
I started out by asking whether they were a famed
Spider Man. Now I need to know are you a
fan of pasta?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
So I'm going to go back and say I actually
really loved Spider Man comics as a kid. So I
want to retrofit this episode to make sure no one
is angry at me. I'm also, of course a huge
fan of pasta. Are you Kiddingeah?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
I mean pasta is so good? And then you have
something in common with Thomas Jefferson. Here another noted pasta fan.
But back in the seventeen hundreds, pasta wasn't known that
much in America. Jefferson discovered it while he was serving
as the US Minister to France. This was from seventeen
eighty four to seventeen eighty nine, and to be honest,
that time in France made him a little bit fancy.
(10:44):
He developed a taste for French cooking, and also at
the time, pasta was all the rage in France. So
while he was in Europe, Jefferson either saw or read
about quote a mold for making macaroni, and being a
fan of macaroni, which was the catch all term for
pasta pretty much of any kind, he wanted a machine
of his own, so he sent one from Naples to
(11:04):
his home at Monticello, and unfortunately it didn't work for
very long, and nobody knows what happened to it.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
So I am very into all of this, but I
am curious, like, what does this stuff to do with
the Library of Congress.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
So Jefferson had pasta on the mind, and so he
drew up his own design for a pasta machine, complete
with instructions for making different shapes. And he noted that
the best pasta is made in Naples from a special
kind of flower called somola, but that any good, finely
ground flower would also do. And the Library of Congress
had these plans. I think you'd probably doubted I was
(11:36):
ever going to ride around to it, But there it is.
The Library of Congress has these plants.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
I love that you said. Jefferson and I are both
noted pasta lovers, so you too. That's the two most
well known things about what the.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I saw a Wikipedia entry about
pasta lovers and you and Jefferson when we're sort of.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Back to back. Yeah, just the two of us. But
I am amazed by this. Did he ever build his machine?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
He did not, unfortunately, so those plans in the library
are the only record of Thomas Jefferson's career as a
pasta machine designer. But he did serve fresh pasta at
dinners at Monticello, courtesy of course, of his kitchen staff,
rolling out dough and cutting it into different shapes. But
pasta was too adventurous for some of his guests. One
visitor actually complained that his pasta meal quote tasted very
(12:22):
strong and not agreeable.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
It feels like if your macaroni is strong and not agreeable,
you're not doing it right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I think that's probably true.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
So, speaking of food, did you know that the Library
of Congress has a piece of wedding cake that's over
one hundred and sixty years old inside of it? I
did not know this, and to be clear, and nobody
has tried to eat it. And the only reason it
survived this long is that it's likely a fruitcake soaked
in brandy. But this old cake has a pretty great story.
It's from the wedding of Charles Stratton aka General Tom
(12:54):
Thumb and Lavinia Warren. Both of them worked for Pt.
Barnum at a circus. Lavinia was thirty inches tall, Charles
was around thirty five inches, and in eighteen sixty three
when they got married, Tom Thumb was one of the
most popular stars in the country. So this wedding was
a huge, huge deal and also kind of a welcome
distraction from the Civil War which was going on at
(13:14):
that time. Now, the event took place in New York City,
and even the Astors and the Vanderbilts were jonesing for
an invite, and The New York Times wrote that there
were crowds for miles trying to get a glimpse of
the couple. The reception was at a downtown hotel and
five thousand guests paid seventy five dollars each. That's almost
two thousand dollars today to attend these festivities.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah, I was going to say, seventy five bucks was
a lot of money at that point. And let me
guess there was cake at the reception.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Definitely, so. According to the Barnum Museum, which also has
a piece of this cake, it was tradition at the
time to give a slice to female guests as they
left the reception. I had never heard of that. Apparently
that's true. Now. The Library of Congress got its piece
of cake from Harrison Fisk, a manager and editor of
at Theater magazine. In nineteen oh five, Lavinia, who had
remarried after Tom Thumb died, sent him a slice of
(14:03):
her wedding cake, which at that point was actually more
than forty years old. The library suspects she was trying
to publicize her autobiography or get cast in a role,
and so she was trying to carry some favor there.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Wow. Well, Mengo, I don't know if I can top
old cake, but I do have old flutes and a
lot of them. So we talked about all the stuff
that the library has, and it's an amazing collection. Do
you remember in twenty twenty two when Lizzo played James
Madison's crystal flute at her concert in DC.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, of course, it was such a big deal.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Well, it actually came from the Library's flute collection, which
is the largest in the world, and I'd had no
idea that this was the case. They're around seventeen hundred
flutes and wind instruments there. Most donated by a physicist
and amateur floutist named Dayton C. Miller. Now he came
by this honestly. His father played the fife and the
Union Army during the Civil War. Besides the crystal flute,
(14:52):
which Miller bought for two hundred dollars in nineteen twenty three,
the library has John Phillips SUS's piccolo, which Lizzo tried
out too, And there's also a flute that belonged to
Frederick the Great, a collection of Native American courting flutes,
and an instrument shaped like quote a horns toad climbing
a tree. You know, it's the whole range here.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
But going back to that crystal flute, did Madison actually
play it?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
He did not so, but it was it was somehow
important to his family. It was a gift from a
French flute maker named Charles Laurent, and the library has
seventeen crystal flutes from Lorent's workshop. Now, interestingly, the workshop
didn't use glass because it sounded better. It was because
glass handled heat and humidity better than wood or ivory.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
So another person who didn't play the flute, as far
as we know it was Amelia Earhart However, she was
the first woman and the second person ever to fly
solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Now, as you might remember,
she disappeared when her plane crashed in nineteen thirty seven
as she was attempting to fly around the world. The
Library of Congress has an amazing collection of Earhart Efemera,
(15:54):
including photos and even audio of a speech she gave.
But my favorite item is an autograph slide of her
palm print. So back in the nineteen thirties, palmistry was
really popular. It's this wu wu thing that claims that
your personality and interest can be seen in your hand.
And one of the world's foremost practitioners at the time
was a woman named Nellie Simmons Meyer, and in June
(16:17):
nineteen thirty three she analyzed Erhart's hence.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
And what did she find?
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Accord to Meyer, apparently, the aviator had a particularly large palm,
showing a love of physical activity and a strong will.
Her long finger showed her attention to detail and her
rational personality. Meyer also wrote, quote the diplomacy indicated by
the little finger enables her to conform to such restrictions
for a certain period, and then the urge for physical
(16:42):
and mental activity becomes so strong that she seeks escape
by a flight in her plane.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
I want somebody to compliment my little finger like that
one day, Mango.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I'm pretty sure your little finger indicates that you're from
Alabama and that you have our final factor of the day.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Nail it. That's exactly what it said. So I'm going
to end and done. Another person who has quite a
bit in the library archives in that is Abraham Lincoln. So,
as you'll recall, he went to Ford's Theater on April fourteenth,
eighteen sixty five, where he was shot by John Wilkes Booth. Now.
He died the following morning, and the contents of his
pockets were given to his son Robert. Now, these were
(17:17):
kept in the Lincoln family for more than seventy years
until Lincoln's granddaughter gave them to the library in nineteen
seventy six. Then Librarian of Congress Daniel Borston decided he
wanted to display them because he wanted to give back
a bit of humanity to a man he said, became
quote mythically engulfed.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Yeah, I imagine his like, so legend is looming very large.
But what did he have in his pockets? Was there
anything super secret.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Well, actually, I mean it's all pretty commonplace stuff, which
which weirdly I think makes it that much more meaningful.
So he had a linen handkerchief with a Lincoln embroidered
on it. There was a pyramid shaped watch fob, a
kind of pocket watch counterbalance. There was also two pairs
of glasses. Lincoln had a lot of vision problems, so
he often switched between pairs, and that evening he had
(18:02):
a small metal folding pair and a larger gold rim
pair that had been mended by Abe himself with a string.
There was also a lens polisher, a button, and a
pocket knife. And this got a bunch of stuff in
his pockets, and that pocket knife he probably had in case,
you know, he needed to repair his glasses. So back
to that idea as well. But he was also carrying
a brown leather wallet, and what's inside is also interesting.
(18:26):
So there was a pencil in eight newspaper clippings, including
an article about his recent successful re election campaign, and
strangest of all, he had a confederate five dollars bill.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
I mean, first of all, it's insane that he had
a wallet with like eight clippings of his recent election victories.
Crazy and in additioned like all these glasses. But why
Confederate money?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, it's weird, right, Well, we can only speculate why
he had it, but historians note that Lincoln had traveled
to Richmond, Virginia, about a week before his death, and
this was right after the city had been taken by
the Union army, so it may have been given to
him as kind of a souvenir. But on that Notemega,
We've made it. We reached nine facts, and I'm going
to give you this episode's trophy because you had secret tunnels,
(19:11):
you had old cake, which is just the shoe. And
when you get old cake, so what else did you do?
You do compliments to the pinky fingers, so you really
you've hit the full spectrum. I had a loss for words, Mango,
it's so amazing.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Well, I'm very honored, and I'll be sure to donate
this to the Livery of Congress when i'm done admiring it.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
That is perfect. Well, that's it for today's episode. If
you enjoyed it, make sure to subscribe to the show
on your favorite podcast app and leave us a nice
rating and review. Also, you can say hi to us
on Instagram at part Time Genius. This episode was written
by Marisa Brown. Thank you so much, Marissa, this was
a fun one, but from Dylan Gabe, Mary Mango and me,
thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongish
Heatikler and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy.
Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan
Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive
produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with
(20:27):
social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and
Viney Shorey. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
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Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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