National Archives

During the week in 1945 that Japan surrendered to the United States, a young graduate of the University of Arkansas arrived by train in Washington, took a room in a boardinghouse and reported to his new job at the National Archives. Fifty-eight years later, John E. Taylor arrives for work at the archives' mammoth records center in College Park before 7 a.m. each day. Among historians of war and intelligence - the archivist's specialty for half a century - his memory for documents and generosity with advice are legendary.

WASHINGTON - Despite its imposing architecture and stunning collection, the National Archives has never quite made the A-list of tourist attractions here. Even the city's official convention Web site does not list it on a suggested tour. But this week the archives will take an important step toward making its building and its precious contents more inviting, not just to history buffs but to the general public. Today, the 216th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution, President Bush, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and congressional leaders are to take part in a ceremony rededicating the archives' grand rotunda, closed for renovations since July 5, 2001.

The National Archives, the guardian of the Declaration of Independence, has shuffled through its files and come up with a sampling of Revolutionary factoids for the Fourth of July. The original declaration remains tucked away in a secure "undisclosed location" until its latest preservation and re-encasement and the renovation of the Rotunda of the National Archives are complete. The declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights will go on display again in September at the Archives building on the Mall in Washington.

TRACING OUT your family history can mean a lot more than long hours on the Web or riffling through dusty files in a library. For the genealogy club at South County Senior Center, it has meant exciting vacations, forging friendships, and tightening bonds with grandchildren. Shirley Miller, assistant director of the senior center, said the club sprouted from a genealogy class the center offered a few years ago. "Since we opened in 1991, we've had different genealogy classes and an autobiography class, which goes along with genealogy," she said, "and there was a group that wanted to do more and travel more."

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. - A method of protecting the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence may have posed the biggest danger to the historic documents, NASA Langley researchers say. A NASA Langley-led research team that has been studying the problem since 1998 has found that conditions inside the encasements holding those documents was key in their potential deterioration. The chief problem, the researchers found, was that there was twice as much water vapor as there should have been.

Where to begin the strange story? In December 1970, Elvis Presley is flying from Memphis to Washington, D.C., on American Airlines and asks a stewardess for writing paper. He proceeds to write a five-page letter to President Richard M. Nixon and personally delivers it at the northwest gate of the White House on the morning of Dec. 21. The letter results in an Oval Office meeting between the King and the president. Years later, a photograph of them shaking hands becomes the most requested document of the National Archives and Records Administration, outstripping requests for a photo of the USS Arizona being blown up at Pearl Harbor.

JOE NICKELL calls them "time capsules," these rare opportunities to explore the mysteries of the past. He is a sleuth of history, a man who uses everything from a knowledge of ancient inks to carbon dating in order to answer questions about long-ago events. Nickell, who has written a book about historical mysteries, once put together a research team that concluded that a diary purportedly penned by Jack the Ripper was bogus. He has come down on the side of research that shows the Shroud of Turin is a 13th-century fake.

As career paths go, the one taken by Stephen St.Croix has been a murky, quirky, meandering trail - a long, strange trip with only one constant: Noise. Whether it was trying to make his electric guitar louder than anybody else's as a rock musician, defuzzing the audio for the re-release of The Wizard of Oz as a sound engineer, or enhancing the covertly recorded mumblings of terrorists and drug dealers as a manufacturer of audio surveillance aids, the Baltimore native's life - at least the parts he can talk about publicly - has been all about sound.

COLLEGE PARK - Great moments in U.S. history often have humble, confusing and sometimes unintelligible beginnings. But with resolve and perhaps an advanced degree in library science, Maryland citizens can now bequeath to their grandchildren a recording of Richard Nixon praising Johnny Unitas! At the National Archives yesterday, the public was allowed for the first time to copy for free any portions of the 1,284 tapes the government had previously released of Nixon's White House conversations.

For more than 50 years, Nazi hunters and historians have tried in vain to discover what happened to Gestapo chief Heinrich Muller, who vanished in 1945 at the end of World War II. Of all the major Nazis, Muller, who was Adolf Eichmann's immediate superior, is the most important still unaccounted for, according to many Holocaust experts. Now, efforts to solve the mystery are resuming, including attempts to answer the most provocative question: Was Muller briefly in U.S. custody after the war?