WASHINGTON – The National Archives, home of the original copies of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, has dusted off more than 1,000 other relics and put them on public display.
The museum’s million or so visitors a year now can view a medley of new exhibits, called “Public Vaults” – including a copy of the first law passed by Congress, an Air Force chart of UFO sightings and a home movie starring a certain newly re-elected president.
In it, 1-year-old George W. Bush toddles across a lawn in rompers.
The exhibit opened Friday, as archives officials were hoping to benefit from publicity about an upcoming commercial movie, “National Treasure.” The film features a fictional plot to steal the Declaration in search of a map on the back that would lead to buried treasure.
Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper said “National Treasure” could inspire viewers to visit the real document – and stay to see the new exhibit.
The National Archives created the 9,000-square-foot mini-museum to show that it preserves more than budget statistics and the proceedings of subcommittees of Congress – it also stores items central to the nation’s history – such as the camera that Abraham Zapruder used to film President Kennedy’s assassination.
“The National Archives experience will significantly increase our ability to share with everyone the drama, struggle and exhilaration that are reflected in these records,” said Archivist John Carlin, NARA’s chief, in an announcement of the new museum. “These records not only trace our past, they point to our future.”
The records take a variety of forms. There are photos, maps, handwritten notes, films and other objects.
A tape recorder gets a glass case all to itself. It’s the one used by Rosemary Woods, President Nixon’s secretary, that produced the infamous 18-minute gap in a recorded presidential conversation about the break-in at what is now the Watergate Hotel.
The exhibit includes interactive displays. Visitors can put together their own D-Day video from footage of the landing. The video can then be shown on a large screen.
Other displays allow visitors to touch screens and pull up more information about particular topics, such as the development of the atomic bomb and the espionage connected with it
The items on view come from a variety of sources of public record. The Zapruder camera, for example, came from the Warren Commission. And Bush’s baby pictures came from his father’s presidential library.
Among the others:
* The nation’s first law. Soon after the Constitution gave Congress the right to pass laws, it approved one on June 1, 1789, requiring all public officials to take an oath of office.
* Footage of President Theodore Roosevelt, a heavy watch chain across his ample paunch, addressing a political meeting. Visitors also can pick up a telephone receiver and listen to a recording of Teddy’s squeaky voice.
* There are scenes of a trip to Europe that John F. Kennedy made as a teenager. He is shown several years later examining copies of his book “While England Slept,” written on the eve of World War II.
* For Civil War buffs, there’s the never-before-exhibited, handwritten text of a telegram from President Lincoln to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant dated Feb. 1, 1865, not long before the surrender of the Confederacy. It reads: “Let nothing which is transpiring, change, hinder, or delay your military movements, or plans.”
The exhibits cost $6.4 million, entirely from private contributions.
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