(Roughly) Daily

This map displays almost 26,000 museums, historical societies, and historic preservation associations in the United States

There are twenty-four history museums and historical societies in the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Even within the confines of downtown, a visitor could peruse the stately home of a nineteenth-century shipping merchant or the much more modest home of an eighteenth-century furniture maker. There are museums dedicated to the history of Charleston, of South Carolina, and of dentistry. And in 2020, the city that once imported and sold more enslaved people than any other city in the United States will be the site of the International African American Museum.

Across the country, museums explore the histories of all kinds of things—states, local communities, religious sects, music, steam engines, the Tuskegee Airmen.

The proliferation of museums of all sizes means that in the United States, one is never very far from history: the average distance between two history museums is only 2.6 miles. Because there tend to be more museums in cities than in rural areas, the “history museum density” of the country is one museum for every 147 square miles (an area about the size of Fayetteville, North Carolina)…

Read more and explore the interactive map at: “Public History.”

* anonymous

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As we ruminate on roots, we might recall that it was on this date in 1775 that, at the request fo the Second Continental Congress, the U. S. Marine Corps was founded, as the first two battalions of Marines were requested at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia.  (Tun Tavern was quite the convening spot in that period: among other “foundings,” Benjamin Franklin raised the Pennsylvania militia there and it is regarded as the “birthplace of Masonic teachings in America.”)

Commemorating this event, the National Museum of the Marine Corps was opened in Triangle, Virginia (near the Quantico Marine Base) on this same date in 2006.

Sketch of the original Tun Tavern

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