Government

Established in 1879 to build and organize a collection of scientific materials in the earth sciences, the U.S. Geological Survey Library is now the largest library for earth sciences in the world. The library system includes four libraries and is part of the Geographic Information Office of the USGS.

Goddard Space Flight Center Library

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Virtual Reference Shelf
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Reference e-books

This was the first (but is not not the latest and greatest, for most purposes) online atlas of Mars. It lets you choose a site by various means and will show the locations (as footprints) of thousands of high-resolution Viking Orbiter images.

A brief overview of this Web site that compares what we knew in 1900 to what we know today

On July 16, 1945 the world changed with the explosion of the first atomic bomb. The explosion took place at Trinity Site which is on what is now White Sands Missile Range. Trinity is a national historic landmark which is open to the public twice a year. The following links will provide you with information on the history of the site, how to get there and some of the historic images.

USDA Mission: Enhance the quality of life for the American people by supporting production of agriculture:
* ensuring a safe, affordable, nutritious, and accessible food supply
* caring for agricultural, forest, and range lands
* supporting sound development of rural communities
* providing economic opportunities for farm and rural residents
* expanding global markets for agricultural and forest products and services
* and working to reduce hunger in America and throughout the world.

New Harmony was established in 1814 by a group of German extraction led by a man named George Rapp. They had moved from a colony named Harmonie in Pennsylvania, and numerous letters written by them from the new Indiana settlement were datelined Harmonie, Ind. It has been reported that Robert Owen changed the name to New Harmony when he acquired it, but a letter of 1815 from George Rapp to his son Frederick was datelined "Neu Harmony" and used the German spelling "Neu" and ended the word "Harmony" with a "y" instead of "ie" (Arndt, 1975, facing p.7). The Harmonists, during their 10 years, made no geologic contribution, but they built a physical base of operations in a wilderness, which their successors probably could not and surely would not have done. When Robert Owen, who was a successful industrialist and progressive thinker in New Lanark, Scotland, sought a site in America to test his ideas for social reform, the ready made community of New Harmony was for sale and was purchased.

Few figures have had so decisive and fundamental an influence on the course of modern cultural history as Sigmund Freud. Yet few figures also have inspired such sustained controversy and intense debate. Freud's legacy continues to be hotly contested, as demonstrated by the controversy attracted by this exhibition even before its opening. Our notions of identity, memory, childhood, sexuality, and, most generally, of meaning have been shaped in relation to--and often in opposition to--Freud's work. The exhibition examines Freud's life and his key ideas and their effect upon the twentieth century.

(Adapted from a Caltech commencement address given in 1974; HTML'ed from the book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!")

During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas -- which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact, that we have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked -- or very little of it did.

For a number of years professor Niels Bohr at the University of Copenhagen was the central figure in the international work on the development of nuclear physics and his modest Institute for Theoretical Physics became the most important meeting place and place of learning for the world's young nuclear physicists. It has left permanent marks in the scientif-ic nomenclature. For instance, the element which has number 72 and which was long unknown was called Hafnium because it was discovered at Niels Bohr's institute and named after the Latin form of Copenhagen, Hafnia.