James Joseph Norris (1907-1976) was a New Jersey born alumnus of Catholic University with a renowned career as global humanitarian working with war refugees and notable as the only layman to address the Second Vatican Council with a speech he wrote and delivered in Latin. He was the eldest child of James Henry Norris and Rose Read More

April 13 is the birthday of Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), an American Founding Father, primary author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and Governor of Virginia (1779-1780) as well as the first Secretary of State (1790-1793), second Vice President (1797-1801), and third President of the United States (1801–1809). A Virginia planter and Enlightenment thinker (i.e. Humanism, Read More

The Metrorail subway system arrived in Washington Saturday and the response was so overwhelming that prospective riders waited in lines for up to four hours to ride in trains that were often so overloaded that they refused to move because of the weight of the overcapacity crowds. – John Koppish, The Tower, Vol 54, Issue Read More

Predating modern cat memes by thousands of years, humans have always found a way to commemorate our feline companions. The Magner Collection showcases a few superb Pre-Columbian ceramic pottery pieces to excite any cat lover. These ceramic artifacts likely originate from the Pre-Columbian civilization known as the Chavín Culture (900 BC – 250 BC). Located Read More

Dear readers, do you ever look up in Mullen Library and notice a blank spot on the wall? Was anything displayed there, if ever? And if there was once something there, what happened to it? Well… The portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, which His Eminence Cardinal Spellman presented to the Catholic University in Read More

As Special Collections at Catholic University celebrates our three hundredth blog post and eleven years with The Archivist’s Nook we reflect upon how we got here and offer a few staff favorites from across the spectrum of our holdings of university records, museum objects, rare books, and American Catholic History manuscript collections. Eleven years ago, Read More

February 24 is the birthday of noted Austrian born physicist and humanitarian, Dr. Karl Ferdinand Herzfeld (1892-1978), who was also an esteemed professor at The Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, D.C. from 1936-1968. Having arrived in the United States in 1926 to teach at Johns Hopkins University, Herzfeld was not a refugee from Read More

Today when most people think of Mardi Gras in New Orleans they think of big parades and parties with plastic beads and cheap masks. It turns out that there is an entirely different side to Mardi Gras where after the parade, guests attend lavish balls to honor the chosen king and queen of carnival. The Read More

As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the nation is looking back on its history, institutions, and peoples. During the spring semester 2026, Special Collections will showcase highlights from the University’s collections, reflecting on the founding and ensuing generations of Americans. Beyond giving examples of our national history, the Read More

Guest author Isaac Copeland is a graduate student at Catholic University in the Department of History and Anthropology. In 1978, five years after the death of renowned author and scholar J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Theodore Meyer took the podium to recount his memories of his famous friend, sketch the life of the famous author, and donate Read More