reflex from the future.

Letter drafted by General Dwight D. Eisenhower in the event that the D-Day Allied invasions on Normandy failed. It reads:

"Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone."

Born in 1907, Gladys Bentley was one of the most important and controversial musicians of the Harlem Renaissance. Openly queer during her early career, she was known for wearing men's clothing, performing bawdy songs with drag queens, and flirting with female audience members.

In the 1950s, however, she stopped dressing in her trademark top hat and tux and married a man. She described her struggles with sexual orientation as her "personal hell" in EBONY Magazine. The man she claimed was her husband would later deny that they ever married. The circumstances surrounding this chapter of her life remain controversial to this day.

Left: A 1958 Braille letter from a Watertown, Massachusetts 13 year old boy to President Eisenhower, who was running for re-election. It reads:

Dear Ike,

I decided to write you a little speech which might help you to win the election.

Vote for me. I will help you out. I will lower the prices and also your tax bill. I also will help the negroes, so that they may go to school.

Good Luck in November.

John Beaulieu

Ford Island Naval Air Station on the day of the attacks on Pearl Harbor. This photo was later used in a court case concerning the imposition of martial law in Hawaii after the attack. 

The original caption: 

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger (left) swears in Sandra Day O'Connor (right) while her husband, John, looks on. September 25, 1981.

Lyndon B. Johnson's personally annotated notes of the remarks he gave at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on November 22nd, 1963 -- the day of President John F. Kennedy's assassination. It reads:

The first film adaptation of The Great Gatsby was released in 1926, just a year after the novel itself was published. Co-produced by the famous Adolph Zukor, the film starred the famous silent film actors Warner Baxter as Jay Gatsby and Lois Wilson as Daisy. Most notable, however, is that George Wilson was played by William Powell, who would later go on to become one of the most famous and profitable leading men of the 1930s and 1940s due to his collaboration with Myrna Loy in the "Thin Man" films.