Have you ever dreamed of being addressed as King or Queen or Prince or Princess or Viscount or Duchess or Lord or Dauphin? If you are a U.S. citizen, don’t expect that dream to come true—the United States does not confer titles of nobility. On Thursday, August 23, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention agreed to explicitly prohibit the new government from conferring such titles. The restriction simultaneously emphasized the republican spirit throughout the Constitution and the deliberate difference from the government of Great Britain. The prohibition on conferring titles of nobility survives today in Article 1, Section 9, of the Constitution. (If you still want to chase that dream, however, just prove yourself of great value to a nation that does not have an Article 1, Section 9.) Image Caption: Royal Crown of the Hungarian Royal Holy Crown Jewels, recovered by the U.S. Army during World War II when this photo was taken on August 3, 1945. Today’s post was written by National Archives volunteer Paul Richter. It is part of a series tracing the development of the Constitution in honor of the 225th anniversary of this document on September 17, 2012.
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Have you ever dreamed of being addressed as King or Queen or Prince or Princess or Viscount or Duchess or Lord or Dauphin? If you are a U.S. citizen, don’t expect that dream to come true—the United States does not confer titles of nobility.

On Thursday, August 23, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention agreed to explicitly prohibit the new government from conferring such titles.

The restriction simultaneously emphasized the republican spirit throughout the Constitution and the deliberate difference from the government of Great Britain. The prohibition on conferring titles of nobility survives today in Article 1, Section 9, of the Constitution.

(If you still want to chase that dream, however, just prove yourself of great value to a nation that does not have an Article 1, Section 9.)

Image Caption: Royal Crown of the Hungarian Royal Holy Crown Jewels, recovered by the U.S. Army during World War II when this photo was taken on August 3, 1945.

Today’s post was written by National Archives volunteer Paul Richter. It is part of a series tracing the development of the Constitution in honor of the 225th anniversary of this document on September 17, 2012.

Happy 100th Birthday to Julia Child—French cooking expert and former member of the OSS, the World War II intelligence organization that was the forerunner to the CIA!
The National Archives holds the personnel file of a young Julia McWilliams, including this resume that she submitted.
The file documents her rise from senior typist to junior research assistant to clerk to senior clerk to administrative assistant. She started out in Washington, DC,and was then sent to duty stations overseas in Ceylon and China, when she met her future husband, Paul Child.
You can read her personnel file online.
To learn more about Julia Child’s time in the OSS, read “A Covert Affair” from Prologue magazine.
To learn more about the OSS, read “Creating the Modern Spy” from Prologue magazine.

The boy on the left is Michael Pupa. Of the individuals chosen randomly to be included in our new exhibit, only Michael Pupa is still alive.

His parents were victims of the Nazis when he was only four, and he and his uncle spent two years hiding in the forests of Poland, waiting until the end of World War II. But the ordeal of Michael Pupa was far from over.

He became a “displaced person,” or DP, moving from one DP camp to another until 1951, when Michael, by then 12, and his cousin were flown to the United States and sent to a home for refugee children, then to foster homes in Cleveland.

Michael Pupa’s story does have a happy ending, told in “Attachments: Faces and Stories from America’s Gates,” a new exhibit that opens at the National Archives on Friday, June 15, and in an upcoming issue of Prologue magazine.

Michael Pupa and his family will be at the National Archives on when “Attachments” opens.

“Attachments” is at the National Archives through September 4.

(Images: Michael Pupa, age 12, National Archives; Michael Pupa, present-day with family, image credit Pupa family.)
National Doughnut Day started in 1938 when it was created by the Salvation Army to honor the women who served doughnuts to the soldiers during World War I. Doughnuts were back on the front lines in World War II. Elizabeth A. Richardson, the woman on the left in this photograph, is standing in front of her Clubmobile, a single-decker bus fitted with coffee and doughnut-making equipment that drove around the England, bringing cheer to the soldiers stationed there. “I consider myself fortunate to be in Clubmobile—can’t conceive of anything else,” she wrote to her parents in World War II. But like many of the young men she served doughnuts to, Elizabeth did not return home. She was killed in plane crash in July 25, 1945, and is buried in the American Cemetery in Normandy. You can read more about her story in this Prologue magazine article: http://go.usa.gov/d4k [Image: Liz Richardson (left) and Mary Haynsworth with smiling GIs in front of their Clubmobile in Normandy. Liz sent the snapshot to her parents on June 4, 1945, noting that the “blur” in her left hand “is a doughnut. And it’s just as well that it wasn’t photogenic.” (Courtesy of James H. Madison)]
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National Doughnut Day started in 1938 when it was created by the Salvation Army to honor the women who served doughnuts to the soldiers during World War I. Doughnuts were back on the front lines in World War II.

Elizabeth A. Richardson, the woman on the left in this photograph, is standing in front of her Clubmobile, a single-decker bus fitted with coffee and doughnut-making equipment that drove around the England, bringing cheer to the soldiers stationed there. “I consider myself fortunate to be in Clubmobile—can’t conceive of anything else,” she wrote to her parents in World War II.

But like many of the young men she served doughnuts to, Elizabeth did not return home. She was killed in plane crash in July 25, 1945, and is buried in the American Cemetery in Normandy. You can read more about her story in this Prologue magazine article: http://go.usa.gov/d4k

[Image: Liz Richardson (left) and Mary Haynsworth with smiling GIs in front of their Clubmobile in Normandy. Liz sent the snapshot to her parents on June 4, 1945, noting that the “blur” in her left hand “is a doughnut. And it’s just as well that it wasn’t photogenic.” (Courtesy of James H. Madison)]