U.S. Army Contract Surgeon women's uniform from World War I. The uniform consists of a coat, skirt, shirtwaist, necktie, campaign hat, gloves, boots, and insignia. The coat and skirt are made of olive drab wool. The hat is brown wool with a black and maroon hat band and black and gold hat cord. The shirt is olive drab cotton and the tie is maroon cotton. The gloves and boots are brown leather. Insignia include metal "U.S." insignia on shirt collar and bronze caduceus with a superimposed "CS" monogram on the coat lapels. World War I Victory ribbon on left breast. Three overseas service chevrons on lower left sleeve, depicting 6 months of service each. This uniform was worn by Dr. Loy McAfee, who was assigned to the Office of the Surgeon General by orders dated May 17, 1918. Donated by Dr. McAfee through The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America.
During World War I the U.S. Army Medical Department employed contract surgeons in order to meet the demand for additional skilled medical personnel. Women who were contract surgeons served as anesthetists, lab technicians, dispensary physicians, and other capacities as needed.
Source:
Vivian Lea Young, “'Petticoats Are Part of this Uniform': American Women Volunteers of the First World War and Their Uniforms” (Master's thesis, George Washington University, 1987).
This shirt was made by an unknown maker, undetermined provenance and date. It is a Dashiki made of red and green printed fabric, with white embroidery on neckline, sleeves, and top of pockets. It was previously used by Mongo Santamaría.
Ramón "Mongo" Santamaría Rodríguez (1917–2003) was a Cuban percussionist and bandleader who spent most of his career in the United States. Primarily a conga drummer, Santamaría was a leading figure in the pachanga and boogaloo dance crazes of the 1960s. From the 1970s, he recorded mainly salsa and Latin jazz, before retiring in the late 1990s. Santamaria made several recordings as a leader of his own group, as well as a sideman with Fania All-Stars, Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie, and Ray Charles.
This black polo-style shirt was a promotional item from Network Solutions, collected by Smithsonian curator David Allison. It is black with white, grey and red embroidery. The front has the Network Solutions logo embroidered in white. The left arm cuff has the term interNIC and the company logo in grey and red embroidery. The shirt has a two-button opening at the neck. It is an extra large size and unworn.
The blockbuster cancer drug Taxol first became available in 1992 and has since been used in the treatment for ovarian, breast, and lung cancer, and for Kaposi’s sarcoma. Its active ingredient was discovered through a joint research project between the National Cancer Institute and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which screened plant materials for their possible use as cancer drugs. In 1962 project researchers found that the bark of the Pacific yew, Taxus brevifolia, contains an anti-cancer chemical. The process to isolate the chemical, however, required trees to be stripped of their bark and consequently die, a fact that concerned both environmentalists and drug manufacturers.
Environmentalists worried that large-scale harvesting of the trees would damage the trees’ natural habitat through clear-cutting and massive harvest of the slow-growing Pacific yews. The drug’s manufacturers realized that the current supply of natural Pacific yew was far from large enough to provide a sustainable source of bark for the continued production of Taxol over time. Slow growth and maturation rates of the yew made replacing natural sources through cultivation an untenable solution.
For these reasons, alternate sources of Taxol were investigated. Some scientists worked in the lab, trying to make the drug from scratch. Others, like microbiologist Gary Strobel, turned to the field, hoping to find a new natural source of the drug. Strobel wore this shirt on trips to the Himalayas when studying Taxus wallachiana, the Himalayan yew. Strobel did succeed in finding several natural alternate sources, all of them fungi which grew within yew and produced their own Taxol. He suggested growing these fungi in the lab and harvesting the Taxol they produced.
In the end, however, a sustainable source of Taxol came from a substance found in the needles of the European yew, Taxus baccata, which could be transformed into Taxol using a chemical reaction. Because needles could be harvested without killing the tree, this semi-synthetic way of making Taxol replaced bark as the commercial source of the drug. Later this process was replaced by simply growing the plant’s cells in the lab in large quantities and harvesting the Taxol they produced.
Sources:
Accession File
“Success Story: Taxol (NSC125973).” National Cancer Institute. Accessed online. http://dtp.nci.nih.gov/timeline/flash/success_stories/S2_Taxol.htm
“Biologist Gets Under the Skin of Plants—And Peers.” Richard Stone. Science. Vol. 296 No. 5573. 31 May 2002. p.1597.
Taxol Product Insert.
“2004 Greener Synthetic Pathways Award: Development of a Green Synthesis for Taxol Manufacture via Plant cell Fermentation and Extraction.” United States Environmental Protection Agency. http://www2.epa.gov/green-chemistry/2004-greener-synthetic-pathways-award
This khaki shirt was worn by Ray McKinley as a member of Glenn Miller’s American Band of The Allied Expeditionary Forces (AEF) during WWII.
Ray McKinley (1910-1995) made his first recordings with Red Nichols, where he worked with Glenn Miller and Jimmy Dorsey, in 1931. McKinley continued to work mostly with Miller and the Dorsey Brothers (Jimmy and Tommy) through 1939. He then was a member of Will Bradley’s band through 1942. After enlisting in the Army in 1942, McKinley joined Glenn Miller’s American Band of The Allied Expeditionary Forces (AEF). After Miller’s disappearance in 1944, McKinley co-led the band with Jerry Gray.
After the war, McKinley formed his own band and worked as a freelance musician. In 1956 he was commissioned by the widow of Glenn Miller to organize a new band under Miller’s name using the original library and style. This band made a successful tour of Iron Curtain countries in 1957 and continued to tour the United States until 1966. McKinley played drums while Buddy DeFranco fronted the band from 1966-1974. McKinley continued to perform through the 1980s.
Made for country music star Patsy Cline by her mother, this Western-style performance outfit features record-shaped patches stitched with the titles of Cline's records. Cline began singing with gospel and country bands as a teenager in Virginia. With her 1957 breakout hit "Walkin' after Midnight," she became the first female country vocalist to cross over to the pop charts. In 1960, Cline achieved her childhood dream of joining the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Three years later, she died in a plane crash.
ink colored western-style shirt with black piping and adorned with hot pink rhinestones and black wool 'record discs' hand-stitched with the names of Patsy Cline's hit songs including "Come On In" [left shoulder], "Poor Man's Roses" [right shoulder], "Walking After Midnight" [back], "Stop the Worlds" [left leg]. and "Yes I Understand" [right leg]. This shirt was part of an outfit worn by Patsy Cline and made by her mother, Hilda Hensley.
This promotional t-shirt was given out to listeners from Annapolis, Maryland radio station, WANN (1190). It is a white 100% cotton t-shirt, men’s large size, with red, black, blue and yellow printing. The t-shirt is silkscreened:
WANN BAY COUNTRY STEREO AM 1190 [ABC logo] [MRN logo] REAL COUNTRY!
WANN (1190 AM) was a radio station based out of Annapolis, Maryland that primarily served the area's growing African American community. Morris Blum founded it in 1946, and it broadcast to the entire mid-Atlantic region. The station was home to disc jockey Charles "Hoppy" Adams starting in the early 1950s. Adams hosted weekly events at a local African American only beach, Carr's Beach, which were popular with the area's youth population.
WANN continued to program gospel, rhythm and blues, and public affairs features until 1992 when the station changed to a mainstream country format with the catchphrase “Bay Country 1190.” Around 1998, the station changed ownership and became WBIS, broadcasting a News Talk Information format.