Judging from our blog readers' favorite posts this year, military history is a popular topic. But you also kept some space on your reading list for 1930s delicacies and long-lost amusement parks.

1) An atlas of self-reliance: The Negro Motorist's Green Book
Read over 18,800 times, this post explored the dark side of the all-American road trip during the Jim Crow era. African American families on vacation had to be ready for any circumstance, should they be denied lodging or a meal in a restaurant. The Negro Motorist's Green Book helped "black motorists travel safely across a landscape partitioned by segregation and scarred by lynching," as guest blogger Jay Driskell put it.

2) A closer look at President Lincoln's silk hat
Not just any hat, we're talking about the silk top hat Lincoln wore to Ford's Theater on the night he was assassinated. After the assassination, it spent 26 years in storage. Rich with details, this touching blog post by curator Harry Rubenstein has been read over 16,900 times.

3) Tasting the 1930s: An experiment with congealed salads and other one-dish wonders
Yes, it's a delight to work in a museum … right up until your boss asks you how you like the tomato aspic with vegetables she made after finding the recipe in a 1930s cookbook.

4) The delicate "war laces" of World War I
Thanks to a German blockade, seven million Belgians were cut off from important food and supplies during World War I. Lacemakers to the rescue!

5) A mother's solace: A letter from a World War I enemy 
The leader of a German balloon squadron writes to the mother of an American soldier he killed, sending Sallie Maxwell Bennett on an overseas quest to locate her son's remains and memorialize him.

6) What does LaGuardia Airport have in common with piano manufacturer William Steinway's long lost amusement park?
Bowery Bay Beach was also known as "The Coney Island of Queens" and it sounds like a fun family getaway.

7) The battlefield cross
The first appearance of the "battlefield cross" is a matter of conjecture.

8) The surrender at Appomattox Court House: 150th anniversary
Though just under 200 words, the terms of surrender for the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia includes some interesting details. For example, Confederates who owned their own horses were allowed to keep them to plant spring crops.

9) Remember the Lusitania: 3 pieces of World War I propaganda
In 2015, we commemorated the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the British ship Lusitania by a German U-boat, an event that preceded America's entrance into the war.

10) 5 fascinating facts about Alexander Graham Bell that aren't about the telephone
Did you know that Bell's actual voice was recorded 130 years ago, and you can still listen to it today?

As the manager of the blog, I'm lucky enough to have time to read all of our posts, so I thought I'd recommend a few of my personal favorites from 2015 that you may have missed.

Curator Alexandra Lord's blog post on early days of anti-vaccination sentiment in America blew me away. I had no idea that this issue had such deep roots and was fascinated by the story of posterchild "Little Belema."

You know how everything stops when a dog or baby visits your office? We enjoyed a visit from not just any pup but an actual war hero. Thanks for stopping by, Fausto! 

When I decided I wanted to work in a museum (a revelation that took place at the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain), I imagined amazing behind-the-scenes experiences. Watching experts work closely with incredible objects was exactly what I had in mind. Our blog post on the conservation of General William T. Sherman's flag is as close as a non-museum-employee may get. 

This year has seen increased discussion on how we deal with mental health issues in America. For some fascinating historical context, I recommend this post on how Patrick Henry (of "Give me liberty, or give me death!" fame) dealt with his wife's mental health challenges. 

I learned to flirt using instant messenger while young people today text their feelings to each other, illustrated with copious emojis. Curator Harold Wallace's blog post reminded me that technology has always shaped how we send messages of love and affection. If I could send you all a CandyGram to thank you for reading our blog, I would. 

Erin Blasco is an education specialist in the New Media Department.

Imagine your daily life without electricity. Cooking and heating clothes irons on wood stoves, pumping water by hand, reading and working under kerosene lamps. Many people in rural America lived that life until well into the 20th century. Most only received electricity by choosing to work together with their neighbors and participate in electrical cooperatives, or co-ops for short.

Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and other inventors began introducing practical electric power systems in the 1880s. By the 1920s most cities and towns in America received electricity from either privately owned or municipal utility companies. Running wires into the countryside where there might be only a few people per square mile seemed uneconomical for either investors or tax-payers. By 1932 only about 10% of rural America was electrified, and about half of those people had to buy their own country-home power plants. This electrical divide fueled the difference in standards of living between city and farm, hampering rural Americans’ ability to participate in the life of their modernizing country.

Electricity would improve the efficiency of work and the comforts of home life in rural areas, encouraging more Americans to stay on family farms. Franklin D. Roosevelt made this issue part of his 1932 presidential campaign and worked with Congress to establish the Rural Electrification Administration (REA). Rather than simply build power systems, the REA made loans to electric cooperatives that were repaid over 30 years. Country folk came together, organized cooperatives, and provided labor to build the systems that they ultimately came to own.

Having electricity is one thing; knowing how to use it is another. To help people learn the new technology, REA hired advisors like Louisan Mamer (1910-2005) from southern Illinois. For decades, Mamer and her colleagues traveled around the country staging what they referred to an "electric circus." They taught people who had never used electricity how to operate and maintain equipment, cook and do household chores with electricity, and use the system safely.

Having grown up on a farm, Mamer understood first-hand how difficult rural life could be and how people might feel pressure to abandon farming. After graduating from the University of Illinois College of Agriculture, she taught home economics and began writing about the topic. Joining REA soon after the agency’s establishment, Mamer not only traveled as a Home Electrification Specialist but also wrote training documents and vetted program materials. We have collected about a dozen appliances from Mamer along with her paper files documenting much of her work in the 1940s and '50s.

World War II interrupted the work of the REA. When President Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Bill in September 1944, Roosevelt said, "From the point of view of raising the living standards of rural America and providing a more efficient form of farm management, one of the most important projects interrupted by the war is the extension of rural electrification."

President Roosevelt went on to explain that participation in rural electrification must be wide and not limited to areas with greater resources: "It is particularly important that extensions of rural electrification be planned in such a way as to provide service on an area basis. The practice has been too frequent in the past for private utility companies to undertake to serve only the more prosperous and more populous rural sections. As a result, families in less favored and in sparsely settled sections were left unserved. I believe that our postwar rural electrification program should bring modern service of electric power to the farm families in the back country."

The rural communities that established, built, and now own their cooperatives have continued to reap benefits from their participation. In the years after most of rural America electrified, the REA (now the Rural Utilities Service) continued working to bring telephone lines and later broadband Internet connections to the countryside. Hundreds of rural cooperatives throughout the country continue to provide power and other services for their participating members. It is a legacy that Louisan Mamer and her colleagues would be proud of.

Hal Wallace is the associate curator of the Electricity Collections at the National Museum of American History and a member of Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative. Learn more about New Deal programs, including the REA, in our American Enterprise online exhibition.

William "Ray" Werner joined the Marine Corps on December 8, 1941. Two years later Ray's mother received the official Marine Corps letter dated September 14, 1943, which read, "My dear Mrs. Warner: . . . your son, Private First class William R. Werner, Jr. U.S. Marine Corp Reserve, sustained a fracture of the third lumbar vertebrae on 20 July 1943 and was transferred to a hospital on 7 August 1943 for further medical treatment." Ray had been hit in the back by a Japanese sniper in the battle of New Georgia in the Solomon Islands and received the Purple Heart for his injuries. Ray would never walk again.

On his three-week journey across the Pacific on a medical transport ship, Ray made the choice to live his life as fully as possible. A testament to Ray's character, he had been in good spirits from the beginning of his ordeal. A chaplain wrote Ray's parents seven days after their son had sustained his injury: "The wound is serious enough to make it necessary for Ray to dictate his letters, but his general condition is good. . . . Ray is in excellent spirits." Ray had even dictated a tongue-in-cheek letter to the chaplain explaining his injury, "Dear Mother, I have been a little busy picking up souvenirs. Will write longer letter when I have more time."

Ray was sent to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, to recover from his wounds and learn to live life from a wheelchair. One of his nurses, Mary Catherine Haines, took a special interest in Ray and in 1945 would become his wife—funny how life turns out sometimes. A positive outlook was imperative to Ray's successful recovery. A gifted athlete throughout high school, Ray played football, basketball, and polo at Bogota High in his hometown of Bogota, New Jersey. It was this athleticism that made him a perfect candidate for a new series of rehabilitation programs initiated by the federal government.

Before World War II, a spinal cord injury was thought to be a death sentence. Advances in medicine during the war allowed for physical recovery, but it was depression brought on by such devastating injuries that often rendered the patient hopeless. By 1946 veterans hospitals were inundated with patients with traumatic injuries that required continuous emotional and physical therapy. These hospitals began devising ways for their patients to get the therapy and exercise needed for their injuries, but in a way that was fun and sustainable after their time at the hospital was through.

Wheelchair basketball seemed to be the sport of choice among many of the veterans because they were familiar with the mechanics of the game, which could be done from a seated position. Within two years of its inception, discharged vets spread the game throughout the nation, with six teams emerging to represent U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals. In 1946 the National Wheelchair Basketball Association was formed and held its first National Tournament in 1948.

Ray Werner became captain of the Jersey Wheelers, the second civilian team established for the 1948–1949 season. Wheelchair basketball follows the same rules as intercollegiate basketball, although wheelchair players are allowed six seconds in the "bucket" instead of three and 20 seconds over the center line instead of the college-regulation 10 seconds. Dribbling is executed in the same manner, although a player is allowed to hold the ball in his or her lap and advance play by means of the wheelchair; however, the player can only push through two turns, and then must resume dribbling.

Ray started the 1948 season as a forward, playing in 24 games and becoming the leading scorer with 212 points. The Wheelers played to small crowds of about 200 people at the local junior high school gymnasium that first year. By 1952 the crowds at certain venues had grown to 1,000 spectators, and wheelchair basketball soon became the number one sport of individuals with disabilities.

Under the leadership of Ray Werner, the Wheelers won the sixth annual National Wheelchair Basketball Tournament in 1954. The slogan for the tournament was "Ability Not Disability Counts!" and included the organization’s purpose, ". . . to foster and promote wheelchair basketball as an aid to the physical and social readjustment of the handicapped . . ."

Ray took these words to heart and helped veterans in his professional life as well. After having to wait six weeks to have a broken axle on his wheelchair repaired, Ray decided to start a wheelchair repair business. In 1950 he landed a contract with the Veterans Administration to travel throughout the state of New Jersey to provide veterans with disabilities with wheelchair repair in their homes and to install hand controls in their cars to allow people who have paraplegia to drive. According to his grandson, David Hoff, "Ray was instrumental in helping disabled vets get jobs, be more socially connected, and more active in their lives."

Downhill skiing was another sport embraced by those with disabilities and its inclusion in adaptive sports can be attributed to Jim Winthers, another World War II veteran. Jim belonged to the U.S. 10th Mountain Division, whose members were trained in mountain warfare, specifically to fight in arctic conditions. After the war, he used his specialized training to create a program in adaptive skiing to help out many of his fellow veterans who had lost limbs or had been paralyzed in the war.

Ray played on the Wheelers for many years and had the honor of participating in the first Paralympics that included war veterans from the United States. His contribution to the sport of wheelchair basketball and his involvement with other disabled veterans and people with disabilities was his passion and his legacy. Ray lived his life with determination and resilience, with Mary and their two children in Westwood, New Jersey, until his death in 1991. He was 74 years old and is buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

Jane Rogers is an associate curator in the Division of Culture and the Arts.