Ralph J. Bunche Library to begin a collection of laws of the states, and $25 for the purchase of foreign gazettes and subscriptions to American newspapers that would be sent to American representatives overseas. In that same year, the Library also became, by law, the office of record to receive laws, public documents, and copyrights. During the War of 1812, the invading British burned the Capital, the White House, and other government buildings including that which housed the State Department and its library on August 24, 1814. While Dolley Madison famously saved the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington hanging in the White House,
Burned house horizon (McPherron and Christopher 1988; Chapman 2000; and Stevanovic 1997). Although the phenomenon of house burning is pervasive throughout the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture's existence, it was by no means the only southeastern European Neolithic society that experienced this. The British-American archaeologist Ruth Tringham has coined the term "Burned House Horizon" to describe the extent of the geographical region that indicates this repetitive practice of house burning in southeast Europe. She, along with Serbian archaeologist Mirjana Stevanović, mapped out this phenomenon from archaeological sites throughout the entire region, and came to the conclusion that: Although I have referred to the ubiquity of burned