Repository of History Has Items Disappearing (US)

Visitors to the National Archives here know they will find the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the main building’s magnificent rotunda.

But they can no longer find the patent file for the Wright brothers’ flying machine or maps for the first atomic bomb missions in the archives inventory.

Many historical items the archives once possessed are missing, including Civil War telegrams from Abraham Lincoln, presidential portraits of Franklin D. Roosevelt, NASA photographs from space and the moon, and presidential pardons.