This is just the beginning! Our collection holds over 300 years of history, including rare newspapers, obituaries, marriage records, birth records, and so much more—most of which you won’t find anywhere else!
American to the Rescue in Kinshasa AIDS Sanctioned Shelter
Delfi Messinger an American conservationist in Kinshasa chose to stay as rioters evacuated about 15,000 foreign workers. She turned her lab into a sanctuary by dressing staff in hospital gowns and smearing the entrance with sheep blood bearing the word AIDS. Soldiers and rioters fired in the air but spared her group. Messinger, 37, from Austin, Texas, runs animal studies projects at the National Institute for Biomedical Research near a military camp. French Foreign Legionnaires helped restore order and protect the facility, allowing the U.S. Project AIDS to continue data collection. Messinger arrived in 1984 on a Peace Corps project and later managed cane rat breeding for protein. Expatriates fled, but she kept labs and animals, including an antelope named Cleopatra, under her care while the center faced logistic challenges.