Yesterday the population of the United States hit 314,159,265, or pi (3.14159265) times 100 million. The Census Bureau marked this milestone with a very charming press release.

You can use SearchWorks to find material from the Census Bureau here in Green Library.

The ICA Summer Film Festival features The Great Famine tonight at 7:00 PM in Building 200 (History Corner), Room 002 (basement). It is based on Bertrand Patenaude's book The Big show in Bololand: the American relief expedition to Soviet Russia in the famine of 1921. This massive two-year relief campaign, was championed by Herbert Hoover, director of the American Relief Administration. Five million Soviet citizens died in this disaster.

On August 10, 1945, a day after the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan accepted the Potsdam Conference terms of unconditional surrender, as President Truman ordered a halt to atomic bombing. The Hoover Institution's current exhibit, The Battle for Hearts and Minds: World War II Propaganda, includes many posters from the archives’ rich and extensive collection of more than 100,000 posters. The exhibit is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and is free of charge. Parking on campus is free on Saturdays.

The winners and finalists of the 2012 Saroyan Prize for Writing have been announced: Elisabeth Tova Bailey's The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating won in the non-fiction category, and Daniel Orozco's Orientation and Other Stories won for fiction. The finalists for non-fiction are Arion Golmakani's Solacers and John Jeremiah Sullivan's Pulphead; and for fiction, Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station and Miroslav Penkov's East of the West: A Country in Stories.

From the Stanford News story:

The major literary award, sponsored by Stanford University Libraries and the William Saroyan Foundation, encourages new or emerging writers in fiction and non-fiction. The award honors the life and legacy of the American writer and playwright William Saroyan.

...

William Saroyan was the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Time of Your Life (1939-40), the novel The Human Comedy (1943) and many volumes of short stories, essays and memoirs. Born in Fresno in 1908 to Armenian parents, Saroyan was a high school dropout and largely self-educated. He is best known for his short stories about the experiences of immigrant families and children in California. He died in 1981.

Stanford University Libraries houses the William Saroyan Collection, which includes manuscripts, personal journals, correspondence, drawings and other material.