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Bush as toddler is part of new archive display

WASHINGTON - The National Archives, home of the original copies of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, has put more than 1,000 other relics on public display.

The museum's million or so visitors a year can view a medley of new exhibits, called "Public Vaults" - including a copy of the first law passed by Congress, an Air Force chart of UFO sightings and a home movie of 1-year-old George W. Bush toddling across a lawn in rompers.

The exhibit opened Friday.

The National Archives created the 9,000-square-foot museum to show that it preserves more than budget statistics and the proceedings of subcommittees of Congress - it also stores items central to the nation's history - such as the camera that Abraham Zapruder used to film President Kennedy's assassination.

The records take a variety of forms. There are photos, maps, handwritten notes, films and other objects.

A tape recorder gets a glass case all to itself. It's the one used by Rosemary Woods, President Richard Nixon's secretary, that produced the famous 18-minute gap in a recorded presidential conversation about the break-in at what is now the Watergate Hotel.

Among other items:

The nation's first law. Soon after the Constitution gave Congress the right to pass laws, it approved one on June 1, 1789, requiring all public officials to take an oath of office.

Footage of President Theodore Roosevelt addressing a political meeting.

The handwritten text of a telegram from President Abraham Lincoln to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant dated Feb. 1, 1865, not long before the surrender of the Confederacy. It reads: "Let nothing which is transpiring, change, hinder, or delay your military movements, or plans."

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. - A commuter van carrying workers from two aerospace companies collided head-on with a semitrailer truck Friday on a Mississippi River bridge, killing four in the van and injuring four, authorities said.

State police said the van was on the Martin Luther King Bridge before dawn when it struck the 18-wheeler, spilling diesel fuel that caught fire. The flames were quickly extinguished.

The wreck closed the busy, four-lane bridge between East St. Louis and St. Louis for about five hours. The bridge is one of three crossing the river at St. Louis.

OKLAHOMA CITY - One of the prosecutors in bombing conspirator Terry Nichols' murder trial was arrested in a police prostitution sting, officials said Friday.

Assistant District Attorney Lou Keel was accused of trying to hire a woman for sex Thursday. He was charged with offering to engage in an act of lewdness with a prostitute, police said. Keel, who was suspended with pay, declined to comment.