History
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Did you know that most of the Southeast used to be covered by grasslands? Now, of course, much of the land is either cultivated for crops or planted as forest, much of which produces agricultural products like timber or wood pellets as well. Here is an interesting story about the grasslands of the Southeast and…
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The Cahokia Mounds outside St. Louis are the remains of one of North America’s largest indigenous population. Many archaeologists estimate that at its peak around the year 1100, Cahokia housed 10,000 to 20,000 people, with up to 50,000 inhabitants living in the surrounding area—a population size rivalling or surpassing concurrent European cities. But archaeologists are…
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Science Friday of National Public Radio (where I was once an intern) has a book club which introduces listeners to new books that discuss interesting aspects of science. This review of N.K. Jemisin’s ‘The Fifth Season’ describes a new book which describes how volcanic eruptions and the atmospheric effects which followed them affected the art…
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If you love history, you will be fascinated by this story about a stubborn meteorologist who made the crucial forecast for the launch of the first US satellite in January 1958 following the flight of the USSR’s Sputnik in late 1957 . They could not afford to get the launch wrong and depended on him…
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As you probably know, this past week has been frigid for the upper Midwest as a piece of the Arctic air associated with the polar vortex has moved through the area. I think everyone there is glad that temperatures are already starting to warm up and they are likely to be above normal within a…
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Today is Veterans Day, and a friend of mine shared a photojournal story from The Atlantic from last May on the fading remains of battlefields from World War 1, which ended 100 years ago this year. You can see it here. My dad’s father fought in WW1 on the side of the Germans. He was a…
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What links together the invention of bicycles and the writing of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein? If you guess a historical climate event, you are exactly right! This year marks the 200th anniversary of the famous novel and next year will be the 200th anniversary of the development of the modern bicycle. Both of these events…