The Robledo Mountains lie to the north of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and to the east of the Rio Grande continental rift. Much of the exposed rock is from about 280 million years ago (Paleozoic), and the geological footprint is obvious and amazing. You can see a slot canyon in most of these pictures, when […]
The Mexican flag flies over the city of Palomas, just over the border from the city of Columbus, New Mexico. Today Palomas is a town frequented by American tourists (like me) who cross over to shop and eat — the Pink House (second image) is its most famous establishment. (It even has its own Wikipedia
This scene of a man-in-the-moon with thirteen stars might strike a vague familiarity with you. And perhaps if you were alive in the United States during the 1980s, it might evoke a sinister connotation. And if that’s the case, you were tangentially affected by the “Satanic Panic” of that decade. Dungeons and Dragons, various rock
These photos taken last weekend show vistas along the Loyalsocks Trail, one of the many stunning forested hiking pathways in Pennsylvania. Taking its name from the Loyalsock Creek (which translates from an American Indian name for “middle” creek), the Loyalsock trail is nearly sixty miles. The portions shown here include Sones Pond, which was built
Boo! And happy Halloween, dear readers. This day’s habits and festivities draw from a number of traditions across quite a wide spread of time, but some of the most interesting are from 19th century Europe and North America. Take this picture from the 1860s, for instance, showing a woman having a fright from a ghost.
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Twenty-one years ago in 2001, the Burd Run Nature Trail and Restoration was established to reverse the damaging effects of an artificially straightened stream channel which had caused erosion and environmental degradation. (See second image). Shippensburg University (particularly the Geography and Earth Science Department), Shippensburg Township, the Cumberland County Conservation District, and the Conodoguinet Creek
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One evening in New York City in 1917, a woman in her early 30s was helping her mother make dinner when, as she leaned over her oven, she felt a sharp pain in her left breast and saw a three-dimensional crucifix emerging from her body, covered in blood. The woman was named Margaret Reilly, and
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The story of the Harlem Hellfighters (aka 369th Infantry Regiment) is one of the most epic accounts of heroism in wartime that doesn’t get talked about in U.S. history books. In the spring of 1918, two U.S. soldiers fighting on the Western Front successfully took on about 24 German forces in an early morning raid.
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This image shows the moment before one Herman Maestas from Las Vegas, New Mexico, was hanged. In the background, you can see several men who had claimed a fence to get a better look at the event. And this was in 1894, decades after an 1835 law had been passed, which actually limited the viewers
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Happy Indigenous People’s Day in the United States! And what could be more appropriate to acknowledge the holiday than the study published just this month in _Science_ that confirmed the dating of these fossilized footprints — the oldest we have of Homo sapiens on North American ground? Using two new different dating methods, geologists Jeffrey
Footprints of White Sands Re-evaluated as Oldest Human in North America Read More »
This is the stuffed body of the most famous messenger pigeon of the 20th century: Cher Ami. Now his little taxidermied self resides in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC, but in 1918, Cher Ami helped save the lives of 194 American Soldiers who had gotten separated from their larger group during the Meuse-Argonne offensive
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I am not particularly enamored by the story of the Titanic, which sank on April 15, 1912. To be sure, I think it was a grave tragedy: 1,517 passengers died after the boat hit an iceberg. Yet I never felt pulled by the Romance of the luxury ship, nor engaged with the minutiae about the
Charles Joughin and the Titanic Read More »
“Pets are humanizing,” wrote James Cromwell, “They remind us we have an obligation and responsibility to preserve and nurture and care for all life.” Room 8, the cat featured here in this portrait next to the classroom after which he was named, exemplifies this beautifully. In 1952 this stray, gray-striped tabby strolled into the Elysian
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Tonight Shippensburg University welcomed guest lecturer Wawa Gatheru, a leader in the contemporary U.S. environmental justice movement. She had many interesting things to say, but since I am an historian, I especially appreciated her discussion of how the legacy of American slavery has led to environmental inequity today. Wawa Gatheru pointed to two ways this
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The Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia is definitely worth visiting. It was a unique and highly influential prison, and the current site now has first-rate displays with the buildings intentionally kept in a state of semi-decay. The ambience perfectly matched the subject. Once the USA’s largest prison, Eastern State Penitentiary opened in 1829 with
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Jamestown was the first permanent settlement by the English in the Americas, but its earliest years were hardly successful — in fact, the community almost died out at first, during the “starving time” winter of 1609-10. As settlers faced disease and drought, they also were surrounded by the hostile Powhatan peoples, which meant that leaving
Late 18th-century Georgian Britain had such fascinating trends. An age of Enlightenment, it brought forth people who were in love with science and anything that sounded “science-y”, even when the actual science was missing. And, no surprise, interest peaked when said pseudo-science trend dealt with sex. This brings me to one James Graham (1745-1794), a
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Here’s the world’s smallest primer for a really fascinating topic in anthropology: ritual. We’ll take the “Healy Howl” tradition from Georgetown University as our case study application. Here’s a picture of a cemetery near Healy Hall, where the ritual howl happens every year on Halloween. At Georgetown on October 31, the 1973 movie “The Exorcist,”
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We all know the man on the right — that’s Albert Einstein, the most famous scientist of the 20th century. But to his left is another important scientist, Kurt Gödel, a mathematician so brilliant that Einstein said that he used to come to the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton just “to have the privilege
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At Shippensburg University, undergraduates have many opportunities to do original historical research projects supervised by faculty who are experts in their fields. Here you can see Jared Diehl and Anna Crawford’s poster presentation for the annual 2023 Academic Day, which commences the semester. Anna and Jared worked this summer to uncover whatever sources they could
