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Black and white headshot of author Matthew Wills

Matthew Wills

Matthew Wills has advanced degrees in library science and film studies and is lapsed in both fields. He has published in Poetry, Huffington Post, and Nature Conservancy Magazine, among other places, and blogs regularly about urban natural history at matthewwills.com.

Parmelia Lichen
Plants & Animals

Lichens as Sensors for Air Pollution

Lichens often go unnoticed, living on the ground, on tree trunks, or on rocks. They're hearty, but remarkably sensitive to air pollution.
An illustration by James Gillray, 1807
Arts & Culture

Vulgarity: An Alternative Language of the People

Was Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue the font of all popular culture studies?
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cigar_box_Peggy_O%27neal.jpg
Politics & History

The Mrs. Eaton Affair

A story of petticoats and power.
A Christmas Carol
Arts & Culture

Pirating Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, in the 1840s

When Parley's Illuminated Library published a pirated version of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens decided he had had enough.
Portrait of Alexander von Humboldt by Friedrich Georg Weitsch
Natural Science

Who Was Alexander von Humboldt?

Remembering the work of the great naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, on the 250th anniversary of his birth.
Members of the Oneida Community
Politics & History

The Oneida Community Moves to the OC

The Oneida Community's Christian form of collectivism was transported to California in the 1880s, when the original Oneida Community fell apart.
An unknown woman from the city of Grodno, circa 1900
Politics & History

Tsarist Russia’s Feminist Intelligentsia

In the context of Russia's patriarchal autocracy, its intelligentsia was surprisingly feminist, as Vera Podorovskaya's life illustrates.
Three reindeer running through snow
Politics & History

The Reindeer Games

In 1907, the U.S. Reindeer Service was organized as part of an effort to domesticate the animals...and Inupiat Eskimos.
Several lab mice in a container
Natural Science

An Epidemic of Retractions

Nicolas Chevassus-au-Louis's new book, Fraud in the Lab, offers some tough love for the scientific community.
Piazza San Marco in Venice, November 4, 1966
Politics & History

The Highest Flood in Italy This Century

Recent flooding in Venice has revived memories of a record-setting 1966 flood, which sparked an international rescue program for art and architecture.
Franz Boas
Education & Society

The Life and Times of Franz Boas

The founder of cultural anthropology, Franz Boas challenged the reigning notions of race and culture.
A moose skeleton
Politics & History

America, Where the Dogs Don’t Bark and the Birds Don’t Sing

The Comte de Buffon's thirty-six volume Natural History claimed that America was a land of degeneracy. That enraged Thomas Jefferson.
Frank Kameny
Politics & Government

The Lavender Scare

In 1950, the U.S. State Department fired 91 employees because they were homosexual or suspected of being homosexual.
Pisco Sour Cocktail
Business & Economics

Sour Grapes: The Pisco War

Peru and Chile both produce the grape brandy called pisco, and they both consider it their national drink.
A hand holding a jar of Nutella in front of an illustrated hazelnut plant
Plants & Animals

Everything You Wanted to Know about Hazelnuts but Were Afraid to Ask

For one thing, there are several species of hazelnuts, including a couple native to North America.
Cartoon showing police brutality against the match makers' demonstration, 1871
Politics & Government

The Origins of the Police

Sir Robert Peel is popularly credited with the formation of the first modern municipal police force. But the Thames River Police did it first.
Helen Hunt Jackson, ca. 1870-1880.
Arts & Culture

Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona Did What Her Nonfiction Couldn’t

And vice versa.
India 1835 2 Mohurs
Politics & History

The East India Company Invented Corporate Lobbying

The historian William Dalyrmple's new book, The Anarchy, indicts the East India Company for "the supreme act of corporate violence in world history."
The first Thanksgiving 1621
Politics & History

Thanksgiving Has Been Reinvented Many Times

From colonial times to the nineteenth century, Thanksgiving was very different from the holiday we know now.
An American and Turkish soldier in Syria
Politics & History

U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Turkey, pt. 2

This is not the first time the presence of American nuclear weapons in Turkey has been part of a crisis.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Little_Galleries_-_1906.jpg
Art & Art History

Alfred Stieglitz’s Art Journal

"The best one can say of American art criticism is that its CLEVERNESS OFTEN CONCEALS ITS LACK OF PENETRATION," Alfred Stieglitz wrote.
Peregrine Falcon, 1919
Plants & Animals

The Case of the Thinning Eggshells

How the proliferation of pesticides like DDT almost undid the Peregrine falcon.
Alfred Jacob Miller - Roasting The Hump Rib
Education & Society

The Origins of the Word “Barbecue”

The skinny on the Q.
First Landing of Christopher Columbus
Politics & History

The Columbian Exchange Should Be Called The Columbian Extraction

Europeans were eager to absorb the starches and flavors pioneered by the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere.
An advertisement for 'Cook's Nile Service', a cruise on the Express Steamer 'MS Hatasoo' run by Thomas Cook & Son Ltd., circa 1900.
Education & Society

A “Cook’s Tour” of Imperialism

Thomas Cook and Son Ltd. pioneered middle class tourism during the Victorian era, when it followed the course of the British Empire.

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