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.
Operation Overlord launched the invasion of German-occupied Europe during WWII. But the right weather, tides, and moonlight were essential for it to work.
The dense, resin-saturated, rot-resistant timber of the longleaf pine helped build up US cities. But most of the native stands have already been logged.
In 1919, a brutal outburst of mob violence was directed against African Americans across the United States. White, uniformed servicemen led the charge.
The Highlander Research and Education Center is "the most notable American experiment in adult education for social change." One of its buildings recently burned down.
Meet the original Bluestockings, a group of women intellectuals. Their name would eventually become a misogynist epithet -- but it didn't start that way.
This 1823 policy initially focused on preventing European colonization in the Americas. But different US presidents have used it to mean different things.
Before American concepts of race took hold in the newly-acquired Louisiana, early 19th-century New Orleans had large population of free people of color.
