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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.

Great Moon Hoax Sun

How the Sun Conned the World With “The Great Moon Hoax”

The birth of the penny press, the first mass media, was very much mixed up with fake news, including the Great Moon Hoax of 1835.
Benjamin Lay portrait

Benjamin Lay: The Radical “Quaker Comet”

Benjamin Lay was a radical abolitionist who helped turn the Quakers from slave-holders to leaders of the anti-slavery movement.
Martin Luther Cranach portrait

Why Martin Luther’s Body Type Mattered

Five hundred years after posting his ninety-five theses and launching the Reformation, Martin Luther remains a big man of history. Literally.
Forest fire burning, Wildfire at night in Chiangmai, Thailand

Welcome to the Age of Megafires

It's been a terrible year for fires in California and elsewhere around the world. Because then it always is now in the age of megafires.
Portrait of Sir Thomas Browne

Sir Thomas Browne’s Vulgar Errors

If you're suffering from exhaustion, hallucination, or a coma, then you have Sir Thomas Browne, dead 335 years now, to thank.
Karl Marx

How the American Civil War Shaped Marxism

Although Karl Marx never saw the U.S., he thought long and hard about how it fit into his theory, especially during the Civil War.
Rudy Vallee

The Gender Politics of the First Boy Bands

Crooning, a musical style of the late 1920s and early 1930s, was fraught with gender panic. Where the singers manly enough?
Robert Goddard at chalkboard

Robert H. Goddard, the Forgotten Father of Rocketry

Robert H. Goddard is acknowledged by many as the "father" of rocketry, but it's a strange paternity since he had so little influence on his contemporaries.
High School Frederick Wiseman

Frederick Wiseman’s Reality Fictions

Frederick Wiseman's 42nd documentary in 50 years of film-making has just been released. What's he making movies about, anyway?
Displaced Rohingya people

How Buddhism Is Being Used to Justify Violence in Myanmar

What's behind the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar in which the minority Rohingya people are being violently driven out of the country?
black power salute olympics

The Uneasy History of Integrated Sports in America

The integration of collegiate and professional sports parallels the civil rights movement, but in important ways it was a whole different track.
Winnetou

Why East Germany Loved the Wild West

During the Cold War, both the West and East Germany film industries made popular westerns. Yes, westerns. What was that all about?
Stephen King and George Romero

Stephen King’s Prophetic Early Work

King of Horror Stephen King celebrates his 70th birthday. Will he finally get the respect he deserves from academia and the culture industry?
Bushy-tailed woodrat

When Packrats’ Hoards Are Helpful

Packrat nests, preserved by a combination of the chemistry of urine and the desert air, open a window into centuries of local climate change.
New River Gorge Bridge

Why There’s A West Virginia

West Virginia declared its independence from the secessionist state of Virginia in the middle of the Civil War and became the 35th state.
Freshwater Mussels

America’s Imperiled Freshwater Mussels

Freshwater mussels were once found in astonishing numbers and diversity in North America. Then came the button fanciers, and then the pearl-makers.
Pico Bolívar

The Last Glacier of Venezuela

Glaciers are retreating around the world. The Andes are no exception: in Venezuela, the ice has mostly already disappeared.
Jefferson Davis

What Is the Jefferson Davis Highway?

The Jefferson Davis Highway was project of the United Daughters of the Confederacy intended to portray Davis as an American hero.
enslaved women illustration

Two Women of the African Slave Resistance

African women, always a minority in the slave trade, often had to find their own ways of rebellion against slavery if they could.
Jerry Lewis

Jerry Lewis: French Film Master

Jerry Lewis was lionized in France as a film auteur, a genius of movie-making. What did the French know that Americans didn't?
Victorian eclipse

Solar Eclipse Tourism: The Victorians Were the Pioneers

People have been planning for this month's total solar eclipse for years. They aren't the first to do so: the Victorians pioneered eclipse tourism.
Cahokia mounds

The Mysterious Pre-Columbian Settlement of Cahokia

Cahokia was the largest pre-columbian settlement north of Mexico. It collapsed centuries before Europeans arrived in the region. What happened?
NYC movie theater air conditioning

Can We Live Without Air Conditioning?

Air conditioning is a profoundly paradoxical technology: the hotter it gets the more we use it, and the more we use it the hotter it gets.
Guam Beach

Guam For Beginners

How did the island of Guam, over 5,000 miles from the West Coast, get to be the closest piece of U.S. territory to North Korea?
New York skyline

The Real Reason Why NYC’s Skyscrapers Are Where They Are

Why does Manhattan have two business separate districts? Turns out that it's not because of the usual story about bedrock depth.