Skip to content
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.

Egg Cream

The Egg Cream Mob

What's in an egg cream? No eggs. No cream. And a dose of mafia history.
Dürer's Rhinoceros

Dürer’s Rhinoceros and the Birth of Print Media

Dürer's image of a rhinoceros which drowned off Italy 500 years ago remains one of the world's most famous prints.
Mercury against a black sky

Where in the Solar System is Vulcan?

A hypothetical Planet Vulcan was the best explanation for strange astrological phenomena—until Einstein, that is. 
Illustration of two house sparrows

The Great Sparrow War of the 1870s

The "sparrow war" in the United States in the 1870s ended with a resounding victory… for the sparrows. 
Vinyl cover of Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited

How Plato Anticipated Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" would not have surprised Plato. 
The Loving Family

Loving v. Virginia and the Origins of Loving Day

Loving Day celebrates the SCOTUS decision in Loving v. Virginia in 1967 which struck down the laws of the 16 states still forbidding interracial marriage. 
Victoria Woodhull

Free Love and the First Female Presidential Nominee

Victoria Woodhull who was known to her enemies as "Mrs. Satan," was the first woman to run for president of the United States.
Louis D. Brandeis

The Confirmation of Louis D. Brandeis

Louis D. Brandeis was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice a century ago. The protracted nomination process may sound familiar.
Black and white engraving of Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman the… Politician?

Before Walt Whitman was a famous poet, he was a scandalous poet, but before even all that he was in the thick of local and national politics.
Dancing Skeletons, 'Dance of Death' Rare Books Keywords: epb 5822

English Sweating Sickness: The Epidemic You Forgot to Be Terrified Of

The 15th and 16th epidemics of English sweating sIckness still fascinate historians and epidemiologists. 
Illustrated map of European countries

Brexit What? On the Foundations of the European Union

The foundations of the European Union, which the UK is deciding to remain in or leave, are in coal and steel.
An illustrated map showing the location of Tibet

Tibet and China 65 Years Later

Tibet was annexed by the Chinese 65 years ago. The struggle for Tibetan independence has continued ever since.
Oil painting of Alexander the Great on his mission to conquer

Alexander The Great… Globalist?

Globalization is the watchword of our time, but maybe Alexander The Great was the first global citizen.
Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie (c. 1797) John Opie, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Mystery Man in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Life

Gilbert Imlay already had a bad reputation before his biographer discovered he was a slave trader.
Topographic map

The Map That Created The Modern Middle East

The Sykes-Picot remade the Middle East for British and French control. A century later, their legacy is a disaster. 
FDR delivers the nominating speech for Alfred E. Smith at the Democratic Convention at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY. June 26, 1924. This speech is often considered FDR's first major gesture of re-entry into national politics after recovering from the onset of polio.

A Really Contested Convention: The 1924 Democratic “Klanbake”

The convention was also notable because hundreds of Knights of the Ku Klux Klan attended as delegates.
College Hall opened in 1875 as the main building of Smith College.

Daniel Aaron: Americanist

Daniel Aaron, a forerunner in the field of American Studies, has passed away at 103.
Polish Codebreakers

Cracking Enigma: The Polish Connection

Bletchley Park's code-breakers are famous for cracking Enigma, but they had a major assist from three Polish mathematicians, who had done it in 1932.
Loving mother and daughter.

The Mother of Mother’s Day

Mother's Day began as one woman's quest to have a public observance of the anniversary of her own mother's passing.
Carnegie Hall

A Critical Look at Gilded Age Philanthropy

The 125th anniversary of the opening of Carnegie Hall on May 5th provides an opportunity to examine Andrew Carnegie's legacy and philanthropy.
Cormorants on a Guano Island

Are We Entering a New Golden Age of Guano?

A history of civilization could be written in fertilizers. And the history of guano—bird poop—tells us a lot about slavery, imperialism, and U.S. expansion.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library. "Sugar cane plantation; [Jamaica.]" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 27, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-94a7-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

Sugar Has Always Been Bad

Sugar long had a bad reputation because of its connection to slavery in the New World.
Louisiana Purchase

The Politics of the Louisiana Purchase

In a treaty signed in Paris on April 30, France swapped 828,000 square miles of North America to the U.S. for $15 million.
Woodpulp pile

Pulp Nonfiction: The Unlikely Origin of American Mass Media

How wood pulp paper created the American mass media.
William Shakespeare

Shakespeare: Dead or Alive?

Shakespeare's authorship has been questioned by many, including Mark Twain.