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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.

Deteriorating nitrate motion picture film

Combustible Cinema? The Nitrate Film Issue

The early plastic called celluloid was made of nitrocellulose and camphor. It made for spectacular pictures. It also made for spectacular fires.
A 1906 Postcard from the National Electric Light Association's convention held at the boardwalk in Atlantic City New Jersey

Generating Electricity…and Uncertainty

As the tobacco and electrical industries demonstrate, US corporations have a history of sowing doubt for profit.
The Honeywell 316 Kitchen Computer

A Computer in Every Kitchen?

The 1969 Honeywell Kitchen Computer is a case study of early computer failures—or is it?
Convicts in Sydney, Australia, 1830

Colonial Masquerade: Convict, Pirate, Gentleman, Con

The convict ships that colonized Australia carried people desperate to get out of their sentence. At least, that was true of Michael Stewart.
Ambrotype of African American Woman with Flag - believed to be a washerwoman for Union troops quartered outside Richmond, Virginia

Home Front: Black Women Unionists in the Confederacy

The resistance and unionism of enslaved and freed Black women in the midst of the Confederacy is an epic story of sacrifice for nation and citizenship.
Four versions of Hokusai's Great Wave, from the Art Institute of Chicago, LACMA, Tokyo National Museum, and British Museum

Under Hokusai’s Great Wave

Hokusai’s watery woodblock print is such a common sight that most people tend to look past the peril at its center.
Carter G. Woodson

Museum Roots

The founders of Black American museums in the post-World War II era were all shaped by Carter G. Woodson’s “Negro Canon” of history and art.
An illustration of a sick horse in a barn, 1872

Civilization Without Horses: The Epizootic of 1872

We’re all now too familiar with the words “pandemic” and “epidemic,” but how about “epizootic”?
Performers go through their routine during a media call for the New Shanghai Circus Australian tour at the Lyric Theatre, Star City June 16, 2004 in Sydney, Australia.

Exporting Chinese Acrobats

Chinese acrobats have been impressing circus-goers at shows like Cirque du Soleil since the 1980s. How did these gymnastic marvels make their way to the West?
Workmen at Federal Telegraph smoothing two castings for 80-ton magnets.

Vacuum Tube Valley 

Silicon Valley’s first high-tech enterprise, Federal Telegraph Co., provided communications for naval ships and radio stations at far-flung US imperial bases.
Mao Tse-tung facing Nikita Khrushchev during the Russian leader's 1957 visit to Peking

A Messy Divorce: The Sino-Soviet Split

The ideological disagreements between two nations shattered the idea of monolithic communism and re-arranged the chessboard of the Cold War.
Map of the Louisiana Purchase Territory, 1903

The Actual Louisiana Purchase Price

The $15 million price tag of the Louisiana Territory has been described as one of the greatest real estate bargains ever. But what did that actually buy?
“The Obscene M.D.” Colored lithograph. Morality of Modern Medicine Mongers. British College of Health, 1852.

Putting an End to Obscene Quackery

When medical professionals joined anti-vice campaigners to censor publications about sex in the 1800s, they found themselves wielding a double-edged sword.
A Ship in a Rough Sea by Cornelisz Verbeecq, 1620s

Earthsickness At Sea

Early European circumnavigators thought that their long absence from land during sea voyages made them sick. (Spoiler alert: it was scurvy.)
A collection of iron nails found in association with Roman material from between 50 and 400 CE.

Recycling… In Fifth-Century Britain

Once the Roman Empire crashed, so too did metal production in Britain. Luckily, scavenged metal could be reforged or used as is (because they needed spoons).
Japan Airlines Air Hostesses, 1951

The Ban on Japanese Aircraft Pilots, 1945–1952

The defeated Japanese weren’t allowed to pilot, own, build, or even research airplanes during the post-World War II occupation by the United States.
Monrovia, Liberia, 1910

Poland’s Colonial Dreams

With the resurrection of a Polish state in the aftermath of World War I, Poland seriously flirted with colonialism—in Liberia.
Dublin Castle, 1830

Weaponizing Homophobia in Ireland

One of the arguments of Irish nationalism was that English rule was morally corrupting. There was no better example of this than same-sex desire.
Tip-O-Tip

The Zulu Prince Scam

In the 1890s, self-proclaimed Zulu princes toured the United States, performing a con game on Americans eager to know Africa and Christianize its peoples.
Nordenfelt submarine of the Ottoman empire, probably Abdül Hamid (Nordenfelt II), c. 1886.

The Great Arms Bazaar of the Nineteenth Century

In the late nineteenth century, fed by the disintegration of the Ottoman empire, the European arms race created a global military surplus.
The murder of August von Kotzebue

Assassination of A Playwright, Birth of A Nationalism

The 1819 assassination of playwright August von Kotzebue by theology student Karl Sand is considered one of foundational moments in German nationalism.
A former German defense bunker lies in Marram Grass along a stretch of coastline that was known as 'Utah Beach' during the June 6, 1944 D-Day Beach landings on April 30, 2019 in Audouville-la-Hubert, on the Normandy coast

Conflict Archaeology in Normandy

The light management of forests in Normandy since WWII helped preserve the remains of German supply depots and other artifacts of war hidden in the woodlands.
A cartoon illustration of an elderly woman communicating on the internet

I Hope This Finds You Well, or, Dude, You Good?

Are formulaic hoping and wishing statements in correspondence evidence of magical thinking?
The Roman Countryside by Pietro Barucci

Ride ’em, Butteri! 

Long before spaghetti westerns, Italians were turned on to an image of the American West by Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show.
The School of Athens (detail) featuring Euclid by Raphael

Data: Not Just Another Four-Letter Word

For early modern theologians, data were assumptions of truths for which there was no need for explanation. How things—and data—have changed.