Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), is famous for many achievements in his relatively short life. Many math students have been exposed to the triangle of coefficients known as Pascal’s Triangle. This mathematician and philosopher is also known for Pascal’s wager, the idea that the risks of not believing in God and being denied entrance into heaven are …
Continue reading “Blaise Pascal and the First Public Transit System”
Pikes Peak is one of Colorado’s fifty-three “fourteeners,” or mountains that have an elevation of at least 14,000 feet (4267 m). The mountain is named after an American explorer with a legendary name, Zebulon Montgomery Pike, although he himself never managed to get to the top of the mountain. At 14,115 feet (4302 m) above …
The Lehigh Valley Railroad (LVR) went into service in 1846 in the northeastern US. Its main purpose was to transport anthracite coal from northeastern Pennsylvania to New York City and Philadelphia. By the end of the 19th century, the LVR wanted to get into the passenger train business. There was demand for a route between …
Continue reading “A Brief Overview of The Black Diamond Express”
By the mid-1850s, the city of New York was faced with severe traffic congestion. Engineers and city planners in the metropolis came up with a variety of different ideas to try to solve this problem. Last week’s blog covered an attempt to build a railway underground, an idea which would take several decades to come …
Continue reading “New York City’s 19th Century Elevated Railroad”
In the late 1800s, many of the growing American cities suffered from a woeful state of public transport. The streets were terribly congested, and fights often broke out in the areas most prone to traffic jams. One potential idea to alleviate the traffic congestion was to build a railway underground. One challenge of building underground …
Continue reading “New York’s 19th-Century Pneumatic Experiment: Its first Subway”
Within the US, women identify as liberal more often than men, and that gap is the widest among young men and women, with 44% of women age 18-29 and 25% of young men identifying with the term. Women have played critical roles in liberal movements such as environmentalism, peace, and labor. Nevertheless, many women have …
Continue reading “A Brief Look at Conservative Women’s Activism in the 20th Century”
In 1920, women earned the right to vote in the United States after a long 72-year fight that started with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. The Seneca Falls Convention spurred many other women’s rights conventions across the country, but the Civil War derailed many of the campaigns for a few years, since many of the …
Continue reading “Why Were Wyoming and Utah the First States to Give Women the Vote?”
The Navajo Nation is a Native American reservation that lies on a tract of land that is spread throughout Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. In total, the nation takes up 71,000 square kilometers (27,413 sq mi) and has a population of around 174,000 based on 2010 census data. The area also contains something toxic: 500 …
Continue reading “Environmental Injustice: A History of Uranium Mining on the Navajo Reservation”
In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Park Service (NPS) are widely known as the government agencies that (mis)manage our nation’s natural resources. However, there are many more agencies that are in charge of certain ecosystems, or whose actions have an undue influence on the country’s natural habitat. The United States …
Continue reading “Brief History of the United States Forest Service”
Two major times in US history when women’s movements fought to enact a significant change in women’s standing in society were the fights for suffrage and the battle over the Equal Rights Amendment. On both occasions, the passage of the constitutional amendment required a significant shift in the nation’s values. In addition, there were women’s …
Continue reading “Comparing the Movements for Women’s Suffrage & the Equal Rights Amendment”
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