Hey Historians: Nostalgia Can Be Good for Us | History News Network

Hey Historians: Nostalgia Can Be Good for Us | History News Network: Hey Historians: Nostalgia Can Be Good for Us | History News Network

You go downstairs to retrieve something, and, arriving flummoxed, completely forget why you went. This happens a lot with age, frustratingly, along with forgetting someone’s name, who gave you that birthday tie or who wrote The Leviathan. As a historian, your profession involves remembering certain detailed facts. As a cognitive neuroscientist, mine is too. Yet we’re both forced to use organs that can’t remember for 30 seconds that what we actually needed from the basement was toilet paper. How can our aging bodies work with such consistently unreliable recording instruments?

Truth is, they can’t.

I Have a Message for You - The New York Times

I Have a Message for You - The New York Times: I Have a Message for You - The New York Times

Traveling while black: Why some Americans are afraid to explore their own country - The Washington Post

Traveling while black: Why some Americans are afraid to explore their own country - The Washington Post: Traveling while black: Why some Americans are afraid to explore their own country - The Washington Post

Naomi Parker Fraley, the Real Rosie the Riveter, Dies at 96 - The New York Times

Naomi Parker Fraley, the Real Rosie the Riveter, Dies at 96 - The New York Times: Naomi Parker Fraley, the Real Rosie the Riveter, Dies at 96 - The New York Times



Unsung for seven decades, the real Rosie the Riveter was a California waitress named Naomi Parker Fraley.



Over the years, a welter of American women have been identified as the model for Rosie, the war worker of 1940s popular culture who became a feminist touchstone in the late 20th century.

Ballard Locks: They don’t move a lot of freight, but they mean a lot of money — and need repair | The Seattle Times

Ballard Locks: They don’t move a lot of freight, but they mean a lot of money — and need repair | The Seattle Times: Ballard Locks: They don’t move a lot of freight, but they mean a lot of money — and need repair | The Seattle Times



The machines used to raise and lower the water levels inside the Locks, for instance, have had to last since the Army Corps of Engineers installed them in 1917.

500 years later, scientists discover what probably killed the Aztecs | World news | The Guardian

500 years later, scientists discover what probably killed the Aztecs | World news | The Guardian: 500 years later, scientists discover what probably killed the Aztecs | World news | The Guardian



On Monday scientists swept aside smallpox, measles, mumps, and influenza as likely suspects, identifying a typhoid-like “enteric fever” for which they found DNA evidence on the teeth of long-dead victims

Northwest History: Spokane's Great Viking Rune Hoax

Northwest History: Spokane's Great Viking Rune Hoax: Northwest History: Spokane's Great Viking Rune Hoax



n July 11, 1926, the New York City readers of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle took up a question that perhaps none of them had previously considered. What were they to make of the alleged discovery of Viking runes in Spokane, Washington? "Query--Who Discovered America First? Bobs Up in Alleged Runic Inscriptions" screamed the headline, over a delightful illustration of a cartoon Columbus shaking hands with a stereotypical Viking. The caption reads "Says the shade of Leif Erickson to the shade of Christopher Columbus: 'Shake! We both did a good job!'"

The Iconic Windmills That Made the American West - Atlas Obscura

The Iconic Windmills That Made the American West - Atlas Obscura: The Iconic Windmills That Made the American West - Atlas Obscura



In A Field Guide to American Windmills, the historian T. Lindsey Baker writes that “the first commercially successful self-governing [or self-regulating] American windmill” was developed in New England in the mid-1850s, by a salesman named John Burnham and a machinist named Daniel Halladay. Unlike more traditional European-style windmills, The Halladay Windmill Company’s product was nimble; it could swivel to face the changing wind and angle its blades to adjust speed and avoid cracking in powerful gusts. Most importantly, it could do all of this mechanically, responding to the power and direction of the wind without the help of people.

Female inmates sterilized in California prisons without approval | Reveal

Female inmates sterilized in California prisons without approval | Reveal: Doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals, The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

At least 148 women received tubal ligations in violation of prison rules during those five years – and there are perhaps 100 more dating back to the late 1990s, according to state documents and interviews.

From 1997 to 2010, the state paid doctors $147,460 to perform the procedure, according to a database of contracted medical services for state prisoners.

STERILIZED in the Name of Public Health

STERILIZED in the Name of Public Health: Abstract

In exploring the history of involuntary sterilization in California, I connect the approximately 20 000 operations performed on patients in state institutions between 1909 and 1979 to the federally funded procedures carried out at a Los Angeles County hospital in the early 1970s.

Highlighting the confluence of factors that facilitated widespread sterilization abuse in the early 1970s, I trace prosterilization arguments predicated on the protection of public health.

This historical overview raises important questions about the legacy of eugenics in contemporary California and relates the past to recent developments in health care delivery and genetic screening.

When California Sterilized 20,000 of Its Citizens | Essay | Zócalo Public Square

When California Sterilized 20,000 of Its Citizens | Essay | Zócalo Public Square



Our dataset reveals that those sterilized in state institutions often
were young women pronounced promiscuous; the sons and daughters of
Mexican, Italian, and Japanese immigrants, frequently with parents too
destitute to care for them; and men and women who transgressed sexual
norms. Preliminary statistical analysis demonstrates that during the
peak decade of operations from 1935 to 1944 Spanish-surnamed patients
were 3.5 times more likely to be sterilized than patients in the general
institutional population.

In the Bones of a Buried Child, Signs of a Massive Human Migration to the Americas - The New York Times

In the Bones of a Buried Child, Signs of a Massive Human Migration to the Americas - The New York Times: In the Bones of a Buried Child, Signs of a Massive Human Migration to the Americas - The New York Times