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In the 1880s, Southern California agriculture was in a state of crisis. The wheat which had been long the basis of its prosperity was...

1919 was a year of promise born of misery.  Between the ravages of influenza and the indiscriminate trench carnage of the First World...

The nineteenth century saw Great Britain expanding vociferously into new markets, extending its influence, for better or worse, into...

Sometimes, simplicity dooms.  In World War I, chlorine gas hailed down upon the British soldiers trudging through their semi-lives in the...

In March 1971, a computer science whiz with an unlikely background was given six months to complete a seemingly impossible project for...

The last decade of Countess Melitta von Stauffenberg's life was ringed by impossible decisions, choices that you and I will never...

We have been living without the menace of Scarlet Fever for a solid century now, and in that time it has devolved from a creature of...

Every day, we subject our eyes to a nearly ceaseless barrage of screen-mediated experiences - phones, computers, televisions, tablets,...

Carbon. Its astounding versatility is matched only by our total and historic complacency in the face of its wonders. “Carbon? Whatever...

On October 4, 1957, the United States received the greatest single blow to its prestige since the burning of the White House in 1814 with...

A movie star. An avant-garde composer. A radio-controlled torpedo. Wi-Fi. One of the unfortunate truths about our web of modern...

It is August 25, 1940, and the Panamanian ship Bonita, sailing alone in war-torn waters with its cargo of clay bound for the United...

In the year 1933, the Long Beach Earthquake bore down on Southern California with the fury of revelation. At 6.4, it was not the largest...

Leona Woods (1919-1986) was only 23 years old, fresh from wrapping up her PhD work in spectroscopy in the basement of the University of...

One of the great things about writing this column is the fact that, from time to time, I get to talk with remarkable people about other...

There was a time, during the Golden Age of Railroads, when the name of the small Welsh town of Dowlais was stamped on iron rails that ran...

Every morning we wake up to a feast of assumptions. We assume that the place our sewage gets dumped is not the same place our drinking...

In the late 1750s and early 1760s, the Seven Years’ War, an intercontinental struggle that would largely determine the power structure of...

Beholding a bar of metal, it seems an object almost primal in its simplicity. Solid, reliable, the stuff of which cities are made. Peek...

Water is that great, terrible thing. Its chemical properties make it a magnificent solvent and coolant, which is wonderful if you’re...