Tag: Nature
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New Forest Chief on Saving Our Forests
In 1921, the U.S. Forest Service director said he wanted to protect America’s forests. He succeeded. The 1920s were the first decade in American history where total forest acres increased (slightly). The number has remained roughly steady ever since. This graph from ThoughtCo., using data from the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program,…
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Project to Make Great Lakes Another Mediterranean
Should the five Great Lakes be connected for transportation and navigation, like the Panama Canal? In 1920, it was being seriously debated. Pro: the economics. New exports would be developed. Our export of coal is in its infancy. The United States is said to have half of the world’s coal. It will be called for…
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Open Season Threatens the Extinction of Deer
A New York state hunter could only kill only one deer per season, which had to be a male buck with antlers. Starting in 1919, a hunter could kill two deer, including a male buck or a female doe. Would that decimate the animal’s population? Even some hunters were opposed to the new law, for that…
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National Menace of Our Depleted Forests
The hit country song Wagon Wheel, written in 1973, begins with the lyric “Headed down south to the land of the pines.” Not exactly. A 1919 headline warned “Supplies of Southern Pine Likely to be Exhausted in Ten Years.” Today, only 3% of the supply remains. Smithsonian Magazine interviewed Chuck Hemard, author of the 2018 book “The Pines,”…
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Blossom Time in January New York, 1919
The current polar vortex has caused temperatures to hit record lows or near-lows across much of the country, including -60° F with the wind chill in Minnesota. But 100 years ago this week, the exact opposite was happening: For two weeks, said the [Weather Bureau] statistician last Wednesday, the average temperature has been 39 degrees.…
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Hunters in Autos Exterminating Big Game
The relatively new invention of the automobile was producing unforeseen consequences for hunters. William T. Hornaday, director of the New York Zoological Park, thought that lawmakers should ban the practice: “There is not the slightest doubt,” he said, “that if things are allowed to remain for the next three years as they have been during…
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River of Doubt Now on Brazil’s Official Maps
In 1914, Theodore Roosevelt — at that point a former U.S. president — trekked upon a previously unmapped tributary of the Amazon River in Brazil. To honor his heroism, Brazil officially named the Rio Duvida (or River of Doubt) the Rio Roosevelt. Did the new name last to the present day? Yes it has. River…
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Scenic Surgery for “Old Man of Mountains”
The famed natural formation that many believed look like the silhouette of a man was at risk of collapsing in 1916, so work was done to secure it. The inevitable was delayed by 87 years, with the formation eventually collapsing in 2003. Here are before and after photos, taken by Jim Cole of the Associated Press:…
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Humidity This Summer Has Broken Record
Ah, the days before global warming and the climate crisis. James H. Scarr, then the head of the New York Weather bureau, stated in 1916: “The highest average mean temperature for July occurred in 1901, and was 78 degrees. The coolest July within this period of forty-five years was in 1884, when the average was…
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Do Sharks Attack Humans Only When Crazed?
A full 59 years before Jaws created a generation of terrorized beachgoers, people were worried about sharks and the possibility of being attacked. In fact, the fear should go the other way around, seeing as sharks kill about 10 humans a year but humans kill about 20 million sharks a year. So to answer the title question:…
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