Hueco Tanks, Texas

The Hueco Tanks area in Texas was home to indigenous people for thousands of years.

Hueco Tanks rock art photo from WikiCommons

Los Braceros

The Braceros Program was implemented during World War One and Two to recruit farmworkers from Mexico to work in the United States.

An exhibit of Braceros artifacts in the El Paso Museum of History

The Second Reich’s Genocide

In the midst of a bitter war, the German government began to round up people of particular ethnicities which it considered to be subhuman enemies, gathered them into concentration camps, and worked them to death as slave labor in a deliberate policy of extermination and  genocide. But this was not the Third Reich in Europe in 1940. It was the Second Reich in Africa in 1904.

Captured and chained Herero prisoners                   
photo from WikiCommons

The Hodges Meteorite

The Hodges Meteorite, on display in Tuscaloosa AL, is the first known example of a space rock that hit and injured a human.

The Hodges Meteorite, on display at the Alabama Museum of Natural History

The Battle of Lake Okeechobee

The Battle of Lake Okeechobee was part of the Seminole Wars, which have now been mostly forgotten.

General Zachary Taylor photo from WikiCommons

The People’s Liberation Army Air Force

The earliest history of Chinese aviation actually began in the United States.

Fuselage of Chinese Shenyang J8-II fighter on display at the Combat Air Museum in Kansas

The Hopkinsville Space Aliens

Today, “unidentified flying objects” are usually associated with extraterrestrial spacecraft, but in the pre-space race days of the 1940’s, they also had a different interpretation: the Cold War was raging, and it was assumed by many that the “discs” were actually some sort of secret Soviet aircraft, on surveillance missions over the US. By the 1950s, however, thanks to scifi movies and sensational books, the idea of UFOs as ET spacecraft was firmly fixed in the public’s imagination. And it was sealed forever by a famous report from Kentucky which made the phrase “Little Green Men” world-famous.

Hopkinsville Space Alien photo from WikiCommons

Florida’s Sinkholes

Billed as a “Geological Park”, Devils Millhopper, in Gainesville, contains a very large sinkhole which houses a profusion of humidity-loving tropical and semi-tropical native plants and wildlife.

Devils Millhopper sinkhole

Icons of Aviation History: P-80 Shooting Star

Rushed into production during World War II, the P-80 Shooting Star was the US’s first operational jet fighter.

P-80 Shooting Star on exhibit at the Warbird Museum in Titusville FL

The Cugnot Steam Auto

What was the first “automobile” … ?

The first modern “automobiles”—self-propelled wheeled carriages run by gasoline-powered internal-combustion engines—were built in Germany by Karl Friedrich Benz and Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler in 1885. But if we look at an “automobile” as being simply a self-propelled wheeled vehicle, the history goes back further, and the earliest one that we know about was a steam-powered cart built in 1769 by a French Army officer named Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot.

The Hopi Game of Totolospi

Totolospi is a racing game that was played by the Hopi Native Americans of the southwest desert.

Totolospi gameboard

Earth’s First Mountains

The area of the Minnesota/Canada border has an interesting early geological history.

Granite layers in Voyageurs National Park                              photo from NPS

Icons of Aviation History: The Soviet Tupolev Tu-22 Bomber

The Tupolev-22 Blinder caused near-panic among NATO air forces when it appeared, but it never lived up to its promise.

Tupolev Tu-22 Blinder in Ukrainian service                                          photo from WikiCommons

A Necessary Political Interlude

The very fine people in the Florida State Legislature have in their infinite wisdom introduced a bill into the Assembly:

“Florida Sen. Jason Brodeur (R-Lake Mary) wants bloggers who write about Gov. Ron DeSantis, Attorney General Ashley Moody, and other members of the Florida executive cabinet or legislature to register with the state or face fines.

Brodeur’s proposal, Senate Bill 1316: Information Dissemination, would require any blogger writing about government officials to register with the Florida Office of Legislative Services or the Commission on Ethics.”

https://www.wfla.com/news/politics/florida-bill-would-require-bloggers-who-write-about-governor-to-register-with-the-state/

Mar-A-Lago, Florida

The Mar-a-Lago Resort is best-known because of its association with a certain divisive and demagogic political figure. But the history of Mar-a-Lago extends for almost a century before that.

Mar-A-Lago in 1967 photo from US Library of Congress