Those who have traveled through the western United States can attest to the scale of the massive earth-moving projects that dominate aspects of the landscape. Massive dams and expansive irrigation systems are part of the work of the Bureau of Reclamation, the nation's largest supplier of water and second largest producer of hydroelectric power. This remarkable tour of some of these sites is part...

Photo studios are often great repositories of information about local history, and the Burgert Brothers firm is no exception. Founded in 1918 by brothers Al and Jean Burgert, their studio focused primarily on photographing the Tampa Bay area, including Ybor City, Port Tampa, Temple Terrace, and Ballast Point. The University of South Florida has the archives of the Burgert Brothers firm, and...

Unless one has a penchant for the history of Australian exploration or the 1985 film "Burke and Wills", they may not be familiar with the personages of Robert O'Hara Burke and his third in command, William John Wills. In 1860, they set forth from the city of Victoria on their way to explore their way across the continent of Australia. While the expedition successfully crossed the continent, some...

This past Tuesday, President Bush signed into law the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), but only after a rather protracted period of difficult and contentious debate in Congress. After signing the bill, Bush remarked that the agreement would defend against “forces that oppose democracy, seek to limit economic freedom and want to drive a wedge between the United States and the rest of...

The people at American RadioWorks don't shy away from difficult or controversial topics, and one of their latest documentaries takes on the rather touchy subject of the modern nuclear marketplace. On the site dedicated to the documentary, visitors can listen to the entire program, and even follow along with a transcript. While many still imagine this marketplace run by terrorists attempting to...

For those with a budding interest in lepidoptery (the study of butterflies), this fine online resource presented by the USGS's Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center will be worth checking out. Currently, the site covers the butterfly species and populations throughout the United States and northern Mexico, with a section on Canada planned for the future. By utilizing the interactive map,...

There has been great hand wringing over the nature of personal debt in recent years, and some commentators have made it seem as if this recent trouble was without historical precedent. This engaging exhibit from the Harvard Business School's Baker Library draws on their historical materials "to show how previous generations devised creative ways of lending and borrowing long before credit cards."...

Arriving in the Sudirman mountain range in New Guinea in 1926, Matthew Stirling and his anthropologist colleagues from the Netherlands and the United States embarked on an expeditionary mission to document the lives of the so-called "pygmy" tribes of this region of the world. Eighty years later, Paul Michael Taylor of the Asian Cultural History Program at the National Museum of Natural History...

This remarkable collection brings together a plethora of printed materials related to the struggle for woman suffrage in the United States. Created as part of the American Memory Project at the Library of Congress, the materials here include photographs of suffrage parades, picketing suffragists, an anti-suffrage display, as well as a number of cartoons. The site includes a special timeline which...

Based at The Ohio State University Libraries, the Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program (BPRCAP) collects, preserves, and provides "access to historical documents concerned with polar regions." Their collection contains papers, records, photographs, and other forms of documentation concerning explorers, scientists, and other figures. Along the top of their page, visitors will find sections...