Innovation
From the Archives: Mr. Eiffel Built More Than A Tower
The Eiffel Tower opened to the public 130 year ago this month, a fact that is being celebrated in a low grade way in the news. And why not? We need all the good news we can get. In that spirit, I offer you a piece which originally appeared in History in the Margins in…
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Butterflies, Bugs, and Maria Sibylla Merian
Once you start looking, it seems like you find examples of women who did important things in the past everywhere. Women you’ve never heard of unless you happen to be in their field of expertise—and maybe not even then. Take, for instance, naturalist and illustrator Maria Sibyella Merian (1647-1717). She was trained as a painter…
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The Strange Case of Dr. Couney
A number of years ago I read a novel titled The Hatbox Baby, by Carrie Brown. It was the story of a man who brought a premature infant to the Century of Progress (aka as the World’s Fair of 1933*) here in Chicago, where premature babies were displayed in incubators as an exhibit alongside freak…
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