Although his books would eventually earn him an international reputation as the father of American ornithology, Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) began his publishing career as an unsuccessful poet. Throughout his late teens and early twenties, he wandered his native Scotland, peddling poetry. He gained...
Walk through West Philadelphia toward 39th Street and Woodland Avenue, and you’ll come across a landscape set apart from the industrial and residential areas that characterize much of the city. The Woodlands cemetery looks the same as it did in the 1840s, when Eli K. Price decided to build it on a...
Even before he was old enough to officially rule France and the territories the nation had acquired throughout the world, King Louis XV knew his geography. He was eight years old when Guillaume Delisle, the great mapmaker who pioneered scientific cartography, took the position of Royal Geographer...
As the colonies prepared for a revolution in 1775, Pennsylvania faced a conflict of its own. Dissatisfaction with its conservative governing body, which had not supported any proposals for independence, had led to the formation of local “committees” that were demanding major change. In June 1776...
“A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors. They still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition—a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors, catching one streetcar instead of...
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) solved a key puzzle for physicists in 1915 with his celebrated theory of relativity, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, and, most significantly, fundamentally changed our understanding of space and time. Recognized world-wide as a great scientist, Einstein received...
At first glance, it may seem contradictory that celebrated artist Chuck Close is best known for his large-scale portraits. Close has prosopagnosia, which means that he has trouble recognizing faces—even those of people he has known for years. But flattening out a face through the process of painting...
In the case of architect Frank Furness (1839-1912), one can easily see how the buildings are the product of the man. Furness has been described as hotheaded and difficult, as well as pioneering and imaginative. Critics and admirers alike have called his buildings challenging, even outrageous, but...
