english blog

Each year, Mount Vernon's Department of Historic Trades accepts a select number of applicants for summer internships. With focus on the Pioneer Farm and George Washington's Distillery & Gristmill, these internships provide an excellent opportunity for undergraduate students to become immersed in 18th-century history, agriculture, and industry. After completing a brief training program, interns will work as full-time Historic Trades Interpreters for a period of 10 weeks under the direction of our professional interpretive staff. Interns live on the grounds of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate during the internship. In addition, interns participate in special field trips to other historic sites and museums in the region. For information on eligibility, dates, accommodations, applications and more, click on the read more button. Candidates interested in Historic Trades internships should have a background in history or agriculture, be comfortable with public speaking...

Check out the latest volume of Early American Studies , featuring a brand new article by Dr. Carla Gerona titled "With a Song in Their Hands: Incendiary Decimas from the Texas and Louisiana Borderlands During a Revolutionary Age."

image credit Most of us woke up to presents on Christmas morning. The MV Akademik Shokalskiy ship, on the other hand, found itself trapped in ice up to 10 feet thick on all sides. The research vessel sent out a distress signal, hoping help would arrive as quickly as possible, considering the 74 crew members were currently sitting in the Antarctic sea. Icebreakers have helped carve paths through frosty seas since the 1800s; of course, the designs of these behemoths have much improved upon the glorified whalers that once sliced through the ice. Here's a look back at the boats that helped humans explore new - very cold - lands.

image credit Almost one hundred years after a group of explorers set out across the frozen landscape of Antarctica to set up supply depots for famed explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, a box of 22 never-before-seen exposed but unprocessed negatives taken by the group's photographer has been unearthed in one of those shacks, preserved in a block of ice. This incredible discovery was made by the Conservators of the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust who are working to restore an old exploration hut. The 22 cellulose nitrate negatives were left there by Shackleton's Ross Sea Party, which became stranded on Ross Island when their ship blew out to sea during a blizzard.

image credit: Alfred Beach In 1855, inventor and social reformer Sir Roland Hill commissioned a feasibility study on the construction of a pneumatic tube-based system between the General Post Office and the West District Central Post Office in London, UK. Developed by the London Pneumatic Dispatch Company, the tube system was meant to transport mail, parcels and light freight between several key locations. But despite favourable reports, the scheme was considered too expensive.

image credit Parts of Manhattan are actually built on the wartime ruins of English towns - churches, homes, pubs, libraries, shops, and businesses - all shipped to the U.S. as ballast during World War II. The city is thus, in an instant, revealed to be a weird layer cake of other cities, of ruins smoothed over ruins, paved under concrete and utterly unknown to the people driving over it everyday - unaware that, beneath them, there are still perhaps recognizable chunks of English cathedrals all packed in gravel and other broken chips of rock.

Rusch, Elizabeth. 2013. Electrical Wizard: How Nikola Tesla Lit Up the World . Somerville, MA: Candlewick.  Ill. by Oliver Dominguez. While Thomas Edison was busy lighting up big American cities with his new invention, Nikola Tesla was pondering the current that made it possible.  While watching a college professor demonstrate a new electrical machine, Inspiration flashed. Nikola realized that the motor didn't need to be run by direct current.  Alternating current, like the kind created by the hand crank, could power the motor. Sticking with alternating current would be simpler than converting to direct current -- and it would eliminate that awful sparking. His professor scoffed, and when Nikola Tesla traveled to the United States to meet his hero, Thomas Edison scoffed, too.  Although he gave Tesla a job, Edison saw Tesla's alternating current (AC) idea as a direct competitor to the power grid he had already set up using direct current (DC).  The two men had a ...

Brown, Don. 2013. The Great American Dust Bowl . New York: Houghton Mifflin. In a slim (80-page), hardcover, graphic novel, Don Brown offers a compelling account of the causes, effects, and consequences of America's 19th century push into the Great Plains - first for ranching, then small farming enterprises, and finally, large-scale, motorized farming.  Years of drought combined with loss of prairie grassland that had sustained the American Indians and the wild buffalo herds, led to dust storms of epic proportions that lasted for a decade. Describing one storm, Brown writes, On May 3, 1934, whirlwinds lifted 350 million tons of dirt from the Montana and the Dakotas' prairie, gathered them into gritty clouds that reached fifteen thousand feet, a height equal to twelve stacked Empire State Buildings.  Enough dust to fill 1,500 modern supertankers blew East. Dust fell like snow over Chicago. Atlanta. Boston. Washington. Midday Manhattan darkened beneath a dusty gray haze. Cars sw...