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Miami's skyline with high-rises under construction.

How Dreams of Buried Pirate Treasure Enticed Americans to Flock to Florida

1925 marked the peak of the Florida land boom. But false advertising and natural disasters thwarted many settlers’ visions of striking it rich.
by Greg Daugherty via Smithsonian on April 15, 2025

They Settled in Houston After Katrina — and Then Faced a Political Storm

The backlash against an effort to resettle 200,000 evacuees holds lessons for future disasters.
by Jake Bittle via Grist on August 27, 2024
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The Ravages and Operations of the Locusts

When it comes to cicadas, the silence of the historical record can be deafening.
by Al Dickenson via HNN on June 18, 2024
Demonstrators holding signs at George Floyd protest in NYC, 2020.

Americans Used to Unite Over Tragic Events − and Now Are Divided By Them

Tragedy seldom unifies Americans today.
by Thomas D. Beamish via The Conversation on June 18, 2024
Exhibit

“Natural” Disasters

A collection of stories about previous generations’ ways of dealing with meteorological calamity and its aftermath..
Old picture of four Japanese American girls in Manzanar prison camp.

Preserving Memories of a Japanese Internment Camp

A poignant connection between the erosions of landscape and memory at a former Japanese internment camp in California.
by Emily Troil, Maya Castronovo via Directors' Library on May 1, 2024
People walking around buildings destroyed by the Johnstown Flood.

A Flood of Tourism in Johnstown

Days after a failed dam led to the drowning deaths of more than 2,200 people, the Pennsylvania industrial town was flooded again—with tourists.
by Matthew Wills, Emily Godbey via JSTOR Daily on March 1, 2024
Destroyed buildings and streets in the aftermath of the Chicago fire.

What Really Started the Great Chicago Fire?

The famous disaster razed a metropolis and spread a pack of colorful lies. To sift through the ashes today is to encounter some uncomfortable truths.
by Margaret Talbot via The New Yorker on October 2, 2023
Attendees of the 1908 Conference of Governors.

When American Governors and Moguls Came Together to Prevent Environmental Catastrophe

A historic 1908 conference transcended party and personal interest for the ‘common good.'
by Adam M. Sowards via Zócalo Public Square on August 17, 2023
Forest of redwoods.

The Greatest Act of Greenwashing in American History

A new chronicle of redwood logging exposes how a cadre of wealthy industrialists reaped a fortune in the name of environmentalism.
by Robert Moor via The Atlantic on August 14, 2023
Madeline Potts, a nurse with Chicago's Public Health Department, checks on a man at one of several cooling centers in the city July 28, 1995.

A Heat Wave Killed Hundreds in Chicago Nearly 30 Years Ago

As record temperatures bake portions of the United States this summer, a Chicago heat wave in 1995 offers a grim preview of the toll from climate change.
by Kim Bellware via Retropolis on July 10, 2023
Abandoned Brownwood subdivision, now the Baytown Nature Center, near Houston, Texas.

What Survives

Lacy M. Johnson walks through a nature center near Houston that has reclaimed the land where a neighborhood, sunken by oil extraction and floodwater, once stood.
by Lacy M. Johnson via Emergence Magazine on March 9, 2023
Line of forest fire volunteers in Siberia

A Deranged Pyroscape: How Fires Across the World Have Grown Weirder

Fewer fires are burning worldwide than at any time since antiquity. But in banishing fire from sight, we have made its dangers stranger and less predictable.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The Guardian on February 3, 2022
Drawing of 19th century woman in science laboratory

Scientists Understood Physics of Climate Change in the 1800s – Thanks to a Woman Named Eunice Foote

The results of Foote's simple experiments were confirmed through hundreds of tests by scientists in the US and Europe. It happened more than a century ago.
by Sylvia G. Dee via The Conversation on July 22, 2021
Abstract design in which adults and children are isolated from each other using computers and tablets, floating near a raised Black fist, a mask, and a TV camera.

Apocalypse Then and Now

A dispatch from Wounded Knee that layers the realities of poverty, climate change, and resilience on the history of colonization, settlement, and genocide.
by Julian Brave NoiseCat via CJR on November 25, 2020
A house and an american flag

A Disaster 100 Years in the Making

Covid-19 and climate change are drastically intensifying insecurity in New Orleans.
by Eric Klinenberg via New York Review of Books on October 22, 2020
Hurricane Katrina flooding.

Through Hell and High Water: Katrina's First Responders Oral History Project

A collection of interviews with rescue workers who responded to the disaster.
via The Historic New Orleans Collection on June 27, 2020
Portraits of Donald Trump and Herbert Hoover.
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Covid-19 May Destroy Donald Trump’s Presidency

Has Trump plunged America into another Great Depression?
by Meg Jacobs via Made By History on March 23, 2020
Spoonfuls of different types of sugar: white and brown, granulated and cubed.

Corn, Coke, and Convenience Food

How high-fructose corn syrup became an American staple.
by Hope Jahren via Literary Hub on March 6, 2020

Goodbye to Good Earth

A Louisiana tribe’s long fight against the American tide.
by Boyce Upholt via Oxford American on September 3, 2019

The Origins of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance

It has long been an important element of U.S. international affairs.
by Julia F. Irwin via The American Historian on February 1, 2019

Looking To History To Combat Wildfires

After decades of modern fire prevention, many forests have become dangerous tinder-boxes.
by Grace Hood via NPR on June 14, 2018

The Role of Water in African American History

Have historians privileged land-based models and ignored how African Americans participated in aquatic activities?
by Tyler D. Parry via Black Perspectives on May 4, 2018
Photo of Lake Oroville with low water levels, California, 2014.

The West Without Water

What can past droughts tell us about tomorrow?
by B. Lynn Ingram via Origins on November 8, 2017

The Jones Act, the Obscure 1920 Shipping Regulation Strangling Puerto Rico

Protectionism and exploitation at its worst.
by Matthew Yglesias via Vox on September 27, 2017

The Woman Who Helped Change How Hurricanes Are Named

For decades, only female names were used.
by Olivia B. Waxman via TIME on September 6, 2017

The Tragic History of Early Weather Forecasting

Read an excerpt from Al Roker's book about the Galveston Hurricane of 1900.
by Al Roker via TIME on August 4, 2015
Aerial photograph of the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

George R. Lawrence, Aeronaut Photographer

George R. Lawrence captured one of the most iconic photos of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. That was only one event in his very interesting life.
by Christopher Turner via Cabinet on November 21, 2008

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