Fighting Wildfires Using Indigenous Practices
Wildfires are occurring more frequently and with greater intensity. Since 2015, wildfires in the United States have burned about 8 million acres each year on average. For the past 100 years, the prevailing government policy has been to suppress, or prevent, fires in national parks and other public lands. However, some federal and state agencies […]
Javier Milei Wins Presidential Election in Argentina
On November 19, 2023, Javier Milei was elected the new president of Argentina. He won close to 56 percent of the votes in a run-off against the economy minister Sergio Massa. Massa won only 44 percent of the vote. This result was unexpected, and Milei’s victory came as a surprise to many, as he is […]
Chef Sean Sherman Promotes Indigenous Foods
Award-winning chef Sean Sherman has earned a reputation as an innovator by promoting Indigenous foods. For Sherman, a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe, that means cooking with ingredients that are native and naturally found throughout North America. Sherman does not use ingredients such as beef, pork, chicken, wheat flour, dairy, and cane sugar. […]
Kenya and Other Nations Focus on Planting More Trees
The east African nation of Kenya has a goal to grow 15 billion trees by 2032. This is part of an effort to restore trees to over 10 million hectares (over 38,000 square miles) of land. On Monday, November 13, 2023, this effort to improve Kenya’s environment received a major boost. Kenya’s government declared that […]
United Auto Workers Tentatively End Strike
Members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) labor union went back to work on October 30, 2023. Since September 15, they had been on a historic strike against the “Big Three” U.S. automakers: Ford Motor Company, General Motors (GM), and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler). It was the first time the UAW had gone on strike at […]
Satellite Photos Reveal Undiscovered Roman Forts
Historians and archaeologists have held many debates about the purpose of hundreds of Roman forts throughout what today is Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. Many scientists thought Romans built the forts during the 2nd and 3rd centuries to protect the Roman empire’s eastern border from attack. However, researchers recently used Cold War era satellite images to […]
Mapping the Underwater Eighth Continent
For hundreds of years, explorers and researchers believed Earth had an eighth continent, but they couldn’t find it. Then in 2017 scientists discovered an underwater landmass located southeast of Australia, under the islands of New Zealand. They named the underwater continent Zealandia. They began mapping parts of the landmass in 2019. Now in 2023, an […]
Artifacts in Buddhist Monastery Inform Nepal’s History
Nepal is a country located high in Asia’s Himalayan mountains. In the capital city of Kathmandu, a hidden treasure of religious objects was recently discovered at the Itumbaha monastery. This Buddhist monastery has a rich history dating back to the 1000s B.C.E. Precious objects had been lost for many years, buried in storage rooms under […]
Indiana Limestone: An Important Building Material
Architects have chosen limestone from Indiana to construct many buildings in the United States. Some of the buildings constructed with Indiana limestone include the Empire State Building, the Pentagon, and the Tribune Tower in Chicago. City halls, stadiums, and a variety of monuments throughout the country are also built of Indiana limestone. Why Is Indiana […]
The Pima Canals: A Solution for Modern Water Problems in the Southwest
As early as the 1600s, Spanish missionaries considered the Pima people in southern Arizona as the gardeners of the dry American Southwest. The Pima used canals dug by their ancestors to water their fields of wheat, corn, beans, and fruit trees. That is, until American settlers upstream diverted the water of the Gila River, which […]