Eliza Jane Nicholson: First Woman to Publish a Major Newspaper
Eliza Jane Nicholson was the first woman in the United States to own a major newspaper. Born Eliza Jane Poitevent, she started working in 1870 as the literary editor of the Picayune, a daily newspaper in New Orleans, Louisiana. During this time, New Orleans was the largest city in the South. It was common for […]
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New Orleans Citizen Cops Recently, many U.S. cities have experienced a shortage of police officers. Some departments have responded to this shortage by relaxing restrictions against tattoos, piercings, or facial hair in order to expand the number of candidates. Other departments have raised salaries, offered extra payments for new candidates, and improved benefits packages. The […]
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Glass Half Full or Half Empty? The world’s most used natural resource is water. Can you guess the second-most-used resource? It’s not coal or trees: it’s sand. Every year, the world uses fifty billion tons of silica sand. (That’s enough sand to build a wall more than 88 feet high and 88 feet wide around […]
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AirBnB Provides Housing for Afghan Refugees Tens of thousands of refugees are fleeing Afghanistan for other countries, including the United States. Airbnb, an American rental company, is helping address this emergency by providing free housing for 20,000 refugees. The refugees will be housed (temporarily) in the same properties you would find if you were searching […]
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Ida B. Wells Monument Unveiled in Chicago Ida B. Wells was an enslaved person who later became a newspaper editor and civil rights activist in Memphis, Tennessee. As a journalist, she travelled the South in a crusade against lynching. Wells published the stories she heard in her newspaper, The Memphis Free Speech and Headlight. She […]
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Deadly Hurricane in Louisiana At least fourteen people are dead in Louisiana after Hurricane Laura, a Category 4 storm, made landfall last Thursday afternoon. Usually, hurricanes weaken as they approach the shore. Laura was one of the rare storms to intensify as it made landfall. With dangerous storm surges and sustained winds of over 150 […]
“Off-Year” Elections? Not for Democrats
This week’s story update on Election Central gives you more information on the election results that happened in some states last week. They’re called “off-year” elections, but there was nothing “off” about last Tuesday night for Democrats around the nation. Several states saw big blue wins. But will 2019’s state-level Democratic gains automatically translate to […]
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Maker of EpiPen Faces Harsh Criticism Millions of Americans suffer from severe food allergies, many of them children. To combat a reaction that could lead to anaphylactic shock, many carrying an EpiPen. This is an “auto-injector” filled with the hormone epinephrine. While epinephrine itself is not considered an expensive drug, the single dose of a […]
Tragedy in Louisiana, Minneapolis, and Dallas
In the wake of celebrating our independence and freedom, the nation has experienced devastating news of continued violence between people and police in a few cities around the nation. Here is an overview summary of the facts and some responses to these tragedies. The Victims and the Incidents Alton Sterling Police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana were called to a […]