History, Natural History & the Arts
On September 27th, 2025, it will be two hundred years ago that the world’s first public railway, known as the Stockton & Darlington (S&DR), was opened in north-east England.
As well as carrying coal, the train offered space for six hundred passengers, most of them traveling in wagons, but some distinguished guests were allocated a seat in a specially designed carriage called The Experiment. [Read more…] about Railroads, The Spuyten Duyvil Disaster & Faustian Legend
She’s the woman who dueled with Aaron Burr and won. Move over Alexander Hamilton. The life of Eliza Jumel is a tale about a woman who pulled hard on her Yankee bootstraps to make good on the American dream.
Margaret Oppenheimer’s splendid book, The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel: Marriage and Money in the Early Republic (Chicago Review Press, 2015), takes readers along on a tale of intrigue, scandal and innuendo. Far from a steamy beach read featuring men in white wigs, this meticulously-researched tale paints a detailed and scholarly portrait of New York City and the way in which the city’s growth provided fertile ground for the ambitions of its heroine. [Read more…] about Review: The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel