Today in 1858 Minnesota became the 32nd state in the Union. There's a part of the state that's on the other side of a lake from the rest, which means anyone who wants to drive from the Northwest Angle to the rest of Minnesota has to drive through Canada.
Today in 2011, UK politician Ed Balls sent a tweet that just said "Ed Balls." He was trying to search for his name, not post it, but the inadvertent self-rep turned into a meme and a wonderfully weird annual tradition.
Apollo 14 may be best known today for the moment when astronaut Alan Shepard hit golf balls on the surface of the moon, but the mission also gave us the “moon trees.”
Today in 1899 was the birthday of Al Capone. Not everyone would brag about getting a gift from the notorious gangster, but there’s a hospital in Baltimore that’s happy to share its connection.
Today in 2021, a very long wait was over. Researchers harvested three bunches of dates from trees that had sprouted from seeds over two thousand years old.
For Abraham Lincoln's birthday, we look at one of the most timeless memorials to the 16th president - or at least its undercroft, which has been out of public view for a long time.
It's the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drough, so it's a good time to check in on the Great Green Wall, a multi-country project in and around Africa’s Sahel region to re-green areas that have turned to desert because of overuse, expanding desert and climate change. Plus: a retired couple in China's Gobi Desert have been running their own regreening project for nearly 20 years, planting tens of thousands of drought-resistant trees by themselves!
On this day in 1948, Idaho Fish and Game moved beavers to a new habitat in a very unusual way: they had the beavers parachute into the wilderness! We'll explain how they did it. Plus: a new map of New York City's most notable trees helps people find some unique green space even in the big city.
My tender hearted kindergartner is making sure the backyard trees won’t be weighed down by too much snow.
Today is Arbor Day, and so we’re going to talk about the Friendship Oak, a remarkable tree in Mississippi that just keeps on keeping on. Plus: we'll visit Joe Bagley, who has 1,400 house plants in his apartment and for whom it might be said that every day is Arbor Day.
