As Kentucky Derby Nears, Last Year’s Deaths Cast Long Shadow
To make matters worse, horses were frequently overworked, and when they dropped dead, their bodies were often left rotting on the streets for several days before being dismembered and removed, posing a further health risk. By the 1880s, fifteen thousand dead horses were being removed from the streets of New York City each year.
Tom Standage • A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next
“It would have been as easy to count or to estimate the number of leaves in a forest as to calculate the number of buffaloes living at any given time during the history of the species previous to 1870,” William Hornaday, who served as the chief taxidermist at the Smithsonian and later as director of the Bronx Zoo, wrote. By 1889, Hornaday reckoned,
... See moreElizabeth Kolbert • Under a White Sky
Visions of a fully loaded passenger train toppling into the sea preoccupied Krome and Coe, who went back to work resetting the pier, trying to reassure themselves that the event had been an anomaly. Still, such uncertainties would linger on, leading to the development of regulations that might seem extreme today. Wind gauges were mounted at the app
... See moreLes Standiford • Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean
Even though the hunters had been doing their work for twenty-five years, since the turn of the millennium, not every poor, dead thing in the world had been snuffed out the way some thought ghosts should be.
M Dressler • The Last to See Me
Medicare Advantage grew out of the idea that the private sector ... See more
Claudia added
US heath care systems need to change. Privatization has never been a health answer — it’s been a profit answer.
Huge piles of manure also built up next to stables and provided an attractive environment for flies. Health officials in Rochester, New York, calculated that if the manure produced by the fifteen thousand horses in the city each year was piled up, it would cover an acre of ground to a height of 175 feet and breed 16 billion flies. And Rochester was
... See moreTom Standage • A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next
Between 1870 and 1900, the number of horses in American cities grew fourfold, while the human population merely doubled. By the turn of the century there was one horse for every ten people in Britain, and one for every four in the United States. Providing hay and oats for horses required vast areas of farmland, reducing the space available to grow
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