Official nickname is 'Tree of Heaven.' Unofficial nickname is 'Tree of Hell'. Ban still on the books in 2026.

This is what they look like (yes, I had to look it up)

What's the most hated tree? In the US, it might be the Ailantus. Congress banned planting them on federal property in 1853.

Really like how this photo turned out

Seems like a different world where this Congressional resolution was possible, and it was still Trump I

Made some bbq chicken on the grill

Still thinking about this tortured footnote from the Vanderbilt/WashU report

Cambridge is very flat except for these chalk pits

Crazy stat from 1975: 5% of the population in the US owned nearly 2/3 of the privately held land. Wonder what it is today...

The US used to have a federal balloon-school, now look at it

This is why I love footnotes

This ad gives 1996 the old-timey treatment

1920s farmhouse vacation rental

This is pretty weird. I've been looking through thousands of pages of the US statutes at large, and this is the first time I've come across something redacted. It's from the mid-1930s. No idea why

I come back to this one again and again. One of the best hardback purchases I ever made

Me when term is finally over

This sounds awful

This woman sued the government for blood money and won

Native Land Digital has new relational map on its site: "Our Constellation Map reimagines how Indigenous nations can be shown by highlighting relationships, connections, and presence rather than strict borders." native-land.ca/maps/constel...

I love footnotes, but even I'll admit things are getting out of hand when you get up over 2000

Re-reading Custer Died for Your Sins this weekend. Easy to forget about all the jokes and zingers in here

Discussed in this excellent book

Interesting story lurking here

It’s a great time to study the US from an ocean away. So apply for the 3-year Mellon postdoc in American History at Cambridge. Closes March 1. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/mellon-...

So, Arkansas used to employ prisoners as armed guards to oversee their fellow inmates. Called them 'trusties.' Sometimes they put them on horseback and gave them shotguns to oversee prisoners laboring in fields

It got a bunch of press

They carried a banner with the motto: ‘Into Civilization and Citizenship’

Did not know this: Pratt had the students marching in the opening ceremonies of the World’s Columbia Exhibition in Chicago in 1893

Shocking stat from the first paragraph of the annual report of the Carlisle Indian boarding school in 1893: the death rate of students was more than double the graduation rate