In the midst of the 1918 influenza pandemic, Cincinnati’s Mayor made the decision to give up. There was pressure from businesses, saloons, clergy and citizens to allow them to get back to normal daily life. How did the city get to this point and what happened before and after?
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From Roadkill to Museum Specimen
Below you will find a brief account of how we prepare bird skins for the museum collection. If you want to see this process in more graphic detail, we’ll provide some video links at the end.
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What’s in a Pot? Lessons from Native American Pottery
Because most Native American pottery we discover through excavations or surface collections is broken into small pieces called sherds, people often ask us “what can those pieces tell us?” As it turns out, quite a lot!
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The Queen City Welcomes Charles Lindbergh and His Spirit of St. Louis, August 6, 1927
Charles A. Lindbergh, an obscure 25-year-old air mail pilot, became an international celebrity when he became the first aviator to cross the Atlantic Ocean non-stop from New York to Paris, France.
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Early Photography Series 3 of 4 – Tintypes
A tintype is a wet-collodion process, same as the ambrotype, with the emulsion applied by hand, but on a dark lacquered iron plate instead of glass. The lacquer forms the dark background required to reveal the positive image. Tintypes are often coated with a protective varnish.
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Archaeological Evidence for the Presence of Dogs at the Hahn Site
At the Hahn Site, located near the border of Anderson Township and Newtown, Ohio, CMC archaeologists have unearthed a plethora of prehistoric Native American artifacts.
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The Long Arm of Prohibition: The F. L. Emmert Company’s Struggle to Survive
Savior Maier and his son-in-law, F. L. Emmert, opened a saloon at the corner of Clifton and Vine streets in 1881. In the day-to-day operation of the saloon, Maier and Emmert learned that brewers were struggling to deal with the large quantities of wet mash, or spent grain, a byproduct of brewing. Seeing an opportunity, Emmert changed the focus of his business and started dealing in spent brewer’s grain.
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The birds are back in town!
Bird migration is at its peak right now in the Cincinnati area and on our Edge of Appalachia preserve. All of our bird breeders that leave for the winter are now back in southern Ohio, Indiana, and Northern Kentucky and singing in their territories.
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Is this the last Great Auk?
The Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis) was a penguin-like, flightless bird found along coastlines in the north Atlantic. It was valued for its meat, fatty oils, and feathers, and was hunted to extinction in the mid-1800’s. As the bird became more rare, collectors paid handsomely for specimens.
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A Snapshot of Early Cincinnati Breweries
Early immigrants, like Frederick Billiods, William Attee, Patrick Reilly, Peter Jonte, Thomas Wood and John Walker, opened breweries in Cincinnati that produced beers found in their native countries – France, England and Ireland – mostly traditional ales and porters.
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