St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington D.C., once called the Government Hospital for the insane, is representative of more than seventy such campuses made up of massive, ornate Victorian buildings designed by some of the most notable architects in the nation, and built across America over a sixty-five year period. Their now largely decaying forms represent ghosts of an era, built on a vision that became for some, a nightmare. The buildings of the Kirkbride Plan deserve to be remembered.
On October 19, 1762 the day was so dark at Fort Detroit that candles were needed to see at noon. A British officer called the day "The most extraordinary dark day perhaps ever seen in the world." Some would take the darkness as a sign.
Solenopsis invicta, the “Red Imported Fire Ant”, native to South America, has proven a tenacious and destructive pest in the United States, costing Americans billions of dollars every year. That is why, in the late 1950s, the United States embarked on an all out war against the six-legged menace.