For most of human history, the disasters wrought by nature were utterly unpredictable, their causes wholly unknown. They were merely a random act of God that could lay waste to whole cities without warning. On the morning of May 20, 1202, thousands of people across an enormous swath of the Earth experienced such destruction.
The history of cotton clothing has followed an interesting path, including a period of a few decades in the United States when cotton represented ingenuity, resilience, and patriotism itself.