On May 19, 1780, Historian Thomas Campanella explains, “ a preternatural gloom settled upon the New England landscape, and by noon the sun had been all but blotted from the sky.” New England’s “Dark Day” was read as an omen, even, perhaps, as the biblical end of days. But the question has persisted for nearly two and a half centuries- what could have blotted out the Sun?
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.