Iowa History, a weekly column, appears at IowaWatch on Saturdays.
Cheryl Mullenbach is a former history teacher, newspaper editor, and public television project manager. She is the author of four
Gov. Terry Branstad says Iowa is getting a good deal with China despite presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump wanting to declare China a currency manipulator and negotiate a new trade deal with the country that benefits the United States.
Doctors from Eddyville and Ottumwa rushed to the scene of a train wreck near Eddyville in August 1885 when news of injuries reached the two towns. The circus train consisted of several cars loaded with wagons containing tents and seats that could accommodate 8,000 audience members, as well as animal
The number of abortions performed in Iowa has been dropping despite access to abortion services within close to a two-hour drive for most Iowans and through telemedicine.
“Whatever you hear that is bad about the division hospital—do not discount it,” Evelyn Belden of Sioux City warned. She had recently returned from a month’s visit to the US Army’s Camp Thomas at Chickamauga, Georgia, in the fall of 1898.
An Iowa state senator said he wants the Iowa Legislature to define life as beginning at conception following a June 27 U.S. Supreme Court decision that limits how much states can restrict abortion access. But the constitutionality of any legislation along those lines would be contrary to previous Su
Forty-four people die everyday in the U.S. from overdose of prescription pain killers, according to statistics provided by the U.S. Attorney’s office. Annually those overdose deaths exceed motor vehicle or firearms deaths. Iowa communities are working to address addiction issues, but for some those
“Every eye is turned upon her, every voice is hushed, and everyone leans forward so they may catch her every word.” It was a beekeepers’ national convention held in the mid-1870s, and the person who was about to speak was an Iowan. Her name was Ellen S. Tupper. She was known as the Bee Queen of Iowa
The world is smaller, and more fearful about others, an Iowan whose family took in a Vietnamese family in the 1970s says in this conclusion of a five-part serial about that experience some 40 years ago.
Iowa’s wide expanses of row-cropped fields produced roughly 2.5 billion bushels of corn and 554 million bushels of soybeans in 2015. And for many, those high yields are thanks in part to pesticides. But what impact, if any, do those chemicals have on our health? It’s a controversial topic and the an
It was both a “horrible and wonderful spectacle.” That’s how Roger Lewis, a Manchester, Iowa native, described the view from his billet near the town of Monthairon, France, where he was stationed with the 110th Ammunition Train during World War I in 1919. They were situated in the Meuse River valley
