Now that spring is coming soon, it might serve as a reminder that the end of winter can be just as turbulent as the rest of the season.
March 11, 1888, was shaping up to be another unseasonably warm day. It had been remarkably mild for the previous week. Yet as the rain fell, the temperatures dropped.
By midnight of March 12, the Great Blizzard of 1888 was in full fury. It would snow nonstop for 36 hours, finally leaving the East Coast on the 14th. When all was said and done, parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts received 50 inches of snow, while parts of New York and New Jersey had up to 40 inches, with drifts as high as 50 feet. 48 inches dropped on Albany, 45 inches in New Haven, and 22 inches in New York, which recorded a temperature of between 6 and 9 degrees Fahrenheit throughout the storm, thanks to wind gusts that reached almost 80 miles per hour.
The blizzard had an enormous impact, even before the age of electricity. The telegraph and telephone lines were in tatters from Montreal and the Maritime provinces of Canada to Maryland and northern Virginia. 200 ships were grounded or wrecked. Roads and rail lines were impassible for days. It even froze the East River in New York so solid for a time that locals walked from Manhattan to Brooklyn across it, bypassing the 5-year-old Brooklyn Bridge which was deemed impassible due to ice.
Attached is a firsthand account of the Blizzard of 1888 by Albert Hunt of Winsted, Connecticut. Recorded in 1949, he recalls the day the storm first hit as if it were yesterday. It’s an amazing piece of oral history-and I wish there were more from that time period.
Mr. D's Neighborhood 
Videos for the Classroom: Crash Course!
I cringe at the word “kid-friendly” — sounds like a bad Law and Order: SVU episode.
One of the constant missions of the Neighborhood is to find resources that tap into the caffeine-addled brains of young people. In the quest to find “kid-friendly” material, most of what I find is directed at…okay, I’ll say it…good little white children. Good little pasty white kids that sit still and believe anything told to them because a happy smiling face in a toga (or bonnet or Abe Lincoln-esque stovepipe hat) tells them so.
Today, even the good little white kids aren’t really that good nor that white–you can thank TMZ, MTV and YouTube for that.
So to connect with today’s kids, we need something a little edgier. Crash Course! is a series of films about history and science, told in an irreverent, snarky way by brothers John and Hank Green. The World History series I saw was pretty entertaining, although the producers do make clear that historical people have sex (they get around it with a folksy word that I forgot). They are, however, loaded with data, facts and historical debate, when necessary–these guys don’t hide their biases, and it’s important for kids to see someone unashamed of their opinions.
If it weren’t for the occasional sex references, I’d recommend Crash Course! to middle schoolers on up. It’s perfectly fine for high school, but you may need some discretion with younger viewers. I’ve attached the episode on Alexander the Great to get an idea. Enjoy.
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Tagged as Abe Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander the Great, American History, Ancient History, Comedy, Commentary, crash course, Cultural Literacy, Education, Hank Green, History, Humor, Humour, Media, movies, MTV, Opinion, Social studies, Teachers, Teaching, U.S. History, World History, YouTube