History on Andrew Healey

This week is the anniversary of a boring sounding document that rewrote the map of American infrastructure

Sun, 17 May 2026 11:26:19 -0500

This week is the anniversary of a boring sounding document that rewrote the map of American infrastructure. On May 19, 1857, a chemist named Lammot du Pont was granted U.S. Patent No. 17,321 for an “Improvement in Gunpowder.”

Before that patent, the American industrial machine had a single point of failure. Gunpowder needed potassium nitrate, and the global supply was controlled by the British Empire, sourced from India. Want to blast a tunnel through a mountain or mine the coal that fed your factory? You were at the mercy of a foreign supply chain and whatever geopolitical wind was blowing that month.

I grew up in Carnation, WA, a little dairy and timber town east of Seattle

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:28:16 -0500

I grew up in Carnation, WA, a little dairy and timber town east of Seattle. The Space Needle was this thing on the skyline I stared at as a kid. By the time I was living in the city, I walked past it every day without looking up. The Monorail was a one-mile ride most of us never took except when skipping school or looking for something to do before laser show at the Science Center.

I saw this on today's calendar and couldn't help but think about our "backyard" here in Northwest Arkansas

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 22:43:06 -0500

I saw this on today’s calendar and couldn’t help but think about our “backyard” here in Northwest Arkansas. On March 12, 1894, Coca-Cola was sold in glass bottles for the first time in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Before that day, if you wanted a Coke, you had to stand at a soda fountain. People in the rural areas surrounding Vicksburg wanted Coke, but they couldn’t get it because they weren’t in town. A candy merchant named Joseph Biedenharn fixed that by putting the product in a bottle.