The Earthquake That Invented Santa Barbara
How a 6.8 magnitude earthquake in 1925 destroyed an ordinary California city and a small group of architects replaced it with a Spanish fantasy that never existed.
• Matt Dennis
The Blowout That Started the Environmental Movement
On January 28, 1969, a Union Oil well ruptured on Platform A in the Santa Barbara Channel. The 100,000 barrels that followed changed American law forever.
• Matt Dennis
The Fishing Village They Burned
In the 1890s, a thriving Chinese fishing community worked Santa Barbara's coast. The city erased them — first by law, then by fire, then by forgetting.
• Matt Dennis
The Tomol: Naval Engineering Before the Europeans Showed Up
The Chumash built plank canoes from driftwood and tar, crossed 25 miles of open ocean, and maintained a maritime trade network for 2,000 years. The engineering was not primitive.
• Matt Dennis
Rum Row: How the Channel Islands Kept Santa Barbara Drinking
During Prohibition, the Channel Islands became staging areas for a sophisticated bootlegging operation that outran the Coast Guard and supplied the entire South Coast.
• Matt Dennis
Third World Man: The Beautiful End of the Affair
How a salvaged track became the perfect eulogy for the Gaucho era, featuring Larry Carlton's weeping guitar and the final silence of the machines.
• Matt Dennis
Command and Service Module: Your Ride Home from the Moon
Inside the spacecraft systems that kept astronauts alive for 8 days and 240,000 miles
• Matt Dennis
The Apollo Guidance Computer: Programming the Moon Landing
How a 16-bit computer with less memory than a greeting card guided astronauts to the moon and back
• Matt Dennis
Engineering the Lunar Module: The Most Tested Vehicle Never Flown on Earth
How Grumman built a tissue-paper spacecraft with one engine that absolutely could not fail
• Matt Dennis