Embedded Files
The Donora Historical Society is in the news or on TV quite often. Feel free to browse this page for some of our most recent exposures in newspapers, books, magazines and television.
You can also follow us on Facebook under Donora Historical Society and Smog Museum.
You can also follow us on Facebook under Donora Historical Society and Smog Museum.
On Saturday, September 13th, 2014, as part of the Heinz History Center Affiliate Ambassador's series, Smog Museum archivist and curator Brian Charlton presented "Donora and the 1948 Air Quality Crisis" at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh. The presentation was filmed by C-SPAN and was featured on October 12th, 2014 on C-SPAN3 and is expected to air on future dates as well. Click on C-SPAN for additional programming information. You can view the show in its entirety (1 hour 15 minutes) by playing it via our 1948 Smog page.
The Donora Historical Society has been a Heinz History Center Affiliate Program member since 2013 and has worked with the Heinz History Center on a number of projects over the past years.
2013 marks the 65th anniversary of the 1948 Smog. To reinforce our moniker that "Clean Air Started Here" and to commemorate those who lost their lives, the Donora Historical Society is hosting an Environmental Conference on Wednesday, October 30th at the Donora Borough building. This will be an all-day event with morning, afternoon and evening sessions. The morning and afternoon sessions will concentrate on discussions by people from local universities and various industries on what occurred in Donora 65 years ago as well as current environmental concerns that are impacting us today. The evening session will feature the showing of the documentary "Rumor of Blue Sky" as well as discussions on the making of the film led by director Andrew Maietta.
As part of our 2013 grant from Washington County Tourism, you will see TV commercials on KDKA News Channel 2 during the month of October to help publicize this event.
In April 2013, the Donora Historical Society hosted ROOT Sports Pittsburgh to do a story on Donora's favorite son - Stan "The Man" Musial that was to be used during the April 17th game between the hometown Pittsburgh Pirates and Stan's beloved St. Louis Cardinals.
Ultimately the game was not carried by ROOT Sports Pittsburgh but was instead carried regionally in St. Louis by ROOT Sports St. Louis and the MLB Network. During the broadcast of the April 17th game, they used the story from ROOT Sports Pittsburgh to pay tribute to Stan by looking back at the impact Musial had both "on" the field as one of Major League Baseball's greatest players and "off" the field as a great person and loyal Donoran.
In November 2012, the Donora Historical Society hosted a Pioneer Productions film crew from London, England for three days to film the most recent documentary on the 1948 Smog event.
The documentary debuted on Sunday, June 16, 2013, on The Weather Channel's nine-part series "Weather That Changed the World" as Episode #3 and titled "Pennsylvania's Fatal Smog". Click on The Weather Channel link for the back story.
The Donora Historical Society and Smog Museum was featured on The Travel Channel on November 1, 2011, retelling the story of Bill Schempp and the oxygen tanks that he used during the 1948 Smog event in Donora. The one-hour show is called "Mysteries at the Museum." Check the Travel Channel website for the show titled "Eastland Disaster and Smuttynose Murders" to see when the story may be shown again. The 1948 Smog story was one of maybe five or six stories featured and started maybe 20 minutes into the hour-long show.
The Weather Channel featured Donora during the 1948 Smog incident in their series called "When Weather Changed History." The show that featured Donora was titled "Killer Smog - Weather Conditions Lead to Catastrophe".
PBS featured a documentary titled "Rumor of Blue Sky" that chronicled the 1948 Smog disaster through compelling remembrances of twenty-five elderly survivors. Recounts one of the worst environmental tragedies in U.S. history and Donora's dramatic contribution to clean air legislation. Check out our Merchandise page and purchase the DVD version today.
In 2011, the Donora Historical Society and some of Bruce Dreisbach's photos related to Palmer Park were featured in an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper. Click on link Tribune-Review Palmer Park to read the article and view some of the photos.
The Shutterbug Magazine - December 2012 issue featured an article on our Bruce Dreisbach glass plate negative collection and project from 2010. The article was written by J. Michael Krivyanski and is titled, "Bruce Dreisbach's Photographic Record - A Treasure Of Images From A Pennsylvania Town." Click on link Shutterbug Magazine - Dreisbach Photos to read the article and view some of the photos.
The Donora Historical Society and Cement City were featured in articles in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper about our Home and Walking Tours in 2011, 2013 and 2014. Click on Post-Gazette - Cement City 2011, Post-Gazette - Cement City 2013 or Post-Gazette - Cement City 2014 to read the articles. You can read more about Cement City and our Home and Walking Tours on our Cement City page.
In 2011, the Donora Historical Society and our Veteran's Day display were featured in an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper. Click on link Post-Gazette - Veteran's Day in Donora to read the article.
In 2014, the Donora Historical Society and museum curator and archivist Brian Charlton were featured in an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper. Click on link Post-Gazette - Brian Charlton to read the article.
In 2011, another book about Stan Musial - Baseball's Perfect Knight was released by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper. The Donora Historical Society helped with research and photos. At this time, we do not sell this particular book at the museum.
The fall 2013 edition of the Western Pennsylvania History magazine had an article on our National Historic District: Cement City, written by Society member, museum curator and Cement City resident Brian Charlton. The article is titled, "Cement City: Thomas Edison's Experiment With Worker's Housing In Donora." This magazine is the region's oldest continuously published magazine since 1918 by the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh.
The Donora Historical Society and Cement City were featured in articles in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper about our Home and Walking Tours in 2012 and 2014. Click on Tribune-Review - Cement City 2012 or Tribune-Review - Cement City 2014 to read the articles. You can read more about Cement City and our Home and Walking Tours on our Cement City page.
In 2012, the Donora Historical Society and our Bruce Dreisbach Collection were featured in an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper about our story in the Shutterbug Magazine mentioned above. Click on the link Tribune-Review MV Sunday - Dreisbach/Shutterbug to read the article.
In 2014, the Donora Historical Society and our Founding of Donora presentation were featured in an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper to recognize the Bicentennial of the town that existed before Donora called West Columbia that was founded in 1814. Click on the link Tribune-Review MV Sunday - Founding of Donora to read the article.
In 2014, the Donora Historical Society and our Second Annual Environmental Conference were featured in an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper about Digital Storytelling in connecting with history and our partnerships with Cal U of PA, the Heinz History Center, and Donora native Kim Moses. Click on the link Tribune-Review MV Sunday - Environmental Conference 2014 to read the article.
In 2014, the Donora Historical Society and Smog Museum was featured in The Public Historian - Public History and Environmental Sustainability (Vol. 36, Number 3, August 2014 - published by The University of California Press). The article is titled, "Reflections on the Public Interpretation of Regional Environmental History in Western Pennsylvania" and was written by Chris J. Magoc - Professor and Chair of the History Department at Mercyhurst University in Erie, PA. A co-founder of the university's Green Team, Magoc teaches courses in Environmental History and directs the Mercyhurst Public History program. The article highlights the Historical Society's ongoing efforts to preserve the memory of the 1948 Smog and received national recognition: Honorable Mention for G. Wesley Johnson Award of the National Council on Public History for best article in the journal for 2014.
In June 2015, executive producer Harvey Moshman and host Will Clinger of Wild Travels TV from Chicago visited the Smog Museum to learn more about the 1948 Smog. Wild Travels is a distinctive half-hour travel series from the makers of the Emmy-award winning Wild Chicago, celebrating the uniqueness of America in its unusual, eccentric, and downright quirky people, places and events...all across the USA. The show aired in the Chicago area and the Midwest in July 2016 and was well received. Click on the link Wild Travels TV - Smog Museum to view our TV show segment or on link Wild Travels TV to learn more about the show in general.
In March 2016, the Donora Historical Society and Smog Museum was featured in the Pittsburgh Quarterly magazine in the Worth the Drive article titled "Boom, bust and disaster - The fascinating story of Donora, PA" by Barbara Eichenlaub. Click on the link Pittsburgh Quarterly - Spring 2016 to read the article.
To Donate to the Donora Historical Society and Smog Museum, please use our PayPal option to the right.
If you would like to add a note along with your donation, please consider sending an email to:donorahistoricalsociety@gmail.com
If you would like to add a note along with your donation, please consider sending an email to:donorahistoricalsociety@gmail.com
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