h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Please consider the following sentence from the Edited Guide entry under discussion:

"One year a terrible infestation of boll weevils destroyed the majority of Alabama's cotton crop thus forcing the state to diversify its economy, and began to invest in other industries."

That sentence is at least as oversized and ornery as the bronze boll weevil in Enterprise. May I suggest:

"One year a severe boll weevil infestation destroyed the majority of Alabama's cotton crop. With no sure way of preventing a recurrence of the disaster, the state was forced to diversify its economy."

The historical assertions made or implied in this article are a little dubious. F'rinstance, it's not as if Alabama had never seen a factory before the decade of the 1910s. The 1810s, maybe. Most of the state was still part of the Creek Indian Nation at that time, and the principle industry was processing deerskins for the European market. (Those yellow buckskin breeches were all the rage. Devilishly handsome.)

Here's an ironworks - http://www.tannehill.org/ - that dates back to 1830. One of the earlier ones.