Smithsonian articles from July 2005

Smithsonian archives from July 2005

The real Robinson Crusoe: he was a pirate, a hothead and a lout, but castaway Alexander Selkirk--the author's ancestor--inspired one of the greatest yarns in literature.
July 1, 2005... Three centuries ago an impetuous Scottish sailor known as Alexander Selkirk--though this wasn't his real name--was languishing off the coast of Chile in a battle-scarred, worm-eaten British ship called the Cinque Ports when he began to argue...

Board rooms: near Portland, Oregon, archaeologists and Indians have built an authentic Chinookan plankhouse like those Lewis and Clark saw.(DIGS)
July 1, 2005... It's still early sunday morning, but the air is filled with the whine of chain saws. At the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, in southwestern Washington State, men wearing jeans, T-shirts and flannel work shirts are cutting cedar logs into...

Making tracks: on the trail of art thieves and elusive elephants.(EDITOR'S NOTE)
July 1, 2005... It's the biggest art heist of modern times and it remains tantalizingly unsolved, with enough red herrings to start a cannery," says Robert Poole, author of "Ripped from the Walls (and the Headlines)," p. 92. "The range of characters is...

Saving Mali's migratory elephants: a new photo library of West Africa's desert elephants is helping researchers track the dwindling herd and protect their imperiled migration routes.
July 1, 2005... Just south of tombouctou, where the sand dunes of the Sahara merge with a scattering of trees and shrubs, live the world's most peripatetic elephants. Mali's desert elephants migrate almost 300 miles in a year, as far as 35 miles in a day, all...

Ripped from the walls (and the headlines): fifteen years after the greatest art theft in modern history the mystery may be unraveling.
July 1, 2005... Most of Boston was sleeping when it happened. At 1:24 a.m. on March 18, 1990, as St. Patrick's Day stragglers wobbled home for the night, a buzzer sounded inside the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. One of two hapless museum guards...

Paris, Mon Amour: for photographer Robert Doisneau, finding an openly affectionate couple in the City of Light was as easy as falling in love.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)
July 1, 2005... In 1950, photographer Robert Doisneau got an assignment from Life to shoot for one of those sentimental stories the weekly magazine was wont to run in those days. Armed with his trusty Rolleiflex, Doisneau, who was already celebrated for his...

Play ball!(JUST LOOKING)
July 1, 2005... PLAY BALL! Perhaps drawn by the crack of a bat as they headed for home before the game's end, Mary McKay Roth, 5, left, and her brothers Will, 8, and Ben, 7, wanted one last peek at the minor league play between the home team Daytona Cubs and...

The Power and the Glory: she bought the electric drill to get a tidier household. Then she found out about the secret sisterhood.(THE LAST PAGE)
July 1, 2005... When i told my friend leslie about my new power drill, she thought I was trying to be funny. We were out walking, and I was thinking about Women's Power to Shape Our Environment and the primal satisfactions that came with attaching tiered...

Egged on.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... i take issue with John Mortimer's description in "Fried Eggs to Savor." It appears to me that the old woman in the Velazquez painting is poaching eggs, not frying them. ANN L. DUBOIS STAMFORD, NEW YORK Many letters have made the...

Candid camera?(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... sally mann's explanation of her controversial, nude photographs of her children ("Model Family") raises some questions. First, Mann said she let her children skinny-dip in the river near their house because there was no one else within five...

Life on earth.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... in the photo on page 82 of scientists testing equipment on Svalbard for future use on Mars, the man lying prone has a rifle pointed straight at him. Those men need to take a hunter-safety course before they are allowed to handle firearms, and I...

The elusive Shoshone: needing horses and a route across the Rockies, the corps must find Sacagawea's people--or risk the fate of the expedition.(LEWIS AND CLARK: 200 YEARS AGO THIS JULY)
July 1, 2005... By mid-july 1805, the corps was desperate to acquire horses--and information--from the Shoshone, the tribe, also known as the Snake Indians, from which interpreter Sacagawea had been abducted five years before. The captains decided that the...

Portrait of injustice: seldom seen for decades, a stark image of two of the wrongfully accused "Scottsboro Boys" comes to light.(AROUND THE MALL: SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)
July 1, 2005... The criminal case with the largest number of trials, retrials, convictions and reversals in American history started in Scottsboro, Alabama, during the throes of the Great Depression. Nine teenagers, who came to be known as the Scottsboro Boys,...

Hurry in.(AROUND THE MALL: SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... View textiles that withstand extreme conditions, including those inside the body (polyester tubing to replace blood vessels), at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City until October 30.

!Azucar! The Cuban expatriate's life in the U.S. began on a bittersweet note.(AROUND THE MALL: SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Celia Cruz)
July 1, 2005... fed up with castro, the Afro-Cuban singing sensation Celia Cruz defected to the United States in 1961. Only a year later her mother died, and Cruz, whose flamboyant stage presence and big, throaty voice would help ignite the salsa music craze,...

Some assembly required.(FROM THE ATTIC)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED Of course there were no directions included in the 34 crates of fossilized dinosaur bones that arrived from Utah at the Smithsonian in 1923. Still, over the next seven years, chief of restoration Norman Boss (right, in...

This month in history: July anniversaries--momentous or merely memorable.
July 1, 2005... 30 YEARS AGO: BIG DIG China reports the discovery, by farmers digging a well, of a vast, buried army of 2,200-year-old terra-cotta soldiers near Xi'an, in July 1975. Some 8,000 figures, arranged in battle formation as though guarding the...

What price glory? On Morris Island, South Carolina, where the nation's legendary African-American fighting force proved its valor in the Civil War, a proposed housing development has ignited a debate over the uses of history.(battle for Fort Wagner )
July 1, 2005... As a crimson sunset spread over a darkening Atlantic Ocean on July 18, 1863, African-American soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers, 650 in all, stood on the shore of South Carolina's Morris Island "like giant statues of marble," an...

Going for the gold: a pop-music confection known as the Village People belted out disco hits in the 1970s that morphed into American standards.(THE OBJECT AT HAND)
July 1, 2005... Gold Record "Y.M.C.A.," 1978 National Museum of the American Indian A visitor to the curvilinear stone mesa that is the new National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) would expect to find classic examples of the art and artifacts of...

Cowboys and artists: each summer models decked out in period dress give artists a picture of life in the Wild West.(POINTS OF INTEREST)
July 1, 2005... The sun has yet to rise on Grant Shearer's 20,000-acre ranch near Wall, South Dakota, but already some 50 guests have gathered along the banks of the Cheyenne River. Loaded down with cameras and film, they wait for dawn--and for 60 or more...

Guiding light: new palm-size computers show videos and maps to lead visitors around--even to a good cup of joe.(SIguides)
July 1, 2005... A trusted guide makes travel all the more rewarding. A good one tells us about what we're seeing, makes sure we're well fed and keeps us from getting lost. Starting this summer, visitors can journey through the Castle and the collections of...

Syria at a crossroads: following a humbling retreat from Lebanon and increasingly at odds with the U.S., the proud Arab nation finds itself at a critical juncture.
July 1, 2005... To get to the kahwaji family's antiques shop in Old Damascus, start at the main corridor of Souk Al Hammadiya, one of the Arab world's oldest markets. Head north along its cobblestone thoroughfares past shops and stalls filled with textiles,...

Tocqueville's America: the French author's piquant observations on American gumption and political hypocrisy sound remarkably contemporary 200 years after his birth.(TRIBUTE)
July 1, 2005... I got the surprise of my life when, at age 36, I walked into the United States consulate in Montreal to apply for a visa and was told I was a U.S. citizen. I was born and raised in Canada, but because my father was born in the States, I'd...

Where are they now? Alvin Toffler: author of Future Shock.(July 1970: THE YEAR WE WERE BORN: A LOOK BACK AT THE WORLD IN SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINES FIRST YEAR)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... alvin toffler remembers July 29, 1970, well. Not only was it his and wife Heidi's 20th wedding anniversary, it was also the day Random House published their book Future Shock. "We had no idea it would be such a success," he says today. "We...

Prince Charles, 21, and his sister, Princess Anne, 19, make their first visit to the United States July 16.(July 1970: THE YEAR WE WERE BORN: A LOOK BACK AT THE WORLD IN SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE'S FIRST YEAR)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... Prince Charles, 21, and his sister, Princess Anne, 19, make their first visit to the United States July 16. Their itinerary includes a Camp David barbecue and a Washington Senators baseball game. "You know that Prince Charles," President Nixon...

Egypt's Aswan High Dam is completed July 21, and the New York Times declares it the "country's greatest engineering work since the construction of the pyramids.".(IN THE NEWS)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... Egypt's Aswan High Dam is completed July 21, and the New York Times declares it the "country's greatest engineering work since the construction of the pyramids." The dam, which regulates the water level in the Nile Valley, prevents floods and...

On July 15, a House investigating committee reports that Army and State Department officers covered up a March 1968 massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians by American soldiers in the hamlet of My Lai.(IN THE NEWS)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... On July 15, a House investigating committee reports that Army and State Department officers covered up a March 1968 massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians by American soldiers in the hamlet of My Lai. Twenty-five officers and enlisted men...

1970 academy awards.(THE LIST)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... Best Picture: Patton Best Actor: George C. Scott, Patton Best Actress: Glenda Jackson, Women in Love Best Supporting Actor: John Mills, Ryan's Daughter Best Supporting Actress: Helen Hayes, Airport Best Director: Franklin...

Comings & goings.(July 1970: THE YEAR WE WERE BORN: A LOOK BACK AT THE WORLD IN SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE'S FIRST YEAR)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... BORN: Jennifer Lopez Singer/Actor, July 24 DIED: Antonio Salazar, 81, Prime Minister of Portugal, July 27

"I don't even think about those things. I just want to keep playing and don't want to stop now.".(July 1970: THE YEAR WE WERE BORN: A LOOK BACK AT THE WORLD IN SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINES FIRST YEAR)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... --Willie Mays, on cracking the 3,000th hit of his major league career, in the July 19 Washington Post.