Smithsonian articles from July 2007

Smithsonian archives from July 2007

History lessons: revising the past to better understand it.(FROM THE EDITOR)
July 1, 2007... "I THINK MOST AMERICANS don't realize how close we came to losing the Revolutionary War," says the historian John Ferling, who wrote "100 Days that Shook the World," p. 44. "Most people think that after the Battle of Trenton at the end of 1776,...

I live on Chesapeake Bay ("Beyond Jamestown"), and I'm distressed by what I'm seeing.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... READERS RESPOND TO THE MAY ISSUE I live on Chesapeake Bay ("Beyond Jamestown"), and I'm distressed by what I'm seeing. The natural habitat of the shoreline is being destroyed for housing developments and estates with manicured lawns that...

Fate of the bay.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... WITH A MODERN road atlas and magnifying glass at my side, I read with great pleasure Terence Smith's replication of Capt. John Smith's exploration of Chesapeake Bay. Some years ago the Chesapeake enamored me too, when I explored its shores on a...

Discovering Gilgamesh.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... I FOUND "Epic Hero," about archaeologist George Smith and his discovery of the epic saga of Gilgamesh, most compelling. Like other epic heroes, such as Odysseus, Smith traveled to far-off lands on a quest; he demonstrated superior intelligence;...

Obstinate Edison.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... I DON'T LIKE the current fad of asking, "What would so and so do?" or, in this instance, "What would Edison do?" ("Let There Be Light"). The question betrays an insufficient appreciation for Edison's legendary stubbornness. Edison only liked...

Linnaeus was a bigot.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... I LEARNED MUCH about Carl Linnaeus in Kennedy Warne's glowing tribute to the father of taxonomy ("Organization Man"), but he did not mention that Linnaeus was the first scientist to introduce the concept of race, subdividing human beings into...

Corrections.(Correction notice)
July 1, 2007... "This Month in History" incorrectly stated that the Hindenberg was fueled by hydrogen. Diesel powered the airship and hydrogen provided lift. Alas, lawn seats for Tanglewood concerts ("The Berkshires") are not free, as reported. They cost...

Mystery trees get ID.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... People have long known the location of earth's oldest forest, thanks to an 1869 flash flood that exposed 385-million-year-old fossilized stumps in the eastern New York town of Gilboa. But what the trees looked like was a mystery--until now. Two...

Pounded by pavement.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(rroad map)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... To assess wilderness and open spaces in the lower 48, the U.S. Geological Survey has created this map. It shows the average distance to the nearest road in each county. Dark red indicates the densest road networks, dark blue the sparsest. The...

Observed.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(fiddler crab behavior)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... NAME: Uca terpsichores, a species of fiddler crab. WHAT HE THINKS: "Look at my big claw! Look at the dome of sand I have built over my bachelor burrow! Let's mate!" (Meanwhile, a crab-eating grackle flies overhead.) WHAT SHE THINKS:...

Down for the count.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(world record breath-holding by a loggerhead turtle)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... A loggerhead turtle has set a new world record for breath-holding by a marine vertebrate. The winning time of more than 10 hours shattered the previous record of 7.5 hours, also held by a loggerhead. Lingering in cold water may help the...

Digging in.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(wild wheat seeds plant themselves to the ground)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Wild wheat seeds can actually dig into the ground, according to a new study from the Max Planck Institute in Golm, Germany. Each seed has a pair of long appendages, called "awns," that are normally bent apart (see diagram). When the humidity...

Behind the veil: photographer Alen MacWeeney wanted to see Ireland's Travellers as they were.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)
July 1, 2007... IN THE SUMMER OF 1965, an Irish photographer named Alen MacWeeney came to a field on the outskirts of Dublin that was strewn with scrap metal and stippled with sheds and the small covered wagons the Irish call caravans. Cherry Orchard, as the...

"Mad, stark mad": thirty-five years after "defecting" to the Barbary Coast, the bestselling novelist still loves his city by the bay.(MY KIND OF TOWN)
July 1, 2007... A RECENT EPISODE of "South Park," the animated show on Comedy Central, was devoted to the notion that hybrid-driving liberals in San Francisco had caused a toxic "cloud of smug" to form over the city, threatening the entire nation. That's...

July anniversaries: momentous or merely memorable.(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY)
July 1, 2007... 175 YEARS AGO TO THE SOURCE! Explorer and ethnologist Henry Schoolcraft leads a search for the headwaters of the Mississippi in July 1832, and finds them in a Minnesota lake he dubs Itasca, a contraction of veritas and caput (true head)....

Life on the Web.(FROM THE CASTLE)
July 1, 2007... FOLLOW A BUMBLEBEE in flight, then observe it resting on a sunflower. What is it doing? Why? How does it fit into the natural world? The Smithsonian Institution is a leading partner in an exciting new initiative called the Encyclopedia of Life...

The float builder and the scholar: a top displayman shows a historian how to love a parade.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)
July 1, 2007... WHEN THE CURATOR Larry Bird began researching the history of parades, there was one man he just had to meet: Earl Hargrove, among the nation's premier float makers. Hargrove has fashioned floats for every presidential inaugural since Harry...

The flight stuff: Amelia Earhart brought her own special style--even to her outerwear.(THE OBJECT AT HAND)
July 1, 2007... A FEW STEPS AWAY from a sleek 1928 Lockheed 5B Vega aircraft, a glass display case at the National Air and Space Museum contains a brown leather coat that once belonged to Amelia Earhart, the legendary aviator who disappeared in the South...

Q & A.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Interview)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... The first woman to pilot and command the space shuttle, retired U.S. Air Force colonel EILEEN COLLINS, 50, recently gave a public talk at the Air and Space Museum. She spoke with the magazine's Amy Crawford. WHAT SPARKED YOUR INTEREST IN...

When mushrooms ruled the earth? A new idea about one of the most puzzling life-forms ever.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... It towered over the landscape 400 million years ago. One of the weirdest things that ever existed, it reigned as the tallest land-based organism (reaching at least 28 feet) for some 70 million years. But what was it? Ever since the discovery of...

What's up.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)
July 1, 2007... SOME ROCK Set in a 1960s brooch, this 128.54-carat gem (actual size) is one of the world's largest yellow diamonds. On loan to the Natural History Museum until September 23, Tiffany & Co.'s signature stone has only been worn twice--once by...

Save the Casbah: in Algiers, preservationists race to rescue the storied quarter. But is it too late?
July 1, 2007... "YOU WANT TO SEE what is happening to the Casbah?" the slender man asks in French, as I make my way down a steep stone staircase that leads to the Mediterranean Sea. Before venturing into this storied hillside quarter of Algiers, a labyrinth of...

100 days that shook the world: the all-but-forgotten story of the unlikely hero who ensured victory in the American Revolution.(Nathanael Greene)
July 1, 2007... WINTER CLOUDS SCUDDED OVER NEW WINDSOR, NEW YORK, some 50 miles up the Hudson River from Manhattan, where Gen. George Washington was headquartered. With trees barren and snow on the ground that January 1781, it was a "dreary station," as...

Hopper: mystery. Longing. A whole new way of seeing. A stunning retrospective reminds us why the enigmatic American artist retains his power.(painter Edward Hopper)
July 1, 2007... PAINTING DID NOT COME EASILY TO EDWARD HOPPER. Each canvas represented a long, morose gestation spent in solitary thought. There were no sweeping brushstrokes from a fevered hand, no electrifying eurekas. He considered, discarded and pared down...

Chronicling the ice: long before global warming became a cause celebre, Lonnie Thompson was extracting climate secrets from ancient glaciers. He finds the problem is even more profound than you might have thought.
July 1, 2007... EVEN FROM THE TOP of a 16,000-footpass, Tibet's Naimona'nyi looks formidable, and the closer we get to it, the larger it looms, until, finally, its ice-glazed face disappears behind the steep, rock-strewn ridge we have yet to climb. At 25,242...

Reboot: a photojournalist enchanted by computers takes another look at the soul of some old machines.(Mark Richards)
July 1, 2007... NOT LONG after photographer Mark Richards walked into the Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, California, he was smitten with the vintage adding machines, supercomputers and PCs. In this high-technology museum--home to Google's first...

The puck stops here: mom goes to hockey camp.(THE LAST PAGE)
July 1, 2007... AT 8:30 IN THE MORNING it was 300 degrees out, but there was a pile of snow lying next to the rink entrance. Summer hockey camps always manage to find ice somewhere. Since this camp was for goaltenders ages 6 to 11, most of them were too small...