Smithsonian articles from September 2005

Smithsonian archives from September 2005

Lesson of a lifetime: her bold experiment to teach Iowa third graders about racial prejudice divided townspeople and thrust her onto the national stage. Decades later, Jane Elliott's students say the ordeal changed them for good.
September 1, 2005... On the morning of April 5, 1968, a Friday, Steven Armstrong stepped into Jane Elliott's third-grade classroom in Riceville, Iowa. "Hey, Mrs. Elliott," Steven yelled as he slung his books on his desk. "They shot that King yesterday. Why'd they...

The best offense: a buried Civil War battery in a Kentucky suburb tells of valiant men standing at the ready ... and waiting ... and waiting....(DIGS)(Battery Hooper)
September 1, 2005... On a saturday morning last September, the Storer House in Fort Wright, Kentucky, was cordoned off with yellow tape. Dozens of volunteers--college students in work boots, white-haired seniors slathered in sunscreen, parents and children--were on...

Louis Armstrong before he was Satchmo? A youthful Ella? For photographs of musicians great or obscure, just about everyone turns to Frank Driggs, jazz man.
September 1, 2005... There's a certain way jazz musicians from the 1930s pose for photographs, half- turned to face the camera, symmetrically arrayed around the bandleader, who can be identified by his regal smile and proximity to the microphone. Publicity stills...

Formative years: early lessons last a lifetime.(EDITOR'S NOTE)
September 1, 2005... Daniel Glick fell in love with animals when he lived in Uganda for a year beginning in 1967. He was 12 and his mother was conducting dissertation research on languages there. "We were able to visit many of the game parks of East Africa before...

Ties that bind: at last, all parties were ready to make peace in the Middle East. Whoops ... not so fast.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)
September 1, 2005... Seconds before showtime, Bill Clinton received an urgent warning from a young aide: "Mr. President, you need to straighten your tie." Clinton reached for his neck. Taking a cue from their host, three Middle East leaders reached for theirs....

In the hot seat.(JUST LOOKING)
September 1, 2005... Watson Davis, photographing for Science Service, a nonprofit education group, captured perennial Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, 65 (seated), as he fielded questions from attorney Clarence Darrow, 68 (standing), at an...

The ambush that changed history: an amateur archaeologist discovers the field where wily Germanic warriors halted the spread of the Roman Empire.
September 1, 2005... "This is the soil of 2,000 years ago, where we are standing now," Susanne Wilbers-Rost was saying as a young volunteer pried a small, dark clod out of it. Wilbers-Rost, a specialist in early German archaeology, peered through wire-rimmed...

Geek to me: how I learned to stop fretting and love a computer nerd.(THE LAST PAGE)
September 1, 2005... I had been going out with him for about four days. It was summer, and we were lying on a blanket in the park, shaded by the whispering leaves of a tall maple. I was trying to remember the age of a mutual friend. Without saying a word, he...

Due diligence.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2005... As residents of a community close to Morris Island, in South Carolina ("What Price Glory?"), we are highly aware of the dangers concerning construction there. Development along the South Carolina coast has often been allowed to flourish without...

Appraising Syria.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2005... In stephen glain's "Syria at a Crossroads," Hezbollah is described as a militant organization that "from the 1970s... waged a vicious and ultimately successful guerrilla war against the Israeli occupation of Lebanon." The U.S. State...

Gay pride.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2005... It strains credulity that Owen Edwards' "Going for the Gold," about the Village People and their impact on the disco scene of the '70s and '80s, did not have even one reference to the gay community. The Village People would not have been...

No DUH.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2005... in "tocqueville's America," Clell Bryant writes that Tocqueville's last name, when standing alone, should appear without the "de" because he was a nobleman, whereas the "de" is kept for the "lower-born" de Gaulle. But the inclusion or omission...

Cold and hungry: when snow blankets the mountains, the expedition is once again imperiled.(LEWIS AND CLARK: 200 years ago this September)
September 1, 2005... Equipped with horses from the Shoshone, the corps prepares to cross the Bitterroot Mountains in present-day Idaho. But winter is fast approaching and there is little to eat. September 4, 1805 [Capt. William Clark] A verry cold morning...

Snapping up the past: want to get Grandma and grandpa's pictures into the Smithsonian? One Curator just may be interested.(AROUND THE MALL: SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)
September 1, 2005... When michelle delaney started to research World War II photography two years ago, she discovered a hole in the National Museum of American History's archives. There were hundreds of pictures by well-known photojournalists such as Life's...

Panda-monium.(AROUND THE MALL: SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Mei Xiang, 7, gave birth July 9 to the first giant panda born at the National Zoo in more than a decade. The delivery seemed to surprise the 245-pound Mei--her male cub, typical for a giant panda, weighed only about 3 to 5 ounces at birth--but...

Smash hit: on hand for a historic celestial crash, an aging satellite takes a final bow.(AROUND THE MALL: SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)
September 1, 2005... When NASA steered its Deep Impact probe into a comet on July 4, capturing imaginations worldwide with a spectacular crash, a six-year-old Harvard-Smithsonian satellite taken out of hibernation just for the occasion had a front row ticket to the...

Who's counting? 32.(AROUND THE MALL: SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Student desks kept at the National Museum of American History EVOKE school-day memories of stashed wads of gum, graffiti and duck-and-cover safety drills. Rows of sturdy, iron-framed desks (left, c. 1910 from a Cleveland, Ohio, classroom)...

70 years ago: dam it!(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY: SEPTEMBER ANNIVERSARIES--MOMENTOUS OR MERELY MEMORABLE)(Hoover Dam completed )(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Hailing the builders of an "engineering victory of the first order," Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates the completed Hoover Dam September 30, 1935. The towering span across the Colorado River--at 726 feet it is then the world's tallest dam--takes...

75 years ago: tale of the tape.(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY: SEPTEMBER ANNIVERSARIES--MOMENTOUS OR MERELY MEMORABLE)(3M engineer Richard Drew's "Scotch" tape )(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... In a quest to create a waterproof tape, 3M engineer Richard Drew, 30, tries coating a new material called cellophane with adhesive. After a year of tinkering, on September 8, 1930, Drew sends a batch of his new "Scotch" tape to a food-packaging...

225 years ago: major betrayal.(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY: SEPTEMBER ANNIVERSARIES--MOMENTOUS OR MERELY MEMORABLE)(Gen. Benedict Arnold's treacherous acts)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... In an act of treachery that makes his name a synonym for "traitor," Maj. Gen. Benedict Arnold (near right), hero of the Revolutionary War battle of Saratoga and commander of the American fort at West Point, turns over drawings of the strategic...

90 years ago: all dolled up.(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY: SEPTEMBER ANNIVERSARIES--MOMENTOUS OR MERELY MEMORABLE)(Johnny Gruelle patents design for Raggedy Ann)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Inspired by his ailing daughter Marcella's favorite rag doll, cartoonist Johnny Gruelle patents the design for Raggedy Ann on September 7, 1915. Ann's popularity takes off when, in 1918, Gruelle begins publishing a series of moralizing...

170 years ago: evolutionary idea.(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY: SEPTEMBER ANNIVERSARIES--MOMENTOUS OR MERELY MEMORABLE)(Charles Darwin reaches the Galapagos Islands)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... While circling the world in the HMS Beagle, naturalist Charles Darwin reaches the Galapagos Islands in September 1835. Amazed that "islands formed of precisely the same rocks, placed under a quite similar climate, rising to a nearly equal...

20 years ago: lost and found.(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY: SEPTEMBER ANNIVERSARIES--MOMENTOUS OR MERELY MEMORABLE)(Robert Ballard discovers the Titanic)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... American oceanographer Robert Ballard discovers the Titanic 2.5 miles underwater on September 1, 1985. The 883-foot vessel, touted on its launch as "unsinkable," has lain submerged since ramming an iceberg in the North Atlantic April 14, 1912....

John Lennon's first album: a recently acquired stamp collection opens a new page on the teenage Beatle-to-be.(THE OBJECT AT HAND)
September 1, 2005... It's a given that boys just want to be cool. The definition may change from generation to generation, but the need seems hard-wired in the male psyche. As an observant father, I noticed that somewhere between third and fourth grade, my son's...

Fuel for thought: cars that run on vegetable oil? Do-it-yourselfers and entrepreneurs alike fill 'er up with the nation's fastest-growing alternative propellant.(PHENOMENA & CURIOSITIES)
September 1, 2005... Every few weeks, Etta Kantor goes to a Chinese restaurant and fills a couple of five-gallon pails with used cooking oil. Back in her garage, the 59-year-old philanthropist and grandmother strains it through a cloth filter and then pours it into...

On not naming names: the reporter was given a choice: identify his confidential sources or go to jail. He chose jail.(PRESENCE OF MIND)
September 1, 2005... The story that would send me to jail for refusing to name confidential sources 27 years ago began with a letter: three typewritten pages that would not only change my life and the lives of others but also lead to a blistering clash between the...

New faces of 2006: artists, emerging and renowned alike, will vie to display their works in the National Portrait Gallery when it reopens next July.(From the SECRETARY)
September 1, 2005... Portraits can reveal to us what is most singular and significant about a person merely by inviting us to look closely at the individual's unique face, form and body. These details, and the settings and the clothes worn by the subjects, can...

Navigating Siberia: a 2,300-mile boat trip down the Lena River, one of the last great unspoiled waterways, is a journey into Russia's dark past--and perhaps its future as well.
September 1, 2005... We shoved off under the weeping sky of a late June dawn, the frost-scarred concrete tenements of Ust-Kut looming, unlikely spectators for the start of an expedition down Russia's most pristine major river. Here, at least, the Lena River, which...

Back from the brink: not every endangered species is doomed. Thanks to tough laws, dedicated researchers, and plenty of money and effort, success stories abound.(Smithsonian)
September 1, 2005... A cheerful endangered species story? It's as rare as an ivory-billed woodpecker. Yet the recently reported sighting of this "ghost bird," long believed extinct, has driven home the message that not all such stories end badly. So we looked for...

Richard Bach: author Jonathan Livingston Seagull.(WHERE ARE THEY NOW?)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... "suddenly, I was on the cover of Time. And all these people are asking, 'What did you have for breakfast?'" says author Richard Bach today of his flurry of fame after the publication of Jonathan Livingston Seagull in September 1970. The fable,...

On September 28, the House approves a $60 million funding package for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.(September 1970: THE YEAR WE WERE BORN: A LOOK BACK AT THE WORLD IN SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE'S FIRST YEAR)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... On September 28, the House approves a $60 million funding package for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The corporation's recently formed network, Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS, hits the airwaves the following month, offering up...

Forty-five-year-old peanut farmer and former Georgia state senator Jimmy Carter wins the state's Democratic gubernatorial nomination against incumbent Carl E. Sanders September 23.(IN THE NEWS)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Forty-five-year-old peanut farmer and former Georgia state senator Jimmy Carter wins the state's Democratic gubernatorial nomination against incumbent Carl E. Sanders September 23. Carter went on to take the election and serve as Georgia's...

On September 29, President Nixon signs a bill authorizing $20 million to purchase 58,398 acres of private land to add to the 1.4 million acres of Everglades National Park in South Florida.(IN THE NEWS)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... On September 29, President Nixon signs a bill authorizing $20 million to purchase 58,398 acres of private land to add to the 1.4 million acres of Everglades National Park in South Florida. UNESCO listed the park as a World Heritage Site in...

1970 Bestselling Albums.(THE LIST)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... 1. Bridge Over Troubled Water / Simon & Garfunkel 2. Deja Vu / Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young 3. McCartney / Paul McCartney 4. Let It Be / The Beatles (soundtrack) 5. Woodstock (soundtrack) 6. Blood, Sweat & Tears 3 / Blood,...

Comings & goings.(September 1970: THE YEAR WE WERE BORN: A LOOK BACK AT THE WORLD IN SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE'S FIRST YEAR)
September 1, 2005... BORN: Macy Gray, singer September 6 DIED: Gamal Abdel Nasser, 52 Egyptian president, September 28 DIED: Jimi Hendrix, 27 Musician, September 18 DIED: Vince Lombardi, 57 Football coach, September 3