History & Archaeology | World History | Smithsonian.com

When an Army of Artists Fooled Hitler

Tue, 21 May 2013 03:22:23 GMT

Shortly after the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944, two Frenchmen on bicycles managed to cross the perimeter of the United States Army’s 23rd Headquarters Special Troops and what they saw astounded them. Four American soldiers had picked up a 40-ton Sherman tank and were turning it in place. Soldier Arthur Shilstone says, “They looked at me, and they were looking for answers, and I finally said: ‘The Americans are very strong.’” Patriotic pride aside, the men of the 23rd were not equipped with super-human strength. They did, however, have inflatable tanks. Shilstone was one of 1,100 soldiers who formed the unit, also known as the Ghost Army. They were artists

Europe’s Hypocritical History of Cannibalism

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 02:12:28 GMT

In 2001, a lonely computer technician living in the countryside in Northern Germany advertised online for a well-built man willing to participate in a mutually satisfying sexual act. Armin Meiwes’ notice was similar to many others on the Internet except for a rather important detail: The requested man must be willing to be killed and eaten. Meiwes didn’t have to look far. Two hundred and thirty miles away in Berlin, an engineer called Bernd Brandes agreed to travel to Meiwes’ farmhouse. There, a gory video later found by police documented Brandes’ consensual participation in the deadly dinner. The cannibalism was both a shock to the German public and a conundrum to

Curses! Archduke Franz Ferdinand and His Astounding Death Car

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 02:29:03 GMT

A contemporary painting depicting—rather sensationally—the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie. The events surrounding their deaths have attracted abundant rumor and legend, none stranger than the suggestion that the car that they were murdered in was cursed. It’s hard to think of another event in the troubled 20th century that had quite the shattering impact of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. The archduke was heir to the throne of the tottering Austro-Hungarian empire; his killers—a motley band of amateurish students—were Serbian nationalists (or possibly Yugoslav nationalists; historians remain divided on the topic) who

Edinburgh’s Mysterious Miniature Coffins

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 03:23:22 GMT

The “fairy coffins” discovered on Arthur’s Seat, a hill above Edinburgh, in 1836. Were they magical symbols, sailors’ memorials—or somehow linked to the city’s infamous mass murderers, Burke and Hare? Photo: National Museum of Scotland. It may have been Charles Fort, in one of his more memorable passages, who described the strange discovery best: London Times, July 20, 1836: That, early in July, 1836, some boys were searching for rabbits’ burrows in the rocky formation, near Edinburgh, known as Arthur’s Seat. In the side of a cliff, they came upon some thin sheets of slate, which they pulled out. Little cave. Seventeen tiny coffins. Three

Pay No Attention to the Spies on the 23rd Floor

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 04:41:05 GMT

The radio room on the top floor of the Hotel Viru in Tallinn, Estonia hasn’t been touched since the last KGB agent to leave turned out the lights in 1991. A sign stenciled on the door outside reads “Zdes' Nichevo Nyet”: There Is Nothing Here. The floor inside is yellowed linoleum. A cheap orange typewriter still has a sheet of paper in it; sheets filled with typed notes spill off the table and onto the floor. The dial of a light-blue telephone on the particleboard desk has been smashed. There’s a discarded gas mask on the desk and an olive-green cot in the corner. The ashtray is full of cigarette butts, stubbed out by nervous fingers more than 20 years ago. Mysteri

The Top Ten Most Influential Travel Books

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 06:21:33 GMT

William H.H. Murray's guidebook to the Adirondacks “kindled a thousand camp fires and taught a thousand pens how to write of nature,” inspiring droves of American city-dwellers to venture into the wild and starting a back-to-nature movement that endures to this day. Of course, Murray's slender volume was part of a great literary tradition. For more than two millennia, travel books have had enormous influence on the way we have approached the world, transforming once-obscure areas into wildly popular destinations. A detailed selection would fill a library. So what follows is a brazenly opinionated short-list of travel classics—some notorious, some barely remembered—

Kon-Tiki Sails Again

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 06:00:00 GMT

The most harrowing scene in Kon-Tiki, the new Oscar-nominated Norwegian film about the greatest sea voyage of modern times, turns out to be a fish story. In the 2012 reconstruction of this 1947 adventure, six amateur Scandinavian sailors—five of whom are tall, slim and valiant—build a replica of an ancient pre-Incan raft, christen it Kon-Tiki and sail westward from Peru along the Humboldt Current for French Polynesia, more than 3,700 nautical miles away. In mid-passage, their pet macaw is blown overboard and gobbled up by a big bad shark. During the scene in ques- tion, one of the tall and slim and valiant is so enraged by the bird’s death that he thrusts his bare hands

Remembering the Last Great Worldwide Sailing Expedition

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 06:00:00 GMT

At 3 p.m., August 18, 1838, six ships got under way on the ebb tide and made for the Cape Henry Lighthouse in Norfolk, Virginia. The vessels were packed with books, the latest scientific and navigational equipment, and a crew of 346 men—including a linguist, a mineralogist, two botanists and two artists. Behind them lay the young, ambitious United States. Ahead lay four arduous years at sea and almost 87,000 miles of ocean. Thus was the launch of the great United States South Seas Exploring Expedition, 175 years ago this summer, and it was as bold a venture as a mission to Mars would be today. The commander was a brilliant but stern 40-year-old Navy lieutenant named Charles Wilkes,

Kon Artist?

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 06:00:00 GMT

One of the first lessons you learn going into the field as an anthropologist, archaeologist or journalist is never to come back empty-handed. The cost of the expedition, the need to gratify sponsors, the urge to make a name, all turn up the pressure to get the story. So it’s easy to forget the second great lesson of fieldwork: beware of a story that’s just a little too good. Thor Heyerdahl, who died in April at the age of 87, spent much of an active and sometimes inspiring life in the thrall of one good story. He believed that, long before Columbus, early ocean travelers—tall, fair-skinned, redheaded Vikings much like himself—spread human culture to the most remote

The Vengeance of Ivarr the Boneless

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 08:54:03 GMT

Vikings as portrayed in a 19th-century source: fearsome warriors and sea raiders. Ninth-century Scandinavia has had good press in recent years. As late as the 1950s, when Kirk Douglas filmed his notorious clunker The Vikings—a movie that featured lashings of fire and pillage, not to mention Tony Curtis clad in an ahistorical and buttocks-skimming leather jerkin—most popular histories still cast the Denmark and Norway of the Dark Ages as nations overflowing with bloodthirsty warriors who were much given to horned helmets and drunken ax-throwing contests. If they weren’t worshiping the pagan gods of Asgard, these Vikings were sailing their longships up rivers to sack monasteries while ra

Why the Department Store Brought Freedom for the Turn of the Century Woman

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 03:48:22 GMT

The new series “Mr. Selfridge” begins airing March 31 on PBS. Historian Amy Henderson of the National Portrait Gallery covers the best of pop culture and recently wrote about the film Cabaret. For Downton Abbey fans wondering how to spend their time until season four begins next year, PBS is offering a little something to dull the pain. Starting March 31st, we’ll be able to indulge our frothy fantasies with “Mr. Selfridge,” a new series replete with Edwardian finery, intricate plots and engaging actors. Inspired by Lindy Woodhead’s 2007 biography, Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge, about department store magnate Harry Gordon Selfridge, the new Masterpie

The Most Audacious Australian Prison Break of 1876

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 06:04:00 GMT

The Irish Fenian prisoners known as the Fremantle Six. Photos: Wikipedia The plot they hatched was as audacious as it was impossible—a 19th-century raid as elaborate and preposterous as any Ocean’s Eleven script. It was driven by two men—a guilt-ridden Irish Catholic nationalist, who’d been convicted and jailed for treason in England before being exiled to America, and a Yankee whaling captain—a Protestant from New Bedford, Massachusetts—with no attachment to the former’s cause, but a firm belief that it was “the right thing to do.” Along with a third man—an Irish secret agent posing as an American millionaire—they devised a plan to sail halfway around the world to Fremantle, Australi

The Secret Plot to Rescue Napoleon by Submarine

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 05:12:36 GMT

Tom Johnson, the famous smuggler, adventurer, and inventor of submarines, sketched in 1834 for the publication of Scenes and Stories by a Clergyman in Debt. Tom Johnson was one of those extraordinary characters that history throws up in times of crisis. Born in 1772 to Irish parents, he made the most of the opportunities that presented themselves and was earning his own living as a smuggler by the age of 12. At least twice, he made remarkable escapes from prison. When the Napoleonic Wars broke out, his well-deserved reputation for extreme daring saw him hired–despite his by then extensive criminal record–to pilot a pair of covert British naval expeditions. But Johnson also has a stra

Top Ten Afterlife Journeys of Notable People

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:08:20 GMT

For more than 500 years, the whereabouts of King Richard III of England, who was killed in the one of the last battles of the War of the Roses, were unknown. A skeleton was dug up in a parking lot in Leicester late last year, and last month, archeologists confirmed the centuries-old corpse belonged to the king. Death wasn’t the end for Richard, as experts study his remains and historians argue where they should finally be put to rest. It wasn’t over for these historical figures either, as told in great detail by Bess Lovejoy in “Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses,” out March 12. These men’s unfortunate corpses were hacked, stolen, transporte

The True-Life Horror that Inspired Moby-Dick

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 03:50:59 GMT

Herman Melville, circa 1860. Photo: Wikipedia In July of 1852, a 32-year-old novelist named Herman Melville had high hopes for his new novel, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, despite the book’s mixed reviews and tepid sales. That month he took a steamer to Nantucket for his first visit to the Massachusetts island, home port of his novel’s mythic protagonist, Captain Ahab, and his ship, the Pequod. Like a tourist, Melville met local dignitaries, dined out and took in the sights of the village he had previously only imagined. And on his last day on Nantucket he met the broken-down 60-year-old man who had captained the Essex, the ship that had been attacked and sunk by a sperm whale

Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet Sniper

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 01:26:56 GMT

Lyudmila Pavlichenko arrived in Washington, D.C., in late 1942 as little more than a curiosity to the press, standing awkwardly beside her translator in her Soviet Army uniform. She spoke no English, but her mission was obvious. As a battle-tested and highly decorated lieutenant in the Red Army’s 25th Rifle Division, Pavlichenko had come on behalf of the Soviet High Command to drum up American support for a “second front” in Europe. Joseph Stalin desperately wanted the Western Allies to invade the continent, forcing the Germans to divide their forces and relieve some of the pressure on Soviet troops. She visited with President Franklin Roosevelt, becoming the first Soviet citizen to

The Last Massive Exploding Meteor Hit Earth in 1908, Leveling 800 Square Miles of Forest

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 04:54:00 GMT

Trees blown over by the shock wave of the 1908 Tunguska meteor. Photo: Vokrug Sveta / Wikimedia Commons Early this morning in Russia, when a meteor broke up a few dozen kilometers above ground, its supersonic flight and mid-air death generated shock waves that rattled houses, broke windows, and sent dozens to the hospital. The meteor’s break-up released energy equivalent to a few hundred thousand tons of TNT. But while it was surely scary for those whose heads it passed over, compared to a disaster that took place a few thousand miles to the east more than 100 years ago, today’s meteor was rather puny. On June 30, 1908, says NASA, a truly massive meteor exploded near the Pod

The Battle Over Richard III’s Bones…And His Reputation

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 06:34:32 GMT

Richard III may have died an unloved king, humiliated in death, tossed naked into a tiny grave and battered by history. But with two British cities trying to claim the last Plantagenet king’s remains 500 years after his death, maybe his reputation is finally turning a corner. The discovery of his remains last fall (and the confirmation of the results this week) was the culmination of a four-year search instigated by Phillipa Langley of the Richard III Society. Both the search and the discovery were unprecedented: “We don’t normally lose our kings,” says Langley. But it’s perhaps not too surprising that Richard’s bones were misplaced. Richard gained and

The Rise and Fall of Nikola Tesla and his Tower

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 07:20:28 GMT

Nikola Tesla. Image courtesy of LIbrary of Congress By the end of his brilliant and tortured life, the Serbian physicist, engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla was penniless and living in a small New York City hotel room. He spent days in a park surrounded by the creatures that mattered most to him—pigeons—and his sleepless nights working over mathematical equations and scientific problems in his head. That habit would confound scientists and scholars for decades after he died, in 1943. His inventions were designed and perfected in his imagination. Tesla believed his mind to be without equal, and he wasn’t above chiding his contemporaries, such as Thomas Edison, who once hired him. “If E

For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of WWII

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 03:56:17 GMT

Siberian summers do not last long. The snows linger into May, and the cold weather returns again during September, freezing the taiga into a still life awesome in its desolation: endless miles of straggly pine and birch forests scattered with sleeping bears and hungry wolves; steep-sided mountains; white-water rivers that pour in torrents through the valleys; a hundred thousand icy bogs. This forest is the last and greatest of Earth's wildernesses. It stretches from the furthest tip of Russia's arctic regions as far south as Mongolia, and east from the Urals to the Pacific: five million square miles of nothingness, with a population, outside a handful of towns, that amounts to only a few t

For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 08:37:00 GMT

The Siberian taiga in the Abakan district. Six members of the Lykov family lived in this remote wilderness for more than 40 years–utterly isolated and more than 150 miles from the nearest human settlement. Siberian summers do not last long. The snows linger into May, and the cold weather returns again during September, freezing the taiga into a still life awesome in its desolation: endless miles of straggly pine and birch forests scattered with sleeping bears and hungry wolves; steep-sided mountains; white-water rivers that pour in torrents through the valleys; a hundred thousand icy bogs. This forest is the last and greatest of Earth’s wildernesses. It stretches from the

The History of Rocket Science

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 07:26:44 GMT

“Rocket science” is synonymous with intellectual complexity, but new research shows that rocketry owes its existence to baffled Chinese alchemists and a party trick that went horribly wrong. Previous scholarship places the rocket’s origins in China during the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960-1279). The first known use of the military rocket occurred in 1232 when the Chinese used fei huo tsiang (flying fire lances) against Mongols besieging the city of Kai-fung-fu. But that weapon didn’t come out of the blue, and scholars have long craved details about its development. Who invented the first rocket and the gunpowder that fueled it? Was the rocket conceived from the very begi

“The Grave Looked So Miserable”

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 03:49:48 GMT

The funeral of James Idle in the village of Hullavington, on August 29, 1914. Picture the British countryside and the chances are that you are picturing the unmatched beauty of the Cotswolds, in England’s green heart, west of London. Picture the Cotswolds, and you have in your mind’s eye a place like Hullavington: a handful of cottages, some thatched, but all clustered around a village green, a duck pond and a church. The latter will most likely be ancient, 600 or 700 years old, and its graveyard will be filled with generation after generation of villagers, the same family names carved on tombstones that echo down the centuries even as they weather into slabs of rock. Visi

What’s Inside a 2,000-Year-Old, Shipwreck-Preserved Roman Pill?

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 08:01:00 GMT

Though submerged in a shipwreck for millennia, the ancient Roman medicinal tablets were kept sealed in tin containers (left), ensuring the pills inside remained dry (right). Image via PNAS/Giachi et. al. Around 120 B.C.E., the Relitto del Pozzino, a Roman shipping vessel, sank off the coast of Tuscany. More than two millennia later, in the 1980s and 90s, a team sent by the Archeological Superintendency of Tuscany began to excavate the ruins, hauling up planks of rotting wood. “It wasn’t an easy task. The wreck is covered by marine plants and their roots. This makes it hard to excavate it,” underwater archaeologist Enrico Ciabatti told Discovery News in 2010. “

Romans Did All Sorts of Weird Things in The Public Baths—Like Getting Their Teeth Cleaned

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 08:13:00 GMT

Photo: Flyin Zi What sort of things have you lost to a swimming pool drain? For ancient Romans enjoying a day at the bathhouse, the list of items includes jewelry (which many women today can probably relate to), as well as less obvious items such as teeth and scalpels. A new study of objects dropped down old drains reveals the bathhouses as a bustling center for social gatherings, LiveScience reports, not just a place to get clean. Back when the Romans controlled Europe, ornate bathhouses popped up around the continent. Ancient texts provide some vague details about the activities that went on in these establishments, but objects found in the tubs’ drains can reveal even more con

Indians Made It to Australia More Than 4,000 Years Before the British

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 07:59:00 GMT

Did ancient Australians witness a similar scene? Photo: Gunter Senft/MPI for Psycholinguistics Outside of Africa, Australia holds some of modern humans’ earliest archeological evidence, with relics dating back to about 45,000 years ago. In other words, Australian aboriginals are the oldest continuous population of humans on the planet, besides those found in Africa. But these populations did not remain quite as isolated as researchers originally thought. Anthropologists and historians always assumed that from the time the first human settlers stumbled upon Australia to the moment European sailors arrived in the late 1800s, Australia remained unknown to the rest of the world. But n

The Candor and Lies of Nazi Officer Albert Speer

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 03:06:26 GMT

Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer in 1943. Photo: Wikipedia On April 30, 1945, as Soviet troops fought toward the Reich Chancellery in Berlin in street-to-street combat, Adolf Hitler put a gun to his head and fired. Berlin quickly surrendered and World War II in Europe was effectively over. Yet Hitler’s chosen successor, Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, decamped with others of the Nazi Party faithful to northern Germany and formed the Flensburg Government. As Allied troops and the U.N. War Crimes Commission closed in on Flensburg, one Nazi emerged as a man of particular interest: Albert Speer, the brilliant architect, minister of armaments and war production for the Third Reich and a clos

The Murky History of Foosball

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 08:43:14 GMT

In the best tradition of skulduggery, claim and counterclaim, foosball (or table football), that simple game of bouncing little wooden soccer players back and forth on springy metal bars across something that looks like a mini pool table, has the roots of its conception mired in confusion. Some say that in a sort of spontaneous combustion of ideas, the game erupted in various parts of Europe simultaneously sometime during the 1880s or ’90s as a parlor game. Others say that it was the brainchild of Lucien Rosengart, a dabbler in the inventive and engineering arts who had various patents, including ones for railway parts, bicycle parts, the seat belt and a rocket that allowed artiller

The Little-Known Legend of Jesus in Japan

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 07:00:00 GMT

On the flat top of a steep hill in a distant corner of northern Japan lies the tomb of an itinerant shepherd who, two millennia ago, settled down there to grow garlic. He fell in love with a farmer’s daughter named Miyuko, fathered three kids and died at the ripe old age of 106. In the mountain hamlet of Shingo, he’s remembered by the name Daitenku Taro Jurai. The rest of the world knows him as Jesus Christ. It turns out that Jesus of Nazareth—the Messiah, worker of miracles and spiritual figurehead for one of the world’s foremost religions—did not die on the cross at Calvary, as widely reported. According to amusing local folklore, that was his kid brother,

Indexed: Fire by the Numbers

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 09:00:59 GMT

Fire can destroy in an instant—or burn for centuries

UPDATE: The Reaction to Karen King’s Gospel Discovery

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 06:30:00 GMT

This story is an update of the news broken by Smithsonian magazine on September 18, 2012. Up a cobblestone driveway in the heart of Rome, across from the soaring Tuscan columns of St. Peter’s Square, juts a narrow building watched over by a heavy-lidded statue of Saint Augustine. The Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum was founded in 1970, in the shadow of the Vatican, to renew the teachings of Church fathers. On most days, its glinting marble halls echo with the footsteps of theology students immersing themselves in doctrine, canon law and sacred Scripture. On September 18, however, the building played host to a secular gathering that some would soon see as profane: the Internati

The Surprisingly Colorful Spaces Where the World’s Biggest Decisions Get Made (PHOTOS)

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Photographer Luca Zanier looks at the view from where the decision-makers sit

That Time a German Prince Built an Artificial Volcano

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 02:39:47 GMT

The smoke began rising above the farm fields and tidy forests of Woerlitz last Saturday morning, puffs of white and black that signaled something unusual. By sunset, thousands of people had gathered on the shores of an artificial lake, listening avidly to ominous rumbles. Dozens more, tipsy with schnapps and wine, floated in candlelit gondolas on the still water. They were all here to see Europe's biggest, oldest and—as far as anyone knows—only artificial volcano. Completed in 1794, the Stone Island of Woerlitz is a little-known wonder of the Enlightenment, a provincial prince's attempt to bring a bit of Italian drama and grandeur to the farmers of Germany. Today it's part of

The Top 10 Biggest Sports #Fails of All Time

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 08:27:41 GMT

For athletes on the world stage, nothing is worse than choking under pressure. Here are the 10 most memorable transgressors

300 Years of Rowing on the Thames

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 06:00:00 GMT

The Thames has been synonymous with rowing for almost three centuries. In August 1715, half a dozen “watermen”—oarsmen who ferried passengers on the river—convened beneath London Bridge for Britain’s first rowing race. Nearly 200 years later, at the London Summer Olympic Games in 1908, spectators thronged the banks of Henley-on-Thames, site of the annual Royal Regatta, as British scullers competed against crews from seven countries, including Canada, Hungary and the Netherlands. England’s team captured gold medals in all four matches, and won three silvers and a bronze as well. “The result of the racing,” reported the Times of London, “

The Little-Known History of How the Modern Olympics Got Their Start

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 03:48:15 GMT

What is known as Wenlock Edge, a great palisade, almost 1,000 feet high, running for 15 miles through the county of Shropshire, overlooks, near its eastern end, the tidy town of Much Wenlock. (Much Wenlock being so named, you see, to distinguish it from its even wee-er neighbor, Little Wenlock.) However, to this quaint backwater village near Wales came, in 1994, Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain, the grandiose president of the International Olympic Committee. Samaranch, an old spear carrier for Franco, was a vainglorious corporate politician, either obsequious or imperious, depending on the company, who was never much given to generosity. Yet he found his way to Much Wenlock, where he troop

The Long and Winding History of the Thames

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 06:05:36 GMT

Steve Brooker treads through a sea of slime, protected by rubber boots and fisherman’s coveralls, stopping every few feet to probe the soggy ground with his trowel. “We’re looking for pure black mud,” the tall, gaunt 50-year-old marathon runner and commercial window fitter tells me. “The black mud is anaerobic—there’s no air in it. If we chuck your trainer in,” Brooker adds, using a British word for running shoe, “it will survive for 500 years.” Brooker has taken me to a stretch of the Thames flowing past Greenwich, a district in south London, to inspect a nearly 600-year-old garbage dump at the former site of Placentia Palace&md

How Canada Celebrates the War of 1812

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 03:44:14 GMT

You don’t have to go very far across the border to get the Canadian take on the War of 1812. At passport control in Toronto’s Preston Pearson Airport, a border agent asks an American traveler the purpose of his visit. When told that he is in Canada on business, and part of that business is the War of 1812, she launches into a concise but remarkably informed summary of the war—invoking the iconic Canadian heroes of the conflict, and even suggesting some significant historical spots around Ontario associated with specific engagements of the war worth visiting. When it is pointed out to the agent that she seemed to know much more about the War of 1812 than your typical Ame

Great Moments in Chicken Culinary History

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 03:38:40 GMT

Where did these six poultry-based dishes (with one imposter) get their start?

Reliving Shackleton's Epic Endurance Expedition

Tue, 22 May 2012 09:17:30 GMT

Legend has it that Antarctic adventurer Ernest Shackleton posted an advertisement in a London paper before his infamous Endurance expedition: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.” Although no one has been able to find the original ad, the sentiment, at the very least, should serve as a strong warning to Tim Jarvis, the British/Australian adventurer who is attempting to recreate the expedition as authentically as possible. “For Shackleton it was a journey into the unknown made out of desperation,” Jarvis says. “For us it will not be that d

How the Chicken Conquered the World

Mon, 21 May 2012 12:00:00 GMT

The chickens that saved Western civilization were discovered, according to legend, by the side of a road in Greece in the first decade of the fifth century B.C. The Athenian general Themistocles, on his way to confront the invading Persian forces, stopped to watch two cocks fighting and summoned his troops, saying: “Behold, these do not fight for their household gods, for the monuments of their ancestors, for glory, for liberty or the safety of their children, but only because one will not give way to the other.” The tale does not describe what happened to the loser, nor explain why the soldiers found this display of instinctive aggression inspirational rather than pointless an

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine

Mon, 07 May 2012 03:46:45 GMT

The last line of a 17th century poem by John Donne prompted Louise Noble’s quest. “Women,” the line read, are not only “Sweetness and wit,” but “mummy, possessed.” Sweetness and wit, sure. But mummy? In her search for an explanation, Noble, a lecturer of English at the University of New England in Australia, made a surprising discovery: That word recurs throughout the literature of early modern Europe, from Donne’s “Love’s Alchemy” to Shakespeare’s “Othello” and Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene,” because mummies and other preserved and fresh human remains were a common ingredient in th

Geronimo’s Decades-Long Hunt for Vengeance

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 04:12:30 GMT

In Mexico’s state of Chihuahua, some 115 miles from the U.S. border, there is a seemingly unremarkable grassy hill just north of the town of Galeana. Look closely, though, and you might see century-old bullet casings rusting in the grass, and a slight depression at the top where a historic act of revenge is carved into the ground. In 1882, years after an Apache encampment was massacred by Mexican troops, this is where the tribe’s legendary leader Geronimo and his men came to avenge the killings, burning Mexican commander Juan Mata Ortiz alive in a pit at the top of the hill. “They told the Mexican commander, Juan Mata Ortiz, ‘no bala, no cuchillo, no lance, pero l

Document Deep Dive: What Does the Magna Carta Really Say?

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 01:15:00 GMT

A curator from the National Archives takes us through what the governing charter means

Why the Titanic Still Fascinates Us

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:00:00 GMT

Dorothy Gibson—the 22-year-old silent film star— huddled in a lifeboat, dressed in only a short coat and sweater over an evening gown. She was beginning to shiver. Ever since it had been launched, at 12:45 a.m., Lifeboat 7 had remained stationed only 20 yards away from the Titanic in case it could be used in a rescue operation. Dorothy and her mother, Pauline, who had been traveling with her, had watched as lifeboat after lifeboat left the vessel, but by just after 2 o’clock it was obvious that the vast majority of its passengers would not be able to escape from the liner. Realizing that the ship’s sinking was imminent, lookout George Hogg ordered that Lifeboat 7 b

Top Ten Demonstrations of Love

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 06:34:33 GMT

The inventor, the celebrity and the royal highness couldn’t resist the draw of making a grand gesture to the love of their life

Revisiting The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:00:00 GMT

Nineteen sixty: Only 15 years had passed since the end of World War II. But already one could read an essay describing a “wave of amnesia that has overtaken the West” with regard to the events of 1933 to 1945. At the time, there was no Spielberg-produced HBO “Band of Brothers” and no Greatest Generation celebration; there were no Holocaust museums in the United States. There was, instead, the beginning of a kind of willed forgetfulness of the horror of those years. No wonder. It was not merely the Second World War, it was war to the second power, exponentially more horrific. Not merely in degree and quantity—in death toll and geographic reach—but also

The Doomed South Pole Voyage's Remaining Photographs

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 07:00:00 GMT

“Great God!” British Capt. Robert Falcon Scott wrote in his journal on January 17, 1912, the day he reached the South Pole. He was not exultant. “This is an awful place,” he went on, “and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.” For more than two months, Scott and his men had hauled their supply sledges across 800 miles of ice from their base camp at Antarctica’s McMurdo Sound, hoping to become the first people to reach the pole. But the photograph at left, taken by Lt. Henry Bowers the same day, makes clear the reason for Scott’s despair: The Norwegian flag flying above the tent had been left by the exp

The Unknown Contributions of Brits in the American Civil War

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 06:33:59 GMT

Though often overlooked, more than 50,000 British citizens served in various capacities in the American Civil War. Historian Amanda Foreman looked at their personal writings and tells the story of the war and Britain’s involvement in it in her latest book, A World on Fire, recently named one of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2011. I spoke with the author—born in London, raised in Los Angeles and schooled at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University and Oxford University—about the role Britain, and one particular Brit, Henry Morton Stanley, played in the conflict. Why is it that more people don’t know about international involvement in the America

Henry Morton Stanley's Unbreakable Will

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Is willpower a mood that comes and goes? A temperament you’re born with (or not)? A skill you learn? In Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, Florida State University psychologist Roy F. Baumeister and New York Times journalist John Tierney say willpower is a resource that can be renewed or depleted, protected or wasted. This adaptation from their book views Henry Morton Stanley’s iron determination in the light of social science. In 1887, Henry Morton Stanley went up the Congo River and inadvertently started a disastrous experiment. This was long after his first journey into Africa, as a journalist for an American newspaper in 1871, when he’d become famo

Five Books on World War I

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 08:22:51 GMT

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, an armistice between Allied forces and Germany put an end to the fighting of what was then referred to as the Great War. President Woodrow Wilson declared November 11, of the following year, Armistice Day. In 1938, an act of Congress made the day a legal holiday, and by 1954, that act was amended to create Veterans Day, to honor American veterans of all wars. Journalist Adam Hochschild, author of To End All Wars (2011), an account of World War I from the perspective of both hawks and doves in Great Britain, provides his picks of books to read to better understand the conflict. Hell’s Foundations (1992), by Geoffrey Moorhou

How the Potato Changed the World

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 06:00:00 GMT

When potato plants bloom, they send up five-lobed flowers that spangle fields like fat purple stars. By some accounts, Marie Antoinette liked the blossoms so much that she put them in her hair. Her husband, Louis XVI, put one in his buttonhole, inspiring a brief vogue in which the French aristocracy swanned around with potato plants on their clothes. The flowers were part of an attempt to persuade French farmers to plant and French diners to eat this strange new species. Today the potato is the fifth most important crop worldwide, after wheat, corn, rice and sugar cane. But in the 18th century the tuber was a startling novelty, frightening to some, bewildering to others—part of a gl

Alfred W. Crosby on the Columbian Exchange

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:00:55 GMT

In 1972, Alfred W. Crosby wrote a book called The Columbian Exchange. In it, the historian tells the story of Columbus’s landing in 1492 through the ecological ramifications it had on the New World. At the time of publication, Crosby’s approach to history, through biology, was novel. “For historians Crosby framed a new subject,” wrote J.R. McNeil, a professor at Georgetown University, in a foreword to the book’s 30th anniversary edition. Today, The Columbian Exchange is considered a founding text in the field of environmental history. I recently spoke with the retired professor about “Columbian Exchange”—a term that has worked its way into

Q and A with Nick Stanhope, Creator of Historypin

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:13:06 GMT

Since 2009, Nick Stanhope has been the CEO of We Are What We Do, a Britain-based nonprofit that creates products and digital tools that aim to affect people’s behaviors for the better. Historypin, one of the Oxford University graduate’s latest projects, is a website and smartphone app that allows users to “pin” old photographs and video or audio clips to Google Maps at the very locations they were snapped and recorded. The photographs can be searched by place and time, organized into collections or tours and even overlaid onto Google Street View for dramatic now-and-then comparisons. For instance, one can see King George VI’s stagecoach passing through Trafal

October Anniversaries

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 06:00:00 GMT

70 Years Ago Larger than Life Fourteen years in the making, sculptor Gutzon Borglum’s Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota is finished on October 31, 1941. “This is no mere ‘colossal’ stunt,” Borglum, who died months earlier, had said of his 60-foot granite heads of presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln, carved largely with dynamite by some 400 workers. “I am simply animating the mountain.” 80 Years Ago Bridge of Size As a squadron of planes flies over—and under—its deck, New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt and New Jersey Gov. Morgan Larson open the George Washington Bridge on October

September Anniversaries

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:00:00 GMT

20 Years Ago Of Ice and Mmen While hiking in the Alps on the border of Austria and Italy on September 19, 1991, German tourists Erika and Helmut Simon discover a man’s body half buried in the snow. Archaeologists determine he is Europe’s oldest natural mummy, preserved in the ice for some 5,000 years. Nicknamed the Iceman, or Ötzi (for the nearby Ötz Valley), he wears clothes sewn from animal hides and carries tools including an ax and bow and arrows. Ötzi’s preserved state gives researchers an unrivaled look at Copper Age life—and death: he was killed by an arrowhead found in his shoulder. Ötzi’s DNA genome is decoded in 2010. 70 Years Ag

Ten Famous Intellectual Property Disputes

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 05:25:11 GMT

1. S. Victor Whitmill v. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. In the recent movie The Hangover Part II, Stu Price, a strait-laced dentist played by actor Ed Helms, wakes up after a night of debauchery in Bangkok to find a tribal tattoo wrapped around his left eye, his skin still painfully pink. Price’s tattoo is identical to the one Mike Tyson has, and it alludes to the boxer’s cameo in the original 2009 movie The Hangover. Tyson’s tattoo artist S. Victor Whitmill filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Entertainment on April 28, just weeks before the movie’s May 26 opening. Since he obtained a copyright for the eight-year-old “artwork on 3-D” on April 19, he c

This Month in History

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 06:00:00 GMT

30 Years Ago Seasoned Judgement Calling her a “person for all seasons,” President Ronald Reagan nominates Arizona appeals court judge Sandra Day O’Connor to the U.S. Supreme Court, August 19, 1981. The first female nominee to the high court, O’Connor faces opposition from anti-abortion groups concerned about her record. At her confirmation hearing, she describes the role of the judiciary as “interpreting and applying the law, not making it”; she is confirmed by a unanimous vote in the Senate on September 21. O’Connor’s 25-year tenure is marked by centrism, and hers is often the swing vote. 60 Years Ago Rye Wit J.D. Salinger publishes The C

June Anniversaries

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

20 Years Ago Rude Awakening After four centuries of quiet, Mount Pinatubo, on the Philippine island of Luzon, explodes June 15, 1991, sending more than a cubic mile of volcanic material some 22 miles into the air, while pyroclastic flows bury nearby valleys in debris 660 feet thick. The volcano’s gas cloud lowers global temperatures by a degree for three years. Predictions of the blow allow for evacuations, limiting deaths to some 700. 40 Years Ago Hot Topic The New York Times reveals details from the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret history of U.S. actions in Indochina, June 13, 1971. Leaked by military analyst Daniel Ellsberg to reporter Neil Sheehan, the report exposes more exten

The Great Japan Earthquake of 1923

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 06:00:00 GMT

The first shock hit at 11:58 a.m., emanating from a seismic fault six miles beneath the floor of Sagami Bay, 30 miles south of Tokyo. A 60- by 60-mile segment of the Philippine oceanic plate ruptured and thrust itself against the Eurasian continental plate, releasing a massive burst of tectonic energy. Down at the docks of Yokohama, Japan’s biggest port and its gateway to the West, hundreds of well-wishers were seeing off the Empress of Australia, a 615-foot luxury steamship bound for Vancouver. “The smiles vanished,” remembered Ellis M. Zacharias, then a young U.S. naval officer, who was standing on the pier when the earthquake hit, “and for an appreciable instant

May 2011 Anniversaries

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 06:00:00 GMT

50 Years Ago Wheels of Change Thirteen civil rights activists, black and white, board two buses in Washington, D.C. on May 4, 1961, headed to New Orleans to put a 1960 Supreme Court ruling barring segregation in interstate terminals to the test. Though the Freedom Riders, as they are known, meet violent resistance, more rides follow. Over seven months, more than 400 Freedom Riders focus national attention on segregation. In November, the Interstate Commerce Commission enacts new regulations to integrate bus stations. 60 Years Ago Say Hey Alabama native Willie Mays, 20, makes his major-league debut with the New York Giants against the Philadelphia Phillies at Shibe Park, May 25, 1951.

April 2011 Anniversaries

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 06:00:00 GMT

40 Years Ago Turning the Tables In the first volley of so-called "Ping-Pong diplomacy," the U.S. table tennis team arrives in Beijing April 10, 1971. The visit, likely prompted by news coverage of a friendly exchange between a Chinese team member and an American player in Japan, is the first by an official American delegation to be allowed into China since the Communist takeover in 1949. The event marks a mutual thaw in Sino-American relations: as the two teams play a series of exhibition matches, the U.S. relaxes its trade embargo. President Nixon travels to Beijing in 1972. 50 Years Ago Cosmos Columbus Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, 27, becomes the first human in space April 12, 1961,

What the Luddites Really Fought Against

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:00:00 GMT

In an essay in 1984—at the dawn of the personal computer era—the novelist Thomas Pynchon wondered if it was “O.K. to be a Luddite,” meaning someone who opposes technological progress. A better question today is whether it’s even possible. Technology is everywhere, and a recent headline at an Internet hu-mor site perfectly captured how difficult it is to resist: “Luddite invents machine to destroy technology quicker.” Like all good satire, the mock headline comes perilously close to the truth. Modern Luddites do indeed invent “machines”—in the form of computer viruses, cyberworms and other malware—to disrupt the technologies

March Anniversaries

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:00:00 GMT

50 Years Ago Corps Values In an executive order signed March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy founds the Peace Corps to supply aid and promote international understanding. Calling for volunteers—members receive basic living expenses but no salary—to teach, build schools, help eradicate malaria and improve agriculture, Kennedy predicts, “It will not be easy.” Kennedy brother-in-law Sargent Shriver heads the program, and in August, the first volunteers head to Ghana. By 2010, more than 200,000 corps members will have served in 139 countries. 80 Years Ago Oh Say Can You Sing On March 3, 1931, more than 100 years after Francis Scott Key wrote the words, Congress vote

This Month in History

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 07:00:00 GMT

40 Years Ago He’s Got Game Ten years after becoming America’s first man in space, Alan Shepard takes a break on a return trip, this time as commander of Apollo 14, to hit a couple of golf balls on the Moon February 6, 1971. His makeshift club—a 6-iron head attached to a sample collector handle—“was very clumsy with our suits” he later recalls, but with the Moon’s lower gravitational force, the ball travels about 200 yards instead of the 30 it might have on Earth. The Apollo 14 astronauts spend nine hours exploring the lunar surface and collect 100 pounds of rocks before returning home February 9. 70 Years Ago Show Starter With war on the horizon,

This Month in History

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 07:00:00 GMT

20 Years Ago War And Peace And War After five months of negotiations, sanctions and a military buildup by mainly U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia fail to dislodge Iraqi troops from Kuwait following a 1990 invasion, an aerial bombardment of Iraq led by the United States signals the start of the Persian Gulf War, January 16, 1991. Iraq mounts little defense against a ground offensive launched February 24; Kuwait is liberated and a cease-fire is declared February 28. Peace terms require Iraq to rid itself of weapons of mass destruction; a failure to do so is cited as the reason for a U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. 25 Years Ago Ill-Fated Space Pioneers One minute 13 seconds after liftoff on

This Month in History

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 07:00:00 GMT

20 Years Ago Dream weaver On Christmas Day 1990, British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, 35, demonstrates the workings of his new creation, the World Wide Web, over the Internet. Programmed to link information on any computer to information on any other, and allow it to be shared, the Web turns the Internet from a largely academic tool into a global fabric for communication and commerce with more than 200 million Web sites in 2010. 120 Years Ago Melee Massacre As U.S. troops attempt to disarm a band of Hunkpapa and Miniconjou Indians at a camp on South Dakota's Wounded Knee Creek on December 29, 1890, a single rifle shot rings out. In short order the 7th Cavalry—

Capturing Warsaw at the Dawn of World War II

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Like other members of his generation, Julien Bryan would never forget where he was or what he was doing when he learned that Germany had invaded Poland. But Bryan had a better reason to remember than most: on that September 3, 1939, he was stopped at what was then the Romanian-Polish border on a train bound for Warsaw. “Why, at this moment, I did not turn around...I do not know,” Bryan would recall of learning of the invasion two days after the onslaught began. With bombs exploding nearby, the train resumed its cautious journey toward the capital—with Bryan on board for a front-row seat at the commencement of World War II. Bryan, who came from Titusville, Pennsylvania,

November Anniversaries

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 06:00:00 GMT

70 Years Ago Incline and Fall Washington’s four-month-old Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapses on November 7, 1940. Known as “Galloping Gertie” for its vertical ripple in a breeze, the span begins twisting laterally in the day’s 42 mph winds. “I saw a side girder bulge out,” says a witness. “Suddenly the bridge dropped from under me.” A dog is the lone fatality. Study of the collapse—caught on film—improves bridge design. 120 Years Ago Service Revelry A crowd of 500 gathers at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as cadets face off against midshipmen from the U.S. Naval Academy, November 29, 1890, in the first Army-Navy football ga

Ten Inventions That Inadvertently Transformed Warfare

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 06:48:52 GMT

Bayonet: In the early 17th century, sportsmen in France and Spain adopted the practice of attaching knives to their muskets when hunting dangerous game, such as wild boar. The hunters particularly favored knives that were made in Bayonne—a small French town near the Spanish border long renowned for its quality cutlery. The French were the first to adopt the “bayonet” for military use in 1671—and the weapon became standard issue for infantry throughout Europe by the turn of the 17th century. Previously, military units had relied on pikemen to defend musketeers from attack while they reloaded. With the introduction of the bayonet, each soldier could be both pikeman a

This Month in History

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 06:00:00 GMT

60 Years Ago Work For Peanuts The “Peanuts” gang debuts in seven newspapers on October 2, 1950. Charles Schulz’s comic strip— an offshoot of his earlier “Li’l Folks” cartoons—stars lovable loser Charlie Brown (above in 1951). His travails with kites, footballs and his beagle Snoopy propel “Peanuts” for 17,897 strips, inspire TV specials and spawn a licensing empire before Schulz’s death at age 77 in 2000. 20 Years Ago Together Again Forty years of separation ends October 3, 1990, when East and West Germany reunite. Mass relocations from East to West—begun in early 1989—and the creation of a pro-reunification

A Viking Mystery

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Before construction could begin on new student housing at one of Oxford University’s 38 colleges, St. John’s, archaeologists were summoned to investigate the site in January 2008. After just a few hours of digging, one archaeologist discovered the remains of a 4,000-year-old religious complex—an earthwork enclosure, or henge, built by late Neolithic tribesmen, probably for a sun-worshiping cult. About 400 feet in diameter, the temple was one of the largest of Britain’s prehistoric henges, of which more than 100 have been found. Later, the archaeologists found pits full of broken pottery and food debris suggesting that people had used the henge as a medieval garbage

This Month in History

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:00:00 GMT

50 Years Ago It’s Debatable Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon face off in the first televised presidential debate September 26, 1960. As a tanned, fit-looking Kennedy debates a thin, wan Nixon (recovering from the flu and recent knee surgery) in need of a shave, the subject is policy, but the take-home message is that on TV, appearances matter. Exactly how much the event affects Kennedy’s fall victory is itself a matter of debate, but more than half of voters report the contest influenced their opinion. Nixon declines to debate in 1968 and, as president, in 1972. 70 Years Ago Underground Art Four teenage boys exploring a fox den in a French hill near

Ten Infamous Islands of Exile

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 06:40:00 GMT

Patmos, Greece A tiny, mountainous speck in the Aegean Sea, the 13-square-mile island of Patmos is where, according to Christian tradition, St. John was exiled in A.D. 95 after being persecuted for his faith by the Romans and where he wrote his Gospel and the Book of Revelation. Ten centuries later, in 1088, a monk built a monastery on the island dedicated to the saint. This established Patmos as a pilgrimage site and a center of Greek Orthodox learning, which it remains to this day. In 1999, Unesco declared the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian—along with the Cave of the Apocalypse, where St. John is said to have received his revelations from God, and the nearby medieval settle

George Friedman on World War III

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

George Friedman holds a doctorate in government from Cornell University and is the founder and chief executive of Stratfor, a geopolitical consulting firm in Austin, Texas. His most recent book is The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century. He spoke with Terence Monmaney. Commentators have declared the end of American dominance. You disagree. Why? The 20th century wasn’t the American century. In the first half of the century, the United States was a peripheral player—marginal to what was happening. From 1945 to 1991, the United States was caught in a terrific conflict with the Soviet Union. The United States has been the sole global power [only] since 1991, less than

The Great Ballerina Was Not the Greatest Revolutionary

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 09:18:51 GMT

Dame Margot Fonteyn is still remembered as one of the greatest ballerinas of the 20th century, revered worldwide for her duets with Rudolf Nureyev and still seen as a national treasure in her native Britain. Her role in a plot to overthrow the pro-U.S. government of Panama in 1959 was all but forgotten—until recently, when Britain’s National Archives released formerly classified British diplomatic cables on the matter. The broad outlines of the attempted coup, in which the ballerina and her Panamanian husband, Roberto Arias, used a fishing vacation as cover to land arms and men on Panama’s shores, made news briefly soon after it failed in April 1959. But the newly releas

To Be...Or Not: The Greatest Shakespeare Forgery

Thu, 20 May 2010 06:00:00 GMT

In the spring of 1795, a parade of London notables—scholars, peers, a future bishop, England’s poet laureate—called at the curio-filled home of an antiquarian named Samuel Ireland. They had come to see some papers that Ireland’s 19-year-old son, William-Henry, said he had found while rummaging in an old trunk. Scribbled in faded ink on yellowed paper, they included letters, poetry and other compositions apparently written and signed by William Shakespeare. Until now, nothing in the Bard’s own hand was known to survive, except four signatures on legal documents. Most astonishing of all was part of an unknown play purportedly by Shakespea

June Anniversaries

Thu, 20 May 2010 06:00:00 GMT

60 Years Ago The Great Divide Troops from Soviet-backed North Korea storm across the 38th parallel and invade South Korea, June 25, 1950. Hoping, he says later, to avoid World War III, President Harry Truman orders U.S. forces to lead a United Nations’ defense of South Korea. The three-year war leaves more than 2.5 million dead and the two Koreas divided—as they remain—at the 38th parallel. 75 Years Ago The Courage To Change On a trip to Akron, Ohio, in 1935, Bill Wilson (below: in 1970), a recovering alcoholic, seeks out fellow drinker Dr. Bob Smith, hoping to lead Smith out of drunkenness and bolster his own sobriety. On June 10, Smith stops drinking, and Alcoholic

May Anniversaries

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 06:00:00 GMT

30 Years Ago Thar She Blows When an earthquake shakes Washington’s Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, it explodes with a blast that takes 1,314 feet off the volcano’s top and shoots ash 80,000 feet into the air. The nine-hour eruption—which kills 57 people and levels 230 square miles of forest—is the most destructive in recorded United States history. 40 Years Ago Four Dead in Ohio At Kent State University, a weekend of confrontation between the Ohio National Guard and campus crowds protesting the Vietnam War and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia turns tragic on Monday, May 4, 1970, when, to disperse a rally, 28 guardsmen open fire on the demonstrators. Four students ar

An American Who Died Fighting for Indonesia's Freedom

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 07:44:34 GMT

On the morning of September 29, 1948, a Douglas DC-3 cargo plane took off from Jogjakarta on the island of Java. Aboard the flight were five crewmen, one passenger, medical supplies and 20 kilograms of gold. Registered as RI002, the plane was the backbone of Indonesia’s fledgling air force in its independence movement, which was fighting for survival against the Netherlands’ colonial army. Within a year, the Dutch would be forced to hand over power to the Republic of Indonesia, ending a four-year war of liberation in the wake of Japan’s defeat in 1945 (Japan had invaded and occupied Indonesia during World War II). But the six men aboard RI002, including its captain, Bobb

The Great British Tea Heist

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:18:42 GMT

In 1848, the British East India Company sent Robert Fortune on a trip to China's interior, an area forbidden to foreigners. Fortune's mission was to steal the secrets of tea horticulture and manufacturing. The Scotsman donned a disguise and headed into the Wu Si Shan hills in a bold act of corporate espionage. This is an excerpt from For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History by Sarah Rose. With [his servant] Wang walking five paces ahead to announce his arrival, Robert Fortune, dressed in his mandarin garb, entered the gates of a green tea factory. Wang began to supplicate frantically. Would the master of the factory allow an inspect

April Anniversaries

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:00:00 GMT

20 Years Ago Bang-Up Job The Hubble Space Telescope is deployed 353 miles above Earth on April 25, 1990. After a 1993 mission corrects its vision, the school bus-size telescope’s images—including galaxies in all stages, protoplanetary disks and stellar nurseries—alter our understanding of the nature of the universe. 40 Years Ago Getting Down To Earth In an effort to put ecological issues on the national political agenda, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin founds Earth Day, April 22, 1970, as a national “teach-in” on environmental degradation. Taking a page from campus antiwar demonstrations, organizers across the country stage grass-roots events—cars

Top Ten Reasons to Beware the Ides of March

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:04:22 GMT

1. Assassination of Julius Caesar, 44 B.C. Conspirators led by Marcus Junius Brutus stab dictator-for-life Julius Caesar to death before the Roman senate. Caesar was 55. 2. A Raid on Southern England, 1360 A French raiding party begins a 48-hour spree of rape, pillage and murder in southern England. King Edward III interrupts his own pillaging spree in France to launch reprisals, writes historian Barbara Tuchman, “on discovering that the French could act as viciously in his realm as the English did in France.” 3. Samoan Cyclone, 1889 A cyclone wrecks six warships—three U.S., three German—in the harbor at Apia, Samoa, leaving more than 200 sailors dead. (On the oth

Demolishing Kashgar's History

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:00:00 GMT

The second-story rooms of the centuries-old mud-brick houses were cantilevered atop log beams and nearly touched each other across an alleyway paved with hexagonal stones. Women wearing dark veils leaned out of tiny windows. Poplar doors, painted bright blue or green and adorned with brass floral petals, stood half open—a subtle signal that the master of the house was inside. The aromas of freshly baked bread and ripe peaches wafted up from vendors’ wooden carts. It was early morning and I was exploring the back streets of Kashgar, a fabled city on the western edge of China, with a Chinese journalist from Beijing, whom I’ll identify only as Ling, and a young handicraft s

The Godfather of Extreme Skiing

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:21:38 GMT

On the afternoon of May 6, 1970, Yuichiro Miura stood on Mount Everest’s South Col, at an altitude of more than 26,000 feet. On his lips he wore white sun block, and on his head a fighter pilot’s helmet, complete with a transceiver. He also had oxygen tanks, and a parachute was strapped to his back, though no one knew if the parachute would work at that altitude. On his feet he wore skis. Breathing quickly and deeply, Miura reached a state of Mu, a Zen-like feeling of nothingness. Then he took off. *** Miura had a reputation in skiing circles before he ever set foot on Everest. The son of the legendary Keizo Miura, who pioneered skiing in Japan’s Hakkōda Mountains, he

March Anniversaries

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:00:00 GMT

100 Years Ago Winged Victory On March 8, 1910, French actress, balloonist and artist Raymonde de Laroche becomes the world’s first licensed woman pilot. Determined to fly after taking a single airplane ride, de Laroche—born Elise Deroche in 1886—is taught by aviator and plane-maker Charles Voisin. “Flying does not rely so much on strength as on physical and mental coordination,” she tells reporters. De Laroche wins the 1913 Femina Cup and sets two women’s altitude records before being killed in a 1919 plane crash while trying to become a test pilot. 160 Years Ago Red Letter Day Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes The Scarlet Letter March 16, 1850. Written

Can Auschwitz Be Saved?

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Everyone who visits Auschwitz remembers the hair: almost two tons of it, piled behind glass in mounds taller than a person. When I first visited the camp, in 1991, the hair was still black and brown, red and blond, gray and white—emotionally overwhelming evidence of the lives extinguished there. When I returned this past autumn, the hair was a barely differentiated mass of gray, more like wool than human locks. Only the occasional braid signaled the remnants of something unprecedented and awful—the site where the Third Reich perpetrated the largest mass murder in human history. At least 1.1 million people were killed here, most within hours of their arrival. This January 27 m

February Anniversaries

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:00:00 GMT

20 Years Ago March To Freedom Nelson Mandela, 71, walks out of South Africa’s Victor Verster prison a free man February 11, 1990, after serving 27 years for his activities with the African National Congress against the apartheid-based government. The country’s most famous political prisoner, Mandela is hailed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as the “symbol of our people.” Mandela shares the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize—for breaking down the apartheid system—with President F. W. de Klerk, who freed him. In 1994, he becomes president after South Africa’s first democratic elections. 100 Years Ago Pointe Counterpoint Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova sells out New Y

Top 10 Real-Life Grinches

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 10:20:12 GMT

1. Brock Chisholm was a distinguished Canadian psychiatrist who, as the first director-general of the World Health Organization, came to be called the “doctor to the human race.” But he was also known for telling an Ottawa home-and-school association in 1945: “Any child who believes in Santa Claus has had his ability to think permanently destroyed. … Can you imagine a child of 4 being led to believe that a man of grown stature is able to climb down a chimney…. That Santa Claus can cover the entire world in one night distributing presents to everyone! He will become a man who has ulcers at 40, develops a sore back when there is a tough job to do, and refuses

January Anniversaries

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:00:00 GMT

50 Years Ago Bottom’s Up Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh make the world’s deepest manned dive, January 23, 1960, in the bathyscaph Trieste—a deep- sea research sub designed by Piccard’s father. Their seven-mile descent to the floor of Challenger Deep in the Pacific’s Mariana Trench—the deepest point in the oceans—takes nearly five hours. On the bottom they see fish—proof of life and oxygen at extreme depths. In June 2009 a robot sub retrieves samples from the trench that may reveal new information about tectonic plate collisions. 60 Years Ago Chocolate Pocket Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer patents the microwave

Ten Notable Apocalypses That (Obviously) Didn’t Happen

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:14:04 GMT

1. The First Warnings From Assyria An Assyrian clay tablet dating to around 2800 B.C. bears the inscription: “Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching.” The world didn’t end (just look around), and despite the plague of corruption and petulant teenagers, four centuries later the Assyrians would establish an empire that eventually encompassed most of the Near East. The Assyrian Empire came to an abrupt end in 612 B.C., when its capital was attacked by th

The Waldseemüller Map: Charting the New World

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

It was a curious little book. When a few copies began resurfacing, in the 18th century, nobody knew what to make of it. One hundred and three pages long and written in Latin, it announced itself on its title page as follows: INTRODUCTION TO COSMOGRAPHY WITH CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF GEOMETRY AND ASTRONOMY NECESSARY FOR THIS MATTER ADDITIONALLY, THE FOUR VOYAGES OF AMERIGO VESPUCCI A DESCRIPTION OF THE WHOLE WORLD ON BOTH A GLOBE AND A FLAT SURFACE WITH THE INSERTION OF THOSE LANDS UNKNOWN TO PTOLEMY DISCOVERED BY RECENT MEN The book—known today as the Cosmographiae Introductio, or Introduction to Cosmography—listed no author. But a printer's mark recorded that it had been publi

December Anniversaries

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

20 Years Ago Smackdown President George H.W. Bush orders U.S. troops to Panama, where military strongman Manuel Noriega, having nullified election results in order to have himself declared the country's leader, announced a state of war with the United States. Spurred by violence against three American servicemen, the invasion begins December 20, 1989; some 20,000 U.S. troops battle to secure the capital. Noriega surrenders January 3, and, convicted of drug trafficking, is sent to U.S. prison. He remains in custody in 2009, fighting extradition. 50 Years Ago Nice Ice The United States and 11 other nations agree, on December 1, 1959, to keep Antarctica a peaceful place of scientific researc

November Anniversaries

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:00:00 GMT

20 Years Ago Something There Is... The Berlin Wall, erected in 1961 to stop emigration from communist East Germany, cracks November 9, 1989, when the country, again facing a mass exodus—this time through its newly democratized Eastern Bloc neighbors—allows two-way travel between East and West Berlin. Thousands cross within hours, and souvenir hunters soon reduce the wall to rubble. Germany reunites the following October. 50 Years Ago Answer Man "I was involved, deeply involved, in a deception," Charles Van Doren admits on November 2, 1959, to a House subcommittee investigating the rigging of TV quiz shows about having been fed the answers while a contestant on &

A Human Rights Breakthrough in Guatemala

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Rusting cars are piled outside the gray building in a run-down section of Guatemala City. Inside, naked light bulbs reveal bare cinder-block walls, stained concrete floors, desks and filing cabinets. Above all there is the musty odor of decaying paper. Rooms brim with head-high heaps of papers, some bundled with plastic string, others mixed with books, photographs, videotapes and computer disks—all told, nearly five linear miles of documents. This is the archive of the former Guatemalan National Police, implicated in the kidnapping, torture and murder of tens of thousands of people during the country's 36-year civil war, which ended in 1996. For years human rights advocates and othe

Terra Cotta Soldiers on the March

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:00:00 GMT

In March 1974, a group of peasants digging a well in drought-parched Shaanxi province in northwest China unearthed fragments of a clay figure—the first evidence of what would turn out to be one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of modern times. Near the unexcavated tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi—who had proclaimed himself first emperor of China in 221 B.C.—lay an extraordinary underground treasure: an entire army of life-size terra cotta soldiers and horses, interred for more than 2,000 years. The site, where Qin Shi Huangdi's ancient capital of Xianyang once stood, lies a half-hour drive from traffic-clogged Xi'an (pop. 8.5 million). It is a dry, scrubby land planted

Czar Treasures From the East

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:26:21 GMT

Hundreds of miles from Moscow, the czar’s delegation waited. Ambassadors for the Ottoman sultan, laden with hundreds of glittering gifts, or rather, persuasive tools to aid in their diplomatic mission, were en route, crossing Russia’s southern border. The 16th and 17th centuries were a time of shifting political and economic alliances in the Caucasus. Russians and Ottomans vied over the costly effects should one power or the other forge a pact with Poland. In Iran, the Safavids pursued Russian military assistance against their long-standing enemy, the Ottomans. Yet above all, the empires forged alliances for economic reasons. Russia imported Turkish and Iranian silk and was hos

In Damascus, Restoring Beit Farhi and the City’s Jewish Past

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:47:22 GMT

Ghosts inhabit Damascus’ Old City like players on a stage. You can see them peering through the ramparts of the citadel and tending to the faithful at the Omayyad Mosque. In the narrow passageways of the main souk, they clamor among the spice markets and connive between the caravansary and Byzantine colonnade. You can see them. There is the Ottoman Governor As’ad Pasha al-Azem, receiving visitors and hearing petitions in the salamlik of his palace, a Mamlukian treasure. Across the way is a merchant from Andalusia offering textiles from Pisa for a set of Persian ceramics. At the Burmistan al Nur, or “house of patients,” a group of surgeons are gathered under a kumqu

October Anniversaries

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:00:00 GMT

80 Years Ago What Goes Down...? The 1920s investment boom goes bust when a record number of shares are traded on Wall Street in October 1929—16.4 million on the 29th alone—evaporating $30 billion from the stock market's value. As overleveraged investors crash, consumer spending declines and a tariff reduces foreign markets for U.S. goods. Unemployment rises and the country sinks into the Great Depression. By 1933, some 9,000 banks fail, taking uninsured depositors with them. Today the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, begun in 1933, insures deposits up to $250,000. 90 Years Ago Black and Blue Rumors of a fix fly when the favored Chicago White Sox lose the 1919 World Serie

September Anniversaries

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:00:00 GMT

25 Years Ago Fit to Print While researching the ways genetic variations are inherited, British geneticist Alec Jeffreys, 34, discovers DNA fingerprints, repeated sequences of DNA that vary from person to person. Reviewing his data on September 10, 1984, Jeffreys recalls he "took one look, thought 'what a complicated mess', then suddenly realised we had patterns." Within months DNA fingerprints are used to prove family links in immigration cases; in 1986, they alter the future of criminal investigation by proving the innocence of a murder suspect. Jeffreys is knighted in 1994. 50 Years Ago Smashing Success On September 14, 1959, Luna 2, a Soviet probe loaded with scientific equip

August Anniversaries

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:00:00 GMT

25 Years Ago Marathon Woman American Joan Benoit, 27, bests the competition and the Los Angeles smog to capture the gold in the first women's Olympic marathon, August 5, 1984. By mile three, Benoit, who had recently had knee surgery, is ahead of the 49 other runners; she medals with a time of 2 hours 24 minutes 52 seconds. "I did not want to take the lead," she says later, "but I figured if no one was coming with me, I might as well go." In 2008, her time of 2:49:08 at the Olympic trials sets a record for the 50+ age group. 50 Years Ago Aloha, Hawaii Sixty-one years after Hawaii's annexation by the United States, President Eisenhower proclaims it the 50th state, August

This Month in History

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:00:00 GMT

40 Years Ago Man On The Moon "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." As millions around the world watch on TV, at 10:56 p.m. EDT July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong takes the first human steps on the moon, with Buzz Aldrin at his heels (Aldrin shoots a footprint, right, to record the effects of pressure on the lunar dust). They explore the surface for more than two hours, collect 47 pounds of lunar samples and return to Earth 195 hours after leaving. 70 Years Ago Unlucky Break His words echoing through New York's Yankee Stadium, Lou Gehrig, 36, declares himself the "luckiest man on the face of the earth," July 4, 1939. In the

June Anniversaries

Tue, 19 May 2009 06:00:00 GMT

20 Years Ago Crackdown Seven weeks of protests by students and dissidents to spur democratic reforms in China end in violence June 3 and 4, 1989, when Chinese soldiers open fire on demonstrators gathered in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Deaths are estimated in the hundreds, casualties in the thousands. The action ushers in an era of political repression and economic reforms. 50 Years Ago Channel Surfing Four years after British engineer Christopher Cockerell used a cat-food tin inside a coffee can to test an idea for a vehicle that could move over land and water on a cushion of air, his hovercraft debuts June 11, 1959, on the waters near England's Isle of Wight. Built by Saunder

Dancing for Mao

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Li Zhensheng heard singing followed by a burst of applause. Following the sounds led the photojournalist to a young girl with unusually fair hair tied in ponytails, dancing with her arms upraised and surrounded by smiling, clapping soldiers. They were at the Red Guard Stadium in Harbin, in northern China, along with hundreds of thousands of Communist Party cadres, workers, peasants and other soldiers who had gathered for a marathon conference on the teachings of Chairman Mao Zedong. This was 1968, nearly two years into the Cultural Revolution, Mao's attempt to purge Chinese society of supposed bourgeois elements and escalate his own cult of personality. The conferees seemed to be trying t

May Anniversaries

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:00:00 GMT

70 Years Ago Food For Fraught In an attempt to bridge the gap between farmers with unsold crops and the hungry urban poor, the USDA rolls out the United States' first food stamp program May 16, 1939, in Rochester, New York. The experimental program provides 50 cents' worth of free blue stamps, good for surplus items—butter, eggs, grapefruit and dried beans, for a start—for every dollar's worth of orange stamps (good for all other food) bought by consumers on relief, as welfare was first known. By the program's end in 1943—World War II having provided a market for both food and workers—some 20 million people have been served. 80 Years Ago Golden Oldie Oscar makes hi

Preserving the World’s Most Important Artifacts

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:59:22 GMT

What would you call a list that includes the 11th-century Bayeaux tapestries and the proceedings of the trial of Nelson Mandela? Plus Story of the Kelly Gang, the world's first feature-length film, made in 1906, and Iran’s 10th-century Book of Kings, considered Persia’s Iliad? And even Grimm’s fairy tales, Alfred Nobel’s family archives and the 13th-century Tripitaka Koreana, 81,258 wooden blocks thought to be the world’s most complete collection of Buddhist texts? United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which keeps such a list, calls it the Memory of the World Register. And the list will get longer this August. U.N. agency

Preserving the World’s Most Important Artifacts

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:59:22 GMT

The Memory of World Register lists over 800 historic manuscripts, maps, films and more to help raise funds for preservation

April Anniversaries

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:00:00 GMT

60 Years Ago All For One The United States and 11 Western European countries sign the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, D.C., April 4, 1949, and create the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Member nations pledge to consider a military attack on any NATO country an attack on all, and to provide assistance, including armed forces. Originally conceived as a defense against a Soviet invasion, NATO shifts its focus to maintaining stability in Europe after the 1991 breakup of the Warsaw Pact. Not until the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. are NATO members—today numbering 26—called on to defend one of their own. 70 Years Ago Vintage Steinbeck John Steinbeck,

Five Rescuers of Those Threatened by the Holocaust

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:00:00 GMT

As persecution of Jews in Europe mounted in the years prior to and during World War II, many people desperately sought visas to escape the Nazi regime. Diplomats, consuls and foreign officials were in a unique position to extend significant help to Jews and other refugees seeking asylum in other countries. But too often the stated policy of foreign governments to stay neutral or restrict immigration left many to perish in Holocaust. As official representatives of their governments, diplomats were obliged to uphold the policies of their countries. Those who acted contrary put themselves at peril. Yet scores of diplomats and others disobeyed their governments by issuing visas, protective pap

March Anniversaries

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:00:00 GMT

20 and 30 Years Ago Energy Crises On March 24, 1989, a decade after the March 28, 1979, partial core meltdown in a reactor at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear plant, the tanker Exxon Valdez runs aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of oil, polluting 1,300 miles of coastline and decimating wildlife. The crisis of confidence in nuclear power safety that TMI sets off provokes stiffer rules and oversight; new plant applications are delayed until 2007. The Valdez spill leads to improved response plans and a requirement that ships in Prince William Sound be double-hulled by 2015. 60 Years Ago Round Trip On March 2, 1949, ninety-four hours after t

Samarra Rises

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 07:00:00 GMT

I'm standing on a street corner in the center of Samarra—a strife-scarred Sunni city of 120,000 people on the Tigris River in Iraq—surrounded by a squad of American troops. The crackle of two-way radios and boots crunching shards of glass are the only sounds in this deserted neighborhood, once the center of public life, now a rubble-filled wasteland. I pass the ruins of police headquarters, blown up by an Al Qaeda in Iraq suicide truck bomber in May 2007, and enter a corridor lined by eight-foot-high slabs of concrete—"Texas barriers" or "T-walls," in U.S. military parlance. A heavily guarded checkpoint controls access to the most sensitive edifice in

Rewriting History in Great Britain

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:36:19 GMT

Nothing is as central to the way the British view themselves as the telling and retelling of their gallant fight against the Nazis. Perhaps the colossal figure of Winston Churchill is taken for granted now, his boozy final years remembered with an indulgent chuckle, his elitist views and nostalgia for Empire taken as a slight embarrassment. But no one pokes fun at the underlying tale: the bull's-eye accuracy of his ignored early warnings about Hitler's intent, the real-time impact of his oratory once he became prime minister, the nation's banding together during the Blitz, the bravery of the pilots who fought the Battle of Britain and the core belief that Britain's stout heart turned the t

Raiders or Traders?

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from its original form and updated to include new information for Smithsonian’s Mysteries of the Ancient World bookazine published in Fall 2009. From his bench toward the stern of the Sea Stallion from Glendalough, Erik Nielsen could see his crewmates’ stricken faces peering out of bright-red survival suits. A few feet behind him, the leather straps holding the ship’s rudder to its side had snapped. The 98-foot vessel, a nearly $2.5 million replica of a thousand-year-old Viking ship, was rolling helplessly atop waves 15 feet high. With the wind gusting past 50 miles an hour and the Irish Sea just inches from the gunwales, &l

Comrades and Arms

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:08:32 GMT

In Mid-January 1959, Fidel Castro and his comrades in revolution had been in power less than a month. Criticized in the international press for threatening summary justice and execution for many members of the government of ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista, Castro called on the Cuban people to show their support at a rally in front of Havana's presidential palace. Castro, 32, wore a starched fatigue cap as he faced the crowd. With him were two of his most trusted lieutenants: Camilo Cienfuegos, unmistakable in a cowboy hat, and Ernesto (Che) Guevara in his trademark black beret. Castro's supporting cast would change over the years—Cienfuegos would die in an airplane crash nine mont

Decade by Decade

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 04:33:32 GMT

In honor of women’s history month, we have chosen one significant event from each decade over the past century. Each event recognizes the achievements of women in all facets of life who moved history forward. Click on the large photo to the right, or click on this link: Begin slideshow >

Smithsonian.com - A Brief History of the St. Bernard Rescue Dog

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 11:15:43 GMT

Long before Beethoven drooled on the big screen, St. Bernard dogs were famous for an entirely different reason: saving lives. Since the early 18th century, monks living in the snowy, dangerous St. Bernard Pass—a route through the Alps between Italy and Switzerland—kept the canines to help them on their rescue missions after bad snowstorms. Over a span of nearly 200 years, about 2,000 people, from lost children to Napoleon's soldiers, were rescued because of the heroic dogs' uncanny sense of direction and resistance to cold. Since then, and through much crossbreeding, the canines have become the domestic St. Bernard dogs commonly seen in households today. Hospice Hounds At a li

A Brief History of the Amber Room

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:00:00 GMT

While many Americans associate amber with the casing for dinosaur DNA in 1993's Jurassic Park, the stone has enthralled Europeans, and especially Russians, for centuries because of the golden, jewel-encrusted Amber Room, which was made of several tons of the gemstone. A gift to Peter the Great in 1716 celebrating peace between Russia and Prussia, the room's fate became anything but peaceful: Nazis looted it during World War II, and in the final months of the war, the amber panels, which had been packed away in crates, disappeared. A replica was completed in 2003, but the contents of the original, dubbed "the Eighth Wonder of the World," have remained missing for decades. Golden

Cixi: The Woman Behind the Throne

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:07:55 GMT

"Too much mystery surrounds the Forbidden City for us to write of its inmates with assured authority. Even when the facts are known, there are two or three versions, each giving a different rendering of what occurred. This vagueness is like the nebulous parts of a Chinese painting; it has a charm that it might be a mistake to dispel. Nor is it certain that the historian, could he lift the veil, would discover the truth." —Daniele Vare, an Italian diplomat in Peking, in his 1936 biography of Cixi,"The Last Empress" History can be a slippery substance, particularly when it comes to personalities. A century after the death of China's last and most famous empress, Cixi, the story of he

Monumental Mission

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:10:06 GMT

The best birthday present Harry Ettlinger ever got arrived on the frigid morning of January 28, 1945. The 19-year-old Army private was shivering in the back of a truck bound from France toward southern Belgium. There the Battle of the Bulge, raging for most of a month, had just ended, but the fighting continued. The Germans had begun their retreat with the new year, as Private Ettlinger and thousands of other soldiers massed for a counterassault. "We were on the way east," Ettlinger recalls, "when this sergeant came running out. 'The following three guys get your gear and come with me!' he yelled. I was one of those guys. I got off the truck." The Army needed interpreters for the forthcom

Conquering Everest

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 06:52:42 GMT

On May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary, a 33-year-old beekeeper from New Zealand and his Nepalese-born guide Tenzing Norgay, stood at the top of Everest for the first time in history. The pair hugged, snapped some evidentiary photographs and buried offerings in the snow. They also surveyed the area for signs of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, two climbers who disappeared in 1924. When met by climbing colleague George Lowe on the descent to camp, Hillary brashly reported the achievement: "Well, George, we knocked the bastard off." Conquering the 29,035-foot monolith ultimately earned Hillary a knighthood and Tenzing Britain's esteemed George Medal for courage. Hillary later wrote: &qu

February Anniversaries

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

60 Years Ago Attention Paid Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller's drama of mashed illusions, opens on Broadway February 10, 1949, starring Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman, the failing salesman whose product is himself. Written in just six weeks, the play is praised for Miller's deft use of flashbacks and his honest, sympathetic treatment of Loman's disintegration. "One of the finest dramas in the whole range of American theatre," says the New York Times. Salesman wins four Tony Awards and the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for drama and propels Miller to the forefront of American letters. He dies in 2005, age 89. 90 Years Ago Grand Plan President Woodrow Wilson signs an act making more than a m

November Anniversaries

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:00:00 GMT

70 Years Ago "This Is A Real Horserace" In a matchup a year in the making, Seabiscuit, the West Coast's hard-luck horse turned top-earning Thoroughbred, takes on War Admiral, the East's Triple Crown winner, November 1, 1938, at Maryland's Pimlico racetrack. The rivals run neck and neck until the "Biscuit" pulls ahead in the final stretch to win the race—and a place in racing history—by four lengths. 70 Years Ago An American Tune Contralto Kate Smith premières "God Bless America," Irving Berlin's anthem to his adopted home, on her radio show November 10, 1938. Berlin had written it 20 years before for a musical and then abandoned it. But w

October Anniversaries

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 06:00:00 GMT

25 Years Ago Medical Emergency After a Marxist coup on the socialist Caribbean nation of Grenada, President Ronald Reagan orders U.S. troops to invade the island on October 25, 1983, citing fears for the safety of American medical students there and an arms buildup. Critics call the concerns exaggerated. The action is popular in the United States, but condemned abroad. 50 Years Ago Charge It Dr. Ake Senning performs the first cardiac pacemaker implantation in a person in Stockholm, Sweden, October 8, 1958. External pacemakers, used to regulate heart rhythms since 1950, limited patient movement and provoked infection. Senning and engineer Rune Elmquist, at work on an implantable model, ar

September Anniversaries

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:00:00 GMT

50 Years Ago Chip Shot On September 12, 1958, Texas Instruments engineer Jack Kilby demonstrates the first microchip, designed while he tinkered through a company vacation. His "integrated circuit," layered onto a sliver of semiconductor material, eliminates the need to connect discrete components. With improvements by Robert Noyce, who patents a similar idea, the microchip makes more complex circuits—and modern electronics—possible. Kilby wins the Nobel Prize in 2000. 70 Years Ago The Lesson of Munich British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the leaders of France and Italy make a pact with Adolf Hitler in Munich, September 30, 1938, to let Germany annex a por

August Anniversaries

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:43:14 GMT

60 Years Ago Spy vs. Spy When journalist Whittaker Chambers accuses former State Department official Alger Hiss of being a Communist, in August 1948, Hiss denies it before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Chambers' further accusations of espionage lead to Hiss' indictment. Two sensational trials—featuring microfilm hidden in a pumpkin and questions about Chambers' sanity—end in Hiss' conviction for perjury in 1950 and increased anti-Communist fervor. Hiss dies in 1996 at age 92, still maintaining his innocence. 120 Years Ago Ripped from the Headlines Mary Ann Nichols, 43, is found murdered August 31, 1888, in London's poor Whitechapel district, her throat cut. In

July Anniversaries

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

50 Years Ago Blastoff With the space race accelerating after the Soviet Sputnik I launch, President Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) into existence, July 29, 1958. "We may find that the road to lasting peace truly lies through the stars," says Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. By 2008, NASA will launch over 100 manned spaceflights and make discoveries that lead to improved highway safety, medical technology and intensive care monitors. 90 Years Ago Royal Blood Former Czar Nicholas II, his wife, Alexandra, and children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexei—detained by the Bolsheviks since Nicholas' abdication the year befor

June Anniversaries

Tue, 27 May 2008 06:00:00 GMT

25 Years Ago Ride, Sally Ride Astrophysicist Sally Ride, 32, blasts off in the Challenger space shuttle on June 18, 1983, the first American woman in space. Ride, an astronaut since 1978, and other crew members deploy satellites and test a robotic arm she helped design. "It's probably the most fun I will ever have in my life," she says on landing. In 2001 she founds Sally Ride Science to encourage schoolgirls to join the fun. 60 Years Ago Help from Above With Berlin blockaded by the Soviets, determined to force Western withdrawal from the city, American and British forces begin flying in flour, coal and medicine to aid its 2 million residents—including 10,000 Americans&mda

When Portugal Ruled the Seas

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 04:00:00 GMT

Globalization began, you might say, a bit before the turn of the 16th century, in Portugal. At least that's the conclusion one is likely to reach after visiting a vast exhibition, more than four years in the making, at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C. The show, like the nation that is its subject, has brought together art and ideas from nearly all parts of the world. It was Portugal that kicked off what has come to be known as the Age of Discovery, in the mid-1400s. The westernmost country in Europe, Portugal was the first to significantly probe the Atlantic Ocean, colonizing the Azores and other nearby islands, then braving the west coast of Africa. In 1488

Jewel of the Jungle

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 04:00:00 GMT

Just before sunrise on a cloudy May morning in northern Cambodia, I joined hundreds of tourists crossing the wide moat to the outer wall of Angkor Wat, often said to be the largest religious structure in the world. Inside the rectangular courtyard, which covers more ground than 200 football fields, I waited near a small lake in front of the temple. Within minutes the sun appeared behind its five iconic towers, each shaped as a closed lotus bud, representing the five peaks of Mount Meru, home of the gods and the mythical Hindu center of the universe. The temple's precise, symmetrical beauty was unmistakable. The other tourists all faced the sun, watching in stillness and whispering in fore

A Brief History of Scotland Yard

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:46:34 GMT

The name Scotland Yard invokes the image of a foggy London street being patrolled by a detective in a trench coat puffing smoke from his pipe. But Scotland Yard has an easily muddled history, full of misnomers and controversy. Neither in Scotland, nor in a yard, it is the name of the headquarters of London's Metropolitan Police and, by association, has become synonymous with the force. The Yard doesn't serve the city either, but instead the Greater London area. With all this confusion, it's time to investigate the story of Scotland Yard and some of its most infamous cases, from Jack the Ripper to the 2005 London bombings. Making the Force The London police force was created in 1829 by an

February Anniversaries

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:14:47 GMT

30 Years Ago Rail to Mail Harriet Tubman (c. 1820-1913), the former slave and Union scout who led some 300 people out of bondage on the underground railroad, becomes the first African-American woman featured on a postage stamp, February 1978. Known as the "Moses of her people" for the 19 trips she made over ten years to guide escaped slaves north, Tubman is the first honoree in the Black Heritage stamp series, issued each February. 110 Years Ago Blast From the Past The USS Maine, moored in Havana Harbor to protect Americans as pro-Spain forces spar with Cuban revolutionaries, explodes on February 15, 1898, killing 266 men. An inquiry blames a mine; the American people, sympathe

Ike at D-Day

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 02:12:39 GMT

All over England the vast task of loading the invasion fleet was going on. Rural roads were lined with ammunition dumps, and huge numbers of vehicles, from heavy tanks to jeeps, motorcycles and bicycles, were being assembled—for the invasion was like an intricate jigsaw puzzle: everything had to be packed and loaded so that it all would come off in the right order on the beaches. Tanks had to be laboriously backed into the LSTs, or landing-ship tanks, so they could come down the ramp onto the beach with their heavier frontal armor facing the enemy and their guns ready to fire; ammunition and medical supplies had to be placed so they would arrive on the beach at the same time as the f

Before the Revolution

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:00:00 GMT

Americans can't travel to Cuba, but tourists from other parts of the world—mostly Europe and Canada—visit the island for its beaches, culture, Spanish colonial architecture and vintage American cars. They buy art and Che Guevara souvenirs in outdoor markets and drink beer in newly restored plazas, where musicians play Buena Vista Social Club tunes in a constant loop. In some places, the country appears stuck in its pre-revolutionary past. The famous Hotel Nacional displays photographs of mobsters and celebrity guests. La Tropicana still features a nightly cabaret. And many Hemingway fans stop at La Floridita, one of his favorite haunts, to slurp down overpriced rum cocktails.

March Anniversaries

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:59:26 GMT

90 Years Ago Time and Again Congress enacts daylight saving time on March 19, 1918. Backers herald benefits, from increased production of war materials to improved worker health and morals. But farmers cry foul, and with World War I's end, national DST is repealed in 1919. Implemented locally, DST makes scheduling—of buses to broadcasts—confusing until uniform start and end dates are declared in 1966. In 2008, all states but Arizona and Hawaii spring forward March 9. 75 Years Ago Great Ape King Kong takes on New York City at its première there, March 2, 1933. The film's special effects—including stop action photography, miniaturization and rear projection—t

May Anniversaries

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:00:00 GMT

60 Years Ago Statehood On May 14, 1948, the eve of the expiration of British rule in Palestine, Israel declares its independence—becoming the first Jewish state in the Holy Land since Roman times. David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister, asserts the "right of the Jewish people to be a nation." The Arab League, opposed to partitioning the territory, responds that only a unified Palestine will make the area secure. Within hours, Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon and Syria invade. The war, but not the conflict, ends in 1949. 70 Years Ago Tick, Tick, Tick Oklahoma lawyer and newspaper publisher Carl Magee patents the parking meter on May 24, 1938. First deployed three years

April Anniversaries

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:04:17 GMT

40 Years Ago Fallen Hero Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 39, is assassinated on the balcony of his Memphis motel on the evening of April 4, 1968, while preparing for a march in support of the city's striking sanitation workers. Escaped convict James Earl Ray, captured in June, pleads guilty and is sentenced to 99 years. Ray then protests his innocence, with the eventual support of King's family, until his death at age 70 in 1998. 50 Years Ago One Free Pound Twelve years after being declared insane, poet Ezra Pound is released from a Washington, D.C. mental hospital in April 1958, incompetent to face treason charges for his pro-fascist, anti-American radio broadcasts in World W

January Anniversaries

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 07:00:00 GMT

40 Years Ago Letting It Be The Beatles give a surprise performance—their last public concert together—on the roof of Apple Records' London recording studio, January 30, 1969. Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, already beginning to go their separate ways but hoping to recapture the band's energy, film themselves—until police say "hello goodbye"— playing several songs from a new project. The album and film, reworked into Let It Be, record the tensions leading to the group's breakup in 1970. John Lennon is killed in 1980, but the three remaining Beatles reunite to record two songs in 1994. George Harrison dies in 2001. 50 Years Ago

December Anniversaries

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

40 Years Ago In The Beginning Three days after launch, the crew of Apollo 8—astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders—become, on December 24, 1968, the first humans to leave Earth's gravity and orbit the moon. "The moon" says Lovell, in the first close-up report, "looks like plaster of Paris or a sort of a grayish beach sand." The astronauts make six live TV broadcasts from space, including a Christmas Eve reading from the book of Genesis that reaches 100 million households. After ten orbits, they splash down December 27. 40 Years Ago Of Mice and Men Computer engineer Douglas Engelbart gives the first public demonstration of an "X-Y posi

November Anniversaries

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 06:00:00 GMT

40 Years Ago Leader of the Pack Six months after its launch, Mariner 9 reaches Mars on November 14, 1971, narrowly beating two Soviet missions to be the first spacecraft to orbit another planet. For 349 days the unmanned orbiter relays data about the composition and temperature of Mars and its atmosphere, sending back more than 7,000 images, including detailed looks at volcanoes, polar caps and moons Phobos (above: an artist’s rendering) and Deimos. A new Mars rover designed to search for conditions favorable to microbial life is slated to launch this month or next. 40 Years Ago One Jump Ahead A man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacks Northwest Orient Flight 305 on November 24, 1971,