Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2022 i Smithsonian Magazine

“Biblical archaeology builds upon slender threads of evidence.” TWITTER: @SmithsonianMag INSTAGRAM: @smithsonianmagazine FACEBOOK: smithsonianmagazine Helpful Heroes As an RN for 39 years, I found “The Caregiver” (December 2021) very interesting. I work in a very busy emergency department caring for Covid patients. For the first time in my career, I know what it is like to be truly weary. Clara Barton probably felt that way often, but plunged ahead to help others. Although we learned about her in college, I learned more about her today. Thanks for sharing the story of this inspirational lady. —Patti M. | Abingdon, Virginia Lay of the Land The Gwich’in people (“Keeping Faith in Caribou Country,” December 2021) speak from 10,000 years of experience living with the nature of the land, the caribou and the…

ALFRED CRALLE ICE CREAM SCOOP Working at a Pittsburgh hotel, Cralle saw that serving ice cream with spoons was a sticky task. In 1897, he patented a tool with a mouthful of a name: the Ice Cream Mold and Disher. FREDERICK MCKINLEY JONES REFRIGERATION UNIT His mobile fridge, designed for trucks and trains (1942), made the supermarket possible. It also saved lives during World War II, powering air conditioners for Allied field hospitals to keep blood packs and other supplies from expiring. NORBERT RILLIEUX REFINING SUGAR Granulating sugar cane on an industrial scale was difficult and dangerous. Then Rillieux—born in New Orleans, educated in Paris—patented a new method in 1846 that was much more efficient and saved laborers from being burned by boiling juice. Still used to make sugar and…

ALEXANDER AUGUSTA DOCTOR’S ORDERS Schooled as a physician in Canada, the Virginia native wrote to Lincoln in 1863 offering his expertise. The first commissioned Black medic to serve in the Union Army, he was also its highest-ranking Black officer. In 1869, Augusta joined Howard University as the nation’s first Black professor of medicine. SUSIE KING TAYLOR SPREADING LITERACY As a child in Georgia, Taylor learned to read and write in secrecy before escaping slavery in 1862 with the help of her uncle. At 14, she joined one of the Union Army’s first Black regiments, serving as a nurse, cook and launderer, and teaching formerly enslaved soldiers to read. After the war, she opened a school for freedmen’s children. ABRAHAM GALLOWAY THE SECRET AGENT Born into bondage in North Carolina, Galloway…

Weeks before Halloween, I found myself pacing the aisles of a costume store. I had volunteered to help with my child’s classroom party, and though I had a witch hat at home I wanted an outfit that would be more commanding. I decided on a horned Viking helmet with long blond braids glued on. A few months later, I happened to come across the origins of this costume. It was first worn by Brünnhilde, the protagonist of Richard Wagner’s epic opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen. For the opera’s 1876 production, Wagner’s costume designer outfitted the characters in helmets, both horned and winged. Brünnhilde went on to become opera’s most recognizable figure: a busty woman in braids and helmet, hefting a shield and spear. Adapted from The Dark Queens by…

Q: What was graffiti like before spray paint was invented? —James Cloonan | Rochester, New York GRAFFITI MOST CERTAINLY predates the spray paint can. The term comes from the Italian word for “scratched.” Ancient Romans, Greeks and Egyptians used to etch writing and pictures onto walls or rocks using sharp objects. Sometimes the markings were applied to a surface using chalk or coal. Graffiti served as a form of expression, often consisting of terms of endearment or quotations. These messages offer valuable insights about culture and identity, both before and after the invention of spray paint. —Rhea L. Combs, director of curatorial affairs, National Portrait Gallery Q: How did dinosaurs, especially featherless ones, survive and thrive throughout winter seasons and ice ages? —George Kammerer | Rancho Murieta, California DINOSAURS LIVED in vibrant…

THE SMITHSONIAN Cultural Rescue Initiative, perhaps the world’s most significant ongoing collaboration to preserve irreplaceable artifacts, artworks, sites and heritage, really got its start with the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. When the magnitude 7 earthquake struck, hundreds of thousands were killed, injured and displaced from their homes. Already-fragile infrastructure was destroyed, including the country’s rich cultural heritage: historic buildings, museums, libraries, archives, galleries, churches, theaters and marketplaces. As Richard Kurin, then the Smithsonian under secretary for history, art, and culture, explained: “We cannot survive if we cannot draw on our history, heritage and community. Culture gives us the strength to move forward.” Working with the U.S. State Department and the Haitian government, Kurin and current SCRI director Corine Wegener brought together American, Haitian and international organizations for a cultural recovery…

IN THE EARLY 1870S, ambitious farmers were cultivating the first seedless navel and sweet Valencia oranges amid the bountiful sunshine of California’s citrus groves. Soon these groves would become the proving grounds for the new science of biological pest control, pitting a rare species of ladybugs against an invading horde of pests in a battle for the future of citrus agriculture in California—and the world. Commercial agriculture drove the largest economic expansion in California since the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill. And oranges, initially brought there by Spanish missionaries, had become California’s most valuable commodity. The number of acres under citrus cultivation in Southern California increased seven-fold between 1877 and 1890, while the number of railroad boxcars exporting these juicy treasures doubled to nearly 6,000 a year, spurred on…

WHEN COVID-19 FORCED people to stay home, many of us found solace in a snack: potato chips. The crispy treats enjoyed around a $350 million increase in sales from 2019 to 2020. When the chips are down, it seems, Americans gobble them up. Any search for the origins of this signature finger food must lead to George Crum (born George Speck), a 19th-century chef of Native and African American descent who made his name at Moon’s Lake House in the resort town of Saratoga Springs, New York. As the story goes, one day in 1853, the railroad and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt was eating at Moon’s when he ordered his fried potatoes be returned to the kitchen because they were too thick. Furious with such a fussy eater, Crum sliced…

LONG BEFORE the term “snowboarding” existed—and at least 80 years before it was an Olympic phenomenon—people were zipping like surfers down snow-covered hills. The first known instance came in 1917, when 13-year-old Vern Wicklund stood on a modified sled that he rode down his parents’ backyard in Cloquet, Minnesota. Wicklund patented the idea nearly two decades later but produced only a handful of models. The sport picked up speed in 1965, when Michigan’s Sherman Poppen created the Snurfer by cross-bracing two skis and adding a string at the front for steering. Poppen sold close to one million units by 1970. But the real breakthrough happened when Dimitrije Milovich, a Cornell University drop-out, founded Winterstick, the first modern snowboard company, in 1972. With steel edges, laminated fiberglass and, most crucially, nylon…

I MEET BOB LEVERETT in a small gravel parking lot at the end of a quiet residential road in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. We are at the Ice Glen trailhead, half a mile from a Mobil station, and Leverett, along with his wife, Monica Jakuc Leverett, is going to show me one of New England’s rare pockets of old-growth forest. For most of the 20th century, it was a matter of settled wisdom that the ancient forests of New England had long ago fallen to the ax and saw. How, after all, could such old trees have survived the settlers’ endless need for fuel to burn, fields to farm and timber to build with? Indeed, ramping up at the end of the 17th century, the colonial frontier subsisted on its logging operations…