Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2025 i Smithsonian Magazine

THE FIRST MORNING OF 1776 DAWNED mercifully warm and clear over Virginia’s port of Norfolk, a welcome change after the snow and bitter cold of December. It should have been a fine day for visiting neighbors to exchange gifts and share terrapin stew, apple toddy or the rumspiked, heated punch called wassail. On this morning, however, the townspeople were gripped with anxiety. Thousands of them, seeking protection, were crammed alongside a few hundred loyalists and British redcoats aboard a motley fleet of a hundred or so vessels that clustered in the harbor, including four British Royal Navy warships bristling with cannons. Only 100 yards or so away, rifle-carrying rebel sentries stood along the wharves lining the riverfront, part of a 1,500-strong force of patriot soldiers. The two sides were locked in…

I’M STANDING AT AN INTERSECTION OF FOOTPATHS in the woods of West Sussex, England, feeling a little uncertain of my bearings. Which one of these five paths leads back to the Land Rover, parked (I think) roughly north of here? The summer sun is high and obscured by clouds, so not much help. The wind, which has been blowing intermittently from the northeast all day, providing a reliable navigation guide, has now died away completely. And I have no phone, compass or GPS. Standing next to me is Tristan Gooley, the “Sherlock Holmes of Nature,” as he’s nicknamed in the British media, so I’m in no danger of actually getting lost. This tall, affable, bearded Englishman, 52 years old and wearing a canvas bush hat, is one of the most skilled…

Across 1 DIY website with tutorials 5 Rock’s ___ Leppard 8 Funny one 10 Matter for the Hardy Boys or Robert H. Jackson 12 Neighbor of a Saudi, Yemeni or Emirati 13 Fighter of “urchin barrens” in kelp forests 15 British nobleman accused of Norfolk’s burning in 1776 17 “Mm-hmm” 18 Grand, long poem 19 Get under the skin of 22 The ___ Badge of Courage, 1951 film adaptation starring Audie Murphy 24 Ten situps, for instance 25 What Impossible Burgers aren’t made of 27 “Neither this ___ that” 29 He cleared a row of 14 buses one rainy day in Ohio 34 Rapper Shakur 35 Woolly Andes animal 36 Country from which kené art originates 37 Really mad 38 Each situp in a 24-Across, instance 39 Living inhabitants of Paris’…

EVERY STORY ABOUT Audie Murphy is a story about America. On January 26, 1945, just outside Holtzwihr, in northeastern France, Army Second Lieutenant Audie Murphy climbed onto a burning tank destroyer and single-handedly held off six tanks and 250 attacking Germans. Wounded and bleeding, he stood at a .50-caliber machine gun for more than an hour defending his unit. His actions saved the entire company and stopped the German advance. By the end of the war, Murphy had won around 30 decorations, including the Medal of Honor, two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts, the Distinguished Service Cross and the French Croix de Guerre. Rising from buck private to first lieutenant, he became the most decorated, and arguably most famous, soldier of World War II. An estimated 300,000…

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BY THE MID-1970S, after a decade of stunts, professional daredevil Evel Knievel was more famous for crashing than landing. Many of his exploits put him in the hospital for weeks, and when he limped out, every kid in America (and their worried parents) would be waiting to see what he did next. A bid to expand his fame in May 1975 brought Knievel across the Atlantic, where he tried and failed to clear his Stars and Stripes-painted Harley-Davidson XR-750 over 13 buses in London’s Wembley Stadium. Just five months later, on October 25, with his semi-healed bones barely knitted together beneath his star-spangled leathers, Knievel mounted again to conquer an even bigger jump. It was a day of cold drizzle at Kings Island amusement park in Ohio, but the crowds…

ONE SUMMER AFTERNOON IN PÈRE LACHAISE, the sprawling cemetery in the east of Paris, a white-haired man, neatly dressed, was tending his own grave. First, he brushed away a spider web that had formed in a corner of his chapel, a small box-like structure that he had chosen as his place of rest. He then swept the slabs that, in time, will be lifted to allow his coffin and that of his wife, Anne, to be lowered into the earth. On a stone shelf was a large camera, sculpted from black granite, its “lens” so polished that the man, a photographer named André Chabot, could be seen in reflection. Finally, he stooped—not without effort—to lift a few strips of film brought as offerings by tourists, then wound these around the…

IN THE FALL OF 1945, a bit more than six years after Nazi Germany invaded Poland and started the biggest and deadliest conflict in history, a largely self-taught lawyer from a tiny hamlet in the southwest corner of New York State set out to convict the surviving Nazi leadership of crimes “so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.” In his roughly four-hour opening statement at the first Nuremberg trial, Robert H. Jackson, chief prosecutor for the United States, offered the first full public picture of how the Nazis had planned and carried out the many horrors that shock the world to this day, including the systematic murder of an estimated six million Jews. The war in Europe had…

DURING THE 1760s, George Washington wrote to the Laird family in New Jersey, pleading for the recipe for a bewitching “cyder spirit” the Lairds brewed. And Abraham Lincoln later sold the same drink during his stint as a tavern keeper in Springfield, Illinois—though we can’t be sure whether Abe was serving the Laird recipe. William Laird emigrated from Scotland’s Fife County in 1698 and began distilling his “cyder,” called applejack, in the Colonies. The Lairds launched their applejack operation in 1780 as Laird & Company, the same year they received the first-ever distillery license from the U.S. government. To make applejack, a type of apple brandy, you have to master the art of “jacking”—freezing fermented hard cider and removing the ice chunks that form. Since alcohol freezes at a much…

A BEST SELLER! MURANO STEMLESS WINE GLASSES SET OF 4 $109 Raise a toast to the masterful artisans of Murano, Italy, who craft this vivid glassware. Iconic Murano artworks are found in the Ceramics and Glass Collection of the National Museum of American History. 71781 B NEW! MURANO GLASS BOTTLE STOPPER $42 EACH Handcrafted by Italian artisans, these vibrant Murano glass bottle stoppers add the joyful color and spirit of Venice’s Carnevale to any gathering and make thoughtful gifts for the host. 4"L x 1.75" diam. 10001944 Blue, Orange, Green, Red C MURANOPITCHER $149 This vibrant Murano glass water pitcher is an easy way to make weeknight meals a little more lively. Great for entertaining, perfect for a housewarming gift, and lovely as a holiday present. No two will be…

SEA OTTERS ARE NORTH AMERICA’S SMALLEST marine mammal, weighing just 30 to 100 pounds, but their appetites are huge. They burn calories at three times the rate expected for their size, chomping on clams, mussels and sea urchins to compensate for a lack of blubber, the layer of fat mammals use to keep warm. Because of their diets and appetites, otters exert a powerful influence on coastal ecosystems. In kelp forests, a key habitat for many fish, otters help prevent hungry urchins from creating desolate “urchin barrens” that support fewer species. In estuaries, otters feed heavily on crabs, allowing seagrass meadows to rebound, stabilizing saltmarsh erosion and helping sequester carbon that would otherwise enter the atmosphere. Otters’ supercharged metabolism isn’t the only adaptation that helps them survive in chilly waters. They…