Tabla de contenidos para December 2024 en Smithsonian Magazine

“The Indians’ side of the story should be in all American history books.” X (TWITTER): @SmithsonianMag INSTAGRAM: @smithsonianmagazine FACEBOOK: smithsonianmagazine Hiding in Plain Sight “The Role of His Life” (November 2024) gave me a deeper understanding of how the anti-Jewish movement in Germany started before World War II, and I was blown away by Leo Reuss’ passion for acting. I can’t even begin to imagine what he went through. It saddened me to see how the masses loved his performances when they did not realize that he was Jewish, and once they found out, they turned on him completely. The lengths that people will go to in order to preserve their hate. It was an incredible story. Kevin Molohon | White Bear Lake, Minnesota Forgotten Fruit I thoroughly enjoyed Mark Schapiro’s…

MARION MAHONY graduated with a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1894—only the second woman in the school’s history to do so. A year later, the Chicago native became Frank Lloyd Wright’s first employee at his upstart architecture firm in her hometown. A brilliant graphic artist with a deep interest in Japanese printmaking, Mahony created the signature aesthetic of Wright’s perspective drawings, bursting with exquisite detail. She also made the drawings for fully half of the 100 lithographs in the 1910 Wasmuth Portfolio, a compendium of Wright’s creations that inspired a generation of European architects, changing the course of 20th-century design. Never quick to cede credit, Wright rarely acknowledged his enormous debt to his brilliant young colleague. Indeed, Mahony took over some projects entirely, as…

MORE THAN 120 SPECIES of birds are considered to be lost—not recorded or captured in the wild for more than ten years. Now, the Search for Lost Birds, a global partnership of conservancy organizations, is offering everyday people a database and encouraging them to gather and share information about the lost birds they might see in the wild. Even in an era of record-breaking species loss, the wild corners of the Earth may still harbor creatures long feared extinct. Collating data from experts and citizen scientists, the project has found 15 missing species since its founding in 2021, including these. LONG-BILLED BUSH WARBLER Lost: 1977 | Found: 2022 This songbird was once so abundant in the river valleys of Kashmir that some said it could be heard all day long—until shifting agricultural…

Every living generation has been petrified by The Wizard of Oz. Early in the 1939 film, a cranky neighbor riding her bicycle through a tornado suddenly transforms into a witch. She soars off on her broomstick, tilting her head back and screaming with laughter as her cloak billows out behind her. The 1900 book by L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, inspired the film’s theme of good and evil sorcery. All the witches in the story have magical powers. They can fly, materialize at will, and see all things far and near. But while the Witches of the North and South are kind and supportive, the Witches of the East and West are seen as evil. “Remember that the Witch is Wicked—tremendously Wicked—and ought to be killed,” the…

On the morning of May 29, 1942, Mary Tsukamoto awoke to find her mattress on the floor. Glancing around the bedroom that she shared with her husband, Al, it took her a moment to get her bearings: Today was the day she and her family would lose their freedom. Their bed frame, along with the rest of their furniture, was in storage. “We had broken no law, committed no criminal act,” she later wrote. But “on this day we were to leave our homes. No one knew where we were to go nor for how long we would be gone…. We were labeled as criminals because our faces were Japanese.” Al and Mary’s daughter, Marielle, who was 5 at the time, clearly recalls that morning. “I remember getting up early, and…

Q: How do scientists know which insects can see color? John Jay Rouse | St. Cloud, Minnesota MUCH OF WHAT we know about which colors insects can see is based on a combination of behavioral studies and understanding the morphology and physiology of the insect eye. The compound eye found in most insects is made up of a few to thousands of individual units called ommatidia, and each ommatidium includes a rhabdom, a transparent structure under the lens, which stores photosensitive pigments known as opsins that are used for detecting colors. The more kinds and combinations of opsins an insect’s rhabdom has, the more colors it can see. Most insects can only see a narrow spectrum of colors, if any at all. Insects with true color vision—like many bees, butterflies and…

Guests of Honor CUE THE PANDA CAM: THE NATIONAL ZOO’S TWO NEWEST RESIDENTS, BAO LI AND QING BAO, WILL MAKE THEIR DEBUT NEXT MONTH THE GIANT PANDA is arguably the (adorable) face of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI), so people were understandably dismayed when Tian Tian, Mei Xiang and Xiao Qi Ji returned to their native China last year, as was always the plan outlined in our conservation program. I was asked so many times—out in public, on the National Mall, in the halls of Congress—“Is the Smithsonian getting the pandas back?” There was never a doubt in my mind this treasured species would return. Pandas are simply too important to our education outreach and conservation science. For the past five decades, the National Zoo, in…

THE YULETIDE DECORATIONS are up: a trimmed tree, jolly stockings on the mantel and—wait, what’s that white-berried weed hanging from the ceiling? And why are people so amorous when they find themselves beneath it? Mistletoe, a parasitic plant, is actually accustomed to the suspension: In nature, it grows only on other trees’ branches. And it’s long been associated with mystical power: In Norse myth, the god Balder is mistakenly killed by an arrow of mistletoe—after which the plant becomes synonymous with his grieving mother’s undying love. While mistletoe’s berries are poisonous, ancient Romans and Greeks used its leaves medicinally, to treat cramps, epilepsy and ulcers. And first-century Celtic druids apparently used mistletoe to make a sacred fertility elixir—one historic use that presaged the plant’s now-dominant identity as an excuse for…

FOR THE YOUNG, tiny nation, VARIED LANDSCAPES AND RICH HISTORY BRING ENDLESS culinary inspiration EVERY CULTURE HAS A cuisine that tells its story. SLOVENIA—A LILLIPUTIAN NATION ABOUT THE SIZE OF NEW JERSEY BUT WITH LESS THAN A QUARTER OF IT S POPULATION — has many stories to tell. Bordered by Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia, the country has a landscape that varies dramatically. In the space of a few hours’ drive, you can see a sweeping span of European scenery and architecture, from Alpine lakes and medieval castles to Adriatic beaches lined with red-roofed villas and olive trees. The country’s history is as diverse as its geography. Once part of a Slavic kingdom, Slovenia was later conquered by the Franks, and for 500 years it was ruled by the Hapsburg…

IN 1995, WHEN Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater was less than 60 years old, a group of engineers traveled to the rural highlands outside Pittsburgh to inspect the house’s iconic cantilevered terraces, thrust out over their waterfall in defiance of gravity—and, as it turned out, of good sense. Even before construction was completed in 1937, cracks had appeared in the concrete parapets. By the mid-1990s, the balconies had sagged in some places by more than seven inches. “You could feel them bounce—it was like a diving board,” says Lynda Waggoner, who started guiding tours at Fallingwater as a teenager in 1965 and served as the house-museum’s director from 1996 to 2018. The extravagant gesture that made Fallingwater the most famous modern house in the United States had nearly brought the entire…

ARTHUR ALLEN carefully packed his camera and luggage at his home in Ithaca, New York. He would soon head south to the backwood swamps of Osceola County, Florida, to search for a ghost bird: the ivory-billed woodpecker. Most scientists considered it extinct; Allen was desperate to prove them wrong. The year was 1924, and Allen was an energetic ornithology professor at Cornell University, about to take a sabbatical. A stocky, outgoing man with a bushy mustache, he’d always been popular with his students, who called him Doc Allen and liked how he never talked down to them. He’d been born and raised in working-class Buffalo, New York, moving to Ithaca in 1904 to study at Cornell and never left. Allen was not the first to be enthralled by this charismatic…

A ABSTRACT STONE ELEPHANT SCULPTURES The essence of one of Africa’s most beloved animals is captured in serpentine stone. Hand-carved in Zimbabwe, each sculpture is unique, but they all share a wish for good luck and prosperity. 85197 7" $49 85196 5" $39 B CEBI CIRCLES PILLOW COVER $39 Bring sunny colors home with this hand-dyed batik cotton pillow cover, made by artisans in Eswatini. Imported. 18" sq. 80795 C KUBA BLUE TOTE AND POUCH Artisans in Kenya hand-print graphics inspired by traditional Kuba textiles in these handsome cotton bags. Imported. Tote: 17" H x 13" W. Pouch: 11" L x 6" W. 23742 Tote $139 23743 Pouch $49 Black available online D POSY EARRINGS $39 Recycled paper pulp is transformed into petals that look like lapis lazuli outlined in…

WHEN HAMID HEMAT accepted a curatorial post at Connecticut’s Wadsworth Atheneum in 2022, the refugee from Kabul, Afghanistan, was surprised by what he found. The Wadsworth is the oldest public art museum in the United States, home to a trove of European and American paintings. But it also holds one of the world’s best collections of Islamic art. “I’m traveling 7,000 miles from my home country, and I came here and found this amazing collection,” says Hemat, who has spent the past two years studying the Wadsworth’s delicate miniatures, medieval Qurans and ornate glassware from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia for a show, “Divine Geometry,” that runs through April 13, 2025. Although donated by American art patrons in the early 20th century, some of these works have…

A sudden roar broke the muggy stillness, making me jump. A young woman squatting in a shallow trench reassured me. “No worries,” she said, gesturing with a trowel into a nearby thicket. “Our tools here are chainsaws and leaf blowers.” Whisk brooms, dental picks and spoons are also part of the arsenal. A few dozen yards away, in a dirty T-shirt, faded camo shorts and black work boots, Michael Jarvis hacked away at thick brush with a gas-powered saw. In this clearing on Smith’s Island, in Bermuda, Jarvis—“Chainsaw Mike” to his students—is unearthing one of the first New World towns built by English colonizers. The settlement was established in 1612, a mere five years after the founding of the Jamestown colony in Virginia and eight years before the Pilgrims stepped…