Photograph courtesy Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce

December 2007

THE BUCKAROO STOPS HERE

Photographer Ralph R. Doubleday made a career of catching cowboys in midair. From around 1910 to 1952, he followed rodeos big and small all over the U.S., with only a camera between him and the hooves. Doubleday shot rider Tex Parker (left) in 1919 at Wyoming's Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo. The image never ran in the Geographic, but it was a popular postcard; over the years, "Old Dub" sold millions of his rodeo photos this way. "He would take pictures one day, develop and print them at night, and have them for sale in the stands the next day," wrote rodeo announcer Foghorn Clancy of Doubleday. "His photography has been a big factor in the development of the sport, for action pictures, like nothing else, can depict the thrill and excitement of the game."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Luis Marden, National Geographic Image Collection

November 2007

BIG FUN

He was there to cover Tonga's King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV taking the throne, but the late National Geographic writer and photographer Luis Marden also caught the monarch taking to the waves. "Riding a king-size board, the 325-pound (147 kilograms) Taufa'ahau surfs in Pacific combers," noted this photo's caption in the March 1968 magazine. Low calories, Marden observed, were not of high importance in Tonga. "Sauntering youths call out to a passing beauty, 'Foi'atelolo, ta ō mu'a mata māhina hopo!' (O fat liver full of oil, let us go and watch the moonrise!)," he wrote. "The liver of a baked pig is the choice morsel reserved for chiefs, and so fond are the Tongans of fat and oily food that any right-minded Tongan girl is enormously pleased at such flattery."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by John Hypolite Coquille; courtesy the Convention and Tourist Bureau, New Orleans

October 2007

THE PRIMATE DIRECTIVE

He weighed nearly 40 pounds—on Earth. But in January 1961, for six and a half minutes during a 16-minute flight aboard the Mercury-Redstone 2 rocket, Ham the chimpanzee was weightless. NASA scientists used the chimp's flight to study life-support systems for the human astronauts they'd soon send into space: Sensors monitored Ham's vital signs while computers tracked his execution of simple tasks. He passed all flying tests with flying colors. "A bruised nose," noted the May 1961 Geographic article where this photo of the chimp's return appeared, "was Ham's only injury."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Sylvia A. Matheson, National Geographic Image Collection

September 2007

KHAN GAMES

Children of Baluchistan's Khan of Kalat play on the palace grounds around 1950. Their father, Mir Ahmad Yar Khan, told journalist Sylvia A. Matheson—who took this photo—he'd designed his palace to resemble the Queen Mary, "with several 'decks' and his own personal quarters in the 'Captain's Cabin' on the top 'deck,' " she wrote. In 1948, Kalat became part of Pakistan. That nation's government later removed Mir Ahmad Yar Khan from power, though he was part of a brief, unsuccessful rebellion in 1958. As he barricaded himself within, "One shell from the encamped Pakistanis took off the top storey of the minaret attached to his private mosque by the side of the palace," noted Matheson. "A second shattered a corner of his living-room."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by John Hypolite Coquille; courtesy the Convention and Tourist Bureau, New Orleans

August 2007

LITTLE REVELS

Their masks only part of their mystery, children in New Orleans pause during Mardi Gras for photographer John Hypolite Coquille of the Times-Picayune. Today no names or dates accompany this image (which never ran in the Geographic), but Coquille shot for the newspaper between 1912 and 1920. The mystery deepens: Though dressed alike, the pair may not be sisters. They might not even be girls. "It was not unusual at the time for men and boys to cross-dress on Mardi Gras," says historian John T. Magill of New Orleans' Williams Research Center. "But not necessarily in the same sense as modern French Quarter drag."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Great Lakes Recruit

July 2007

FLAG WAVERS

Far from the ocean, 10,000 sailors-to-be took the form of a flag at Illinois's Great Lakes Naval Training Station. The photo ran in March 1918 with a story by former President William Howard Taft, who emphasized the importance of the salute in his lectures to young World War I draftees. "The freedom and independence that an American youth enjoys make it necessary to have the reason for such a ceremony explained to him," Taft wrote. "His self-confidence and his self-conceit make it irksome to him, at first, thus to register his subordinate position or to obey implicitly, as he must, if he would be a good soldier."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph courtesy International Film Service

June 2007

BIG CHILL

A colossus of ice and snow covered Niagara Falls on January 23, 1920, straddling the U.S. and Canadian shores and muffling the roar of water that rushed beneath. Published in the April 1922 Geographic, the text with this photo complained that water diversion to hydroelectric plants wounded Niagara's majesty. Today, successor plants produce 8,265,000 kilowatts of clean electricity. Global warming hasn't yet relegated Niagara's ice bridges to history. Winters have grown slightly warmer, but an ice bridge is expected to form every year for at least the next half century.
— Siobhan Roth

Photograph by Luis Marden

May 2007

ON THE FENCE

Balancing on bicycles, Icelanders watch British soccer players practice. This photo was acquired by National Geographic in 1943 and was probably taken in the early 1940s, when World War II engulfed most of Europe. Officially neutral, Iceland played a strategic role in the conflict, allowing British and U.S. forces to operate from bases on the island and secure Allied control of the North Atlantic. Soccer had come to Iceland only 50 years or so earlier and had found instant popularity. Today, the men's national team hasn't yet made it to a World Cup, but the women's team consistently ranks among the top 20 soccer clubs in the world.
— Siobhan Roth

Photograph by Luis Marden

April 2007

TROUT À LA LUIS

A man beyond legend, the late Luis Marden, who wrote and photographed for National Geographic for 64 years, slipped his passions into every story he touched. Marden, fluent in five languages, a pioneer in underwater photography, discoverer of the remains of the Bounty, to list only a few of his accomplishments, found a way to cast a line (usually a fly line) into practically every drop of exotic water he encountered. On assignment in Panama in 1941, he sniffed out a trout stream on the forested slopes of a volcano, caught three rainbows (serendipitously stocked in 1925 by a fellow trout-o-phile), and recorded the moment as a still life. "Fishing," he once wrote a friend, "is a solace . . . the opposite of war, a civilized, gentle, and healing occupation."
— Cathy Newman

Photograph courtesy Walt Disney Productions

March 2007

BEFORE THE MAGIC KINGDOM

Testing a movie camera in 1923, 21-year-old Walt Disney had just arrived in Hollywood with a Mickey Mouse-size bankroll and Dumbo-size dreams. Rejected by the big studios, the young animator started his own business, conceiving a character that changed his fortunes forever. But Disney didn't draw the mouse that launched his empire; longtime collaborator Ub Iwerks gave form to Mickey, while Disney squeaked the mouse's friendly falsetto. "I never did believe I was worth anything as an artist," said Disney in the August 1963 National Geographic. "I certainly don't consider myself a businessman."
— Siobhan Roth

Photograph by Andre La Terza

February 2007

CANARY CARE

A tiny heartbeat offers an earful to an amateur bird medic named Patrick Lambert. His plywood examination plank held the bird “securely without injury to feathers or other parts,” claim the notes on the back of this photograph, which was acquired by National Geographic in 1940 but not published in the magazine. The New Jersey man's feathered patients ranged "from an inquisitive parrot who walked into an electric fan . . . to a canary blinded by lightning" that "had to be taught to bathe and where to find its seed and water. Not being able to recognize daylight, the bird would often start singing at midnight."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photo courtesy Robert E. Peary Collection

January 2007

ON TOP OF THE WORLD

Cmdr. Robert E. Peary scans the horizon near his igloo at Camp Jesup near the North Pole in April 1909. After staking his claim as the first person to reach the Pole, he wrote, “when I knew for a certainty that we had reached the goal, there was not a thing in the world I wanted but sleep.” Before breaking camp the next afternoon, he found time to pen a postcard to his wife: “My dear Jo, I have won out at last. Have been here a day. I start for home and you in an hour. Love to the 'kidsies.'”
— Margaret G. Zackowitz