Photograph by Robert F. Sisson, National Geographic Stock

December 2010

THE SOUND AND THE FURRY

"Too shrill for the human ear to hear," a little bat's voice turned visible when the animal was placed before a microphone hooked up to a cathode-ray oscilloscope. "The streaks above and below the central luminous spot are the visual representation of the creature's cries, which have a frequency of 50,000 cycles per second—some 30,000 above the maximum range audible to man," noted this photograph's caption in "Mystery Mammals of the Twilight," published in the July 1946 Geographic. "Such experiments…first proved that bats 'see with their ears,' guiding their flight by the echoes of their cries."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by European Picture Service, National Geographic Stock

November 2010

MODERN MERMAIDS

A Japanese ama goes overboard in search of shellfish in the 1930s. For centuries these female free divers worked the country's coasts without much clothing, but that changed: "Except for a few older women, the ama of Hekura no longer dive semi-naked," wrote Luis Marden after visiting one group of divers. His July 1971 Geographic story, "Ama, Sea Nymphs of Japan," goes on to say, "The girls wore black leotards. Most others wore all-enveloping suits of black neoprene, the diver's wetsuit."

There aren't many ama left in Japan. Most who remain are middle-aged or older; divers sometimes work into their 80s. Today few young women care to take the plunge.
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Wide World, National Geographic Stock

October 2010

BOING

"Some kangaroos can cover 30 feet in a single bound, and may outstrip a horse for a short distance," notes the caption to this photo in the December 1936 Geographic story "Beyond Australia's Cities." While driving across a sheep station, writer W. Robert Moore found himself in a race: "Propelling themselves with only their powerful hind legs, with their tiny undeveloped front legs held high, their running seems uncanny. But as our speedometer touched 45 miles an hour, one old kangaroo kept pace beside the car."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Edwin L. Wisherd, National Geographic Stock

September 2010

MEET THE BEETLES

"Scarabs that might have made a pharaoh envious" were among 263 insects photographed for the July 1929 Geographic. They were first "placed with care in relaxing jars (a sort of humidor) to render flexible their delicate legs, wings, and antennae, so that they might be 'posed' in lifelike attitudes," notes the accompanying text. "Their irreplaceable value…and the fragile nature of their many anatomical members added materially to the sense of responsibility of the members of the National Geographic Society's illustrations staff."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Roy Waldo Miner, National Geographic Stock

August 2010

DEEP COVER

Peering through a 55-pound brass helmet, marine biologist Roy Waldo Miner "prepares to make movie actors of the rainbow-hued residents of a coral reef" off Andros Island, Bahamas. Miner's expedition, which he wrote about in the June 1934 issue of National Geographic, also harvested some 40 tons of coral from the site. Specimens were hoisted from the sea bottom, bleached and dried, then shipped to New York City's American Museum of Natural History, where they were coated with beeswax and painted to resemble a colorful living reef. That coral is still on display, part of a two-story-tall diorama in that museum.
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Moody Bible Institute, National Geographic Stock

July 2010

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME

Electricity flashes from the thimble-topped fingers of traveling "preacher-scientist" George Speake. From the 1940s into the '60s, he was one in a series of men affiliated with Chicago's Moody Bible Institute who demonstrated religious faith by demonstrating scientific principles. To create the lightning effect, Speake would stand atop an electric transformer coil. The room would darken. Then, at his command, a brief high-frequency current would travel over his skin, up from his feet and out of his fingertips. According to notes accompanying the image, Speake suffered no injury because "the high-frequency juice…is too fast to be felt." Another reason he stayed safe was his extreme care in setting up the trick: The photo's notes also warn that the practice was "for spectacle purposes only."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Ralph B. Hubbard, Jr., National Geographic Stock

June 2010

MIDNIGHT FUN

A series of suns studs the night sky in this multiple exposure. A member of polar explorer Donald B. MacMillan's 1947 expedition to Greenland, photographer Ralph B. Hubbard, Jr., explained, "To obtain the picture, I set my cameras up on a prominence near Refuge Harbor, about 11.5 degrees from the North Pole, and aimed them towards the north. In all I made about 11 exposures of the sun while it was in the field of my camera, with one exposure being made every 20 minutes." The sun shown at the center was shot at exactly midnight.
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Acme Newspictures/National Geographic Stock

May 2010

DEEP SLEEP

In October 1940—as German bombs rained on their city—Londoners sought overnight safety in the Aldwych tube station, one of about 80 underground stops used as shelters during World War II. At times more than 170,000 people slept in the shelters. At first the station staff were unprepared, says Robert Bird, senior curator of the London Transport Museum. "Gradually, sheltering became properly organized, with admission tickets, bunk beds, medical aid, chemical toilets, and refreshments." These days nobody sleeps at Aldwych—not even on a train car passing through. The station was permanently closed to traffic in September 1994.
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Luis Marden, National Geographic Stock

April 2010

COOL KIDS

Children seek a soaking outside a Connecticut firehouse in 1935. The unusual shower arrangement may have been rigged by local firefighters specially for summer refreshment. In towns big and small, options for larger scale (and even soggier) recreation increased greatly during the 1930s as government groups such as the Works Project Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps put the Great Depression's unemployed to work. Their efforts included the construction of hundreds of swimming pools across the United States, many of which are still in use today.
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Carl J. Lomen, National Geographic Stock

March 2010

Wolf Dancers

It was a performance "so real that it was difficult to believe that they were simply men wearing wolf masks," noted an observer in 1914. Participants in the Inupiat eagle-wolf dance honored slain animals, sending their spirits home to ensure future hunting success. According to Deanna Kingston, professor of anthropology at Oregon State University, the dance's wolves appeared—bursting through holes in a platform onstage—as part of a hunter's mystical vision. Performances traditionally took place during a feast that gathered residents of neighboring Alaska settlements. But these men posed in a Nome, Alaska, photo studio sometime early in the 20th century.
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by T.S. Hitchcock, National Geographic Stock

February 2010

Family Portrait

"Apachie women and their white husban Arizonia 1879," notes the handwritten caption for this hand-colored portrait. That same year the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ruling against polygamy. "Everything there has changed," wrote T. S. Hitchcock, a retired dentist, who submitted this photo (and others likely acquired during his travels) to the Geographic in 1917. An editor responded that the unsolicited images "of course are not suitable for publication."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by American Red Cross, National Geographic Stock

January 2010

Digging In

Some 8.5 million French were mobilized to fight in World War I. Following the conflict, the wounded were mobilized to work. A 1918 Red Cross report put it bluntly: "Disabled men will have no difficulty in obtaining employment immediately after the war when there will be the greatest good-will…the difficulty will come…when the way in which the disabilities were acquired has been forgotten." Amputees like this man fitted with a shovel belt were trained to compensate for their lost limbs. Noted the report, "Ingenuity quickly devises appliances for making easy operations which a mutilation has made difficult."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz