Photograph by H.E. Park, National Geographic Stock

December 2012

PARKING IT

“In the scenic heart of the Sequoia National Park,” noted the January 1917 National Geographic, “the only section of the magnificent 160,000-acre playground…accessible to motor-driven and horse-drawn vehicles, stands a group of trees, the [Sequoiadendron giganteum], known as the Giant Forest.” Acquired by the magazine eight months later, this photo captured a camping party taking full advantage of that access, using a toppled giant as both picnic spot and parking space.

The park was just 26 years old at the time, and some sections weren’t totally worked out. The U.S. Department of the Interior had secured a six-month option on the sequoias still in private hands in 1916 and allocated $50,000 for the purchase, but hadn’t included the price of adjacent property needed to complete the transaction. The National Geographic Society pitched in the $20,000 balance.
— Johnna Rizzo

Photograph by Hans Hildenbrand, National Geographic Stock

November 2012

HEAD IN THE SAND

The Sphinx, Egypt’s half-beast–half-man monolith, has often been buried up to its neck. It had been dug out at least three times by the time this photo was taken. The first was around 1400 B.C. by Pharaoh Thutmose IV, again during the Roman period, and a third time beginning in 1925—the same year as this photo—by Émile Baraize, a French engineer. In the summer of 1928 National Geographic Editor Gilbert H. Grosvenor warned his staff not to use this image, noting on the back: “As the Sphinx has been entirely uncovered, this picture is very much out of date.”

But the photo’s technology wasn’t. Grosvenor had installed the first color printing lab in American publishing in 1920. Photographers processed their autochrome images in the field as glass plates and shipped them via steamer to the Geographic’s Washington headquarters.
— Johnna Rizzo

Photograph by Alfred T. Palmer, National Geographic Image Collection

October 2012

PARADE FLOAT

“This kitten, perhaps, is wondering how he is going to get ashore without wetting his feet,” opines the note accompanying a 1935 Alfred T. Palmer photo from the Philippines. “But he is perfectly safe so long as he stays aboard this floating giant of the vegetable world, the ‘Queen Victoria’ (Victoria regia) water lily.”

The tiny cat’s perfect safety wasn’t ever in question. Now more commonly called the giant water lily—reaching eight feet across and staying afloat by means of a substantial amount of air trapped in the spaces between its ribs—the plant is strongest at its center and can hold up to a hundred pounds.
— Johnna Rizzo

Photograph by Beverly B. Dobbs, National Geographic Stock

September 2012

INSIDES OUT

Sitting in a Nome, Alaska, photo studio in the early 1900s, an Eskimo man models a parka fashioned of walrus intestine. Impermeable when wet and easy to come by for the sea-focused people, the material was prepared by air curing, then sliced and sewn with a waterproof stitch—the same as used on watercraft, including the umiak (canoe) he’s holding. The jacket’s extra material at the hem functioned as a spray skirt when he was at sea.

Other innards also had uses: Bladders became water bags, guts got sewn together as sod-house windows, and stomachs could be stretched for tambourine drums.
— Johnna Rizzo

Photograph by Charles Martin, National Geographic Stock

August 2012

MUSHROOM CAP

This hat, shaped from the fibrous interior of Fomes fomentarius, was mailed to National Geographic headquarters by William J. O'Reardon in 1920. Its accompanying letter cataloged the cap's dimensions and alerted the editors that this “very rare and extraordinary cap [is] made from a mushroom.”

The Latin fomes means “tinder,” but it has long defied being just a fungus used to light fires. Up to a foot and a half long, the tree-encircling mushroom continues to be transformed into millinery today. According to an eyewitness report in the newsletter of the North American Mycological Association, Fomes caps of Hungarian origin were spotted for sale at the 12th International Fungi and Fibre Symposium in 2005. The attendee bought four.
— Johnna Rizzo

Photograph by Joseph K. Dixon/National Geographic Stock

July 2012

SENT MESSAGES

These smoke signals were staged on a hilltop in Montana in 1909 for the book The Vanishing Race. The tribe of the messenger is unknown, but nearly all Plains Indians used this speedy form of sending news.

The book's author, Joseph K. Dixon—an ethnographer sent by President William Howard Taft to document the disappearing traditions of Native Americans—became more than an objective observer. According to his book's acknowledgments, while on a later expedition that spanned 26,000 miles and 189 tribes, Dixon was adopted by the Wolf clan of the Mohawk Nation and given the name of Ka-ra-Kon-tie, or Flying Sun.
— Johnna Rizzo

Photograph by U.S. Army Air Service/National Geographic Stock

June 2012

UP IN THE AIR

Though Wilbur had piloted all the glider tests since the Wright brothers had started their flying project in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1900, Orville—junior by four years—finally got his chance in the fall of 1902. Wilbur helped launch him.

When their airplane was ready to fly a little more than a year later, the two tossed a coin to see who would pilot. Wilbur won—but his attempt ended in less than four seconds. Three days later, when the damage from Wilbur's try had been fixed, it was Orville's turn. The younger brother's stab at sustained, controlled, free flight succeeded, and “the flying problem,” as the brothers called it, was solved.
— Johnna Rizzo

Photograph by Amsterdam Press Agency/National Geographic Stock

May 2012

HOT STUFF

Bathers bask in geothermal mud at a spa in Iceland in the early 1950s. The treatment is said to relax the muscles and soothe the skin. Present-day spas in the country continue the tradition, limiting sessions in the 100°F mud to 15 minutes and warning off those with heart or lung problems or allergies to nickel.

Writer Deena Clark covered the country in her story "Iceland Tapestry" for the November 1951 Geographic. She made no mention of mud baths but did share the packing list an official gave her prior to her trip: "'You'll need a passport, a cocktail dress, a dinner gown, a raincoat, galoshes—and a boundless capacity for astonishment!'... I found he was right," she noted, "especially about the last."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by National Geographic Image Collection

April 2012

MODEL CITIZEN

At London's Kensington Gardens, every Sunday morning in 1953 marked departure time for the Empress of Britain—in miniature. Modelmaker (and weekday bus driver) Alfred Kidd based his 93-pound steam-powered ship on the namesake Canadian ocean liner sunk by a Nazi torpedo in 1940. The vessel took Kidd four years to build, working an average of three hours a day. "While other folks are wrapped up in scarves and overcoats against the cold winds," say notes accompanying the photograph, "Alfred Kidd, coatless, is active and happy as any schoolboy as he sets the course for his model and runs round to meet it on the other side of the Round Pond."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by National Gallery of Art/National Geographic Stock

March 2012

SHOW HORNS

Centuries-old vessels made of narwhal tusk (from left), rhinoceros horn, and a stony stomach accretion called a bezoar were among Austria's treasures—part of Nazi caches stashed across that country—touring world museums after World War II. Notes from Washington, D.C.'s National Gallery of Art, where 875,173 people viewed the exhibit in the winter of 1949, say the works "were lent by the Austrian Government in gratitude to the American people for the rescue of works of art from the salt mines in Upper Austria." Today these vessels reside in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, where they're slated to go on display this December.
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Wide World Photos, Inc/National Geographic Stock

February 2012

THE HOLE THING

Pointers named Tyree and Skeeter poke through portholes in a Plymouth. Notes accompanying the photograph—which was published in a 1958 National Geographic book about dogs—say the animals' owner, E. D. Todd of Victoria, British Columbia, installed the openings in the trunk "to give dogs light and air when he went driving." Though probably not the safest arrangement for the pets in case of accident, it likely did cut down on the dog hairs in the car's back seat. Their coats may be short and slick, but pointers can be prodigious shedders.
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Paramount Publix Corporation/National Geographic Stock

January 2012

BYRD DOGS

Puppies pull a play sledge for the amusement of supply officer George Black during Richard E. Byrd's first Antarctic expedition. They were the offspring of the 94 dogs originally brought along for transport on the journey—and would soon be the youngest residents of a part of the camp called Dog Town. "Oh Lord, all the perfumes in France couldn't have rid Dog Town of its gamy aroma," wrote Byrd in a book about his travels, Exploring With Byrd. (This photograph ran in his August 1930 account of the 1928-30 Antarctic trip for National Geographic.) "The air in the tunnels was thick enough not only to be cut with a knife; spiced with a dash of garlic from the bulbs that hung over Noville's door, it could have been served as pemmican."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz