Smithsonian Magazine: April 2006

Features

Grace Under Fire

As San Francisco burned, 100 years ago this month, a hardy band of men worked feverishly to save the city's mint—and with it, the U.S. economy

Young and Restless

Saudi Arabia's baby boomers, born after the 1973 oil embargo, are redefining the kingdom's relationship with the modern world

A Gibson Girl in New Guinea

Two Seattle women have retraced the intrepid travels of model and portrait artist Caroline Mytinger, who journeyed to the South Sea islands in the 1920s to capture "vanishing primitives" on canvas

Odyssey's End?: The Search for Ancient Ithaca

A British researcher believes he has at last pinpointed the island to which Homer's wanderer returned

For the Love of Lemurs

To her delight, social worker-turned-scientist Patricia Wright has found the mischievous Madagascar primates to be astonishingly complex

Students of the Game

When the Aztec and Maya played it 500 to 1,000 years ago, the losers sometimes lost their heads—literally. Today scholars are visiting remote Mexican villages to study the oldest sport in the Americas, ulama, now on the verge of extinction

Departments

Indelible Images

Stars and Strife

A clash of cultures at Boston's City Hall in 1976 symbolized the city's years-long confrontation with the busing of schoolchildren

The Object at Hand

Refined Palette

Scholars say this 19th-century artifact could have belonged to the celebrated American painter

Points of Interest

Home Is the Sailor

One hundred years ago this month, John Paul Jones was welcomed home with great fanfare at the U.S. Naval Academy. But was the body really his?

Presence of Mind

Evildoer

The Beowolf monster is a thousand years old, but his bad old tricks continue to resonate in the modern world

Editor's Note

Giving Back

Nothing routine about these assignments

From the Secretary

Fred and Ginger

Two robots, neither as graceful as its namesake, but no less accomplished, are among advances keeping scientists on the cutting edge

Letters

April Letters

Readers respond to the February Issue

This Month in History

April Anniversaries

Momentous or merely memorable

The Last Page

My Cold War Hang-Up

How I learned to stop worrying and make peace with my nuclear phone

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