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
By Michael Castleman
Young and Restless
Saudi Arabia's baby boomers, born after the 1973 oil embargo, are redefining the kingdom's relationship with the modern world
By Afshin Molavi
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
By Tessa DeCarlo
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 and a new wealth of data supports his thesis
By Fergus M. Bordewich
For the Love of Lemurs
To her delight, social worker-turned-scientist Patricia Wright has found the mischievous Madagascar primates to be astonishingly complex
By Richard Conniff
Students of the Game
When the Aztec and Maya played it 500 to 1,000 years ago, the losers sometimes lost their headsliterally. Today scholars are visiting remote Mexican villages to study the oldest sport in the Americas, ulama, now on the verge of extinction
By John Fox
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
By Celia Wren
The Object at Hand
Refined Palette
Scholars say this 19th-century artifact could have belonged to the celebrated American painter
By Owen Edwards
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?
By Adam Goodheart
Presence of Mind
Evildoer
The Beowolf monster is a thousand years old, but his bad old tricks continue to resonate in the modern world
By Matthew Gurewitsch
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
By Lawrence M. Small
The Last Page
My Cold War Hang-Up
How I learned to stop worrying and make peace with my nuclear phone
By Deborah Dalfonso
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