History / World History

Daughter of the Desert

Renowned as the Uncrowned Queen of Iraq, Gertrude Bell was once the most powerful woman in the British Empire

April 1, 1998

For Whom the Bell Tolled

In the Spanish Civil War, as a horrified world watched, the future of Europe seemed at stake

April 1, 1998

The Case of the Disappearing Frescoes

Or how a mustachioed Barcelona artist foiled an elaborate plot to spirit Catalonia’s priceless Romanesque paintings away from their homeland

April 1, 1998

On a Bungled Flight to Nowhere, They Sought a Chinese Mountain High

When a ballpoint pen czar and a hotshot pilot went looking for the world’s tallest peak, all they found was trouble

March 1, 1998

In the Game of Chess “Your Opponent Must Be Destroyed”

January 1, 1998

The Lure of Gold

January 1998

Museums and Marketing

As philanthropy ebbs, the Smithsonian Council advises prudence in our search for corporate sponsorship

January 1, 1998

Mutiny on the Amistad

In 1839, African freemen, seized as slaves, struck a daring blow for freedom

December 1, 1997

Miriam Leslie: Belle of the Boardroom

November 1, 1997

“Expand the Pie Before You Divvy It Up”

Sound half-baked? Not to Bill Ury, coauthor of the “negotiator’s bible,” as he mediates a peace talk between the Russians and the Chechens

November 1, 1997

The Strange Journey of Heinrich Harrer

The Austrian mountain climber escaped from a prison camp in 1944, slipped into forbidden Tibet, tutored the Dalai Lama and wrote a famous book

September 30, 1997

They Flew & Flew & Flew

How two brothers in an old Curtiss Robin set a record that’s stood for 62 years

September 30, 1997

Mark Catesby

Both Audubon and Linnaeus were indebted to this intrepid British limner of the New World

August 31, 1997

A Gem of an Exhibition

August 31, 1997

Shadows on the Rock

Spain wants Gibraltar; the people of the Rock hate the very idea; England is caught in the middle

September 1997

An Englishman Looks at India Fifty Years After British Rule

July 31, 1997

Near and Far, We’re Waving the Banner for Flags

Across time and distance, these colorful emblems fluttering in the breeze are symbols steeped in our history and our cultures

May 31, 1997

Even Our Most Loved Monuments Had a Trial by Fire

Controversies like those swirling around the FDR Memorial are the rule when Americans try to agree on anything to be cast in bronze

April 30, 1997

Declaring an Open Season on the Wisdom of the Ages

Under the stewardship of scholars Diderot and d’Alembert, the 18th-century’s Encyclopédie championed fact and freedom of the intellect

April 30, 1997

The Object at Hand

A bejeweled box from a sorely beset emperor leads to a Yankee dentist, and how he rescued the beautiful empress Eugénie from a Paris mob

March 1997