50 Years Ago

  1. Humans

    From the November 25, 1933, issue

    STEEL TOWERS GO UP AND DOWN TO SPEED SURVEY OF COUNTRY Work on control surveys of the United States is being rapidly pushed forward under funds recently provided by the Public Works Administration to the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. Although the immediate purpose is to provide employment to a great number of men, the […]

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  2. From the November 18, 1933, issue

    “ROSETTA STONE” OF PREHISTORIC AMERICA Frank M. Setzler of the Smithsonian Institution is shown pointing to a little pottery bowl which he likens to the Rosetta Stone of the Nile because it is decorated with two kinds of art design, one known and the other unknown. Together with other discoveries made under Mr. Setzlers direction […]

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  3. Humans

    From the November 11, 1933, issue

    RARE BIRD COURTSHIP SHOWN BY NEW MUSEUM GROUP Romantic squires and young knights of the sunset days of feudalism paid court to the lovely ladies of their fancy in elaborately built bowers set in corners of the castle grounds. Even in these livelier days, when troubadours carry saxophones and steel guitars instead of plaintive lutes […]

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  4. Humans

    From the November 4, 1933, issue

    WEIGHT LOSS FOUND TO BE CLUE TO PERSONALITY TYPE A new link between the mind and the body has been described to psychologists in a report by Dr. W.R. Miles and his wife, Dr. Catharine C. Miles, of the Institute of Human Relations, Yale University. The minute quantities of weight lost from your body when […]

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  5. Humans

    From the October 28, 1933, issue

    WEATHERMEN UNWITTINGLY POSE HALLOWEEN PICTURE Not ancient warlocks making weather but modern scientists just making a record of it, unintentionally posed a good Halloween picture on the top of Mount Washington, with the aid of a cat that doesn’t like the wind. The photograph has nothing of the mellowness of autumn about it–quite naturally, since […]

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  6. From the October 21, 1933, issue

    COULD YOU DO THIS AT 18 MONTHS? Could you climb a smooth slide as the baby on the front cover does when you were a year and a half old? Of course not. But perhaps you could have, had you been given the training that 18-month-old Johnny, pictured in one of his favorite exercises, has […]

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  7. Humans

    From the October 14, 1933, issue

    SOVIET ASCENSION BREAKS WORLD ALTITUDE RECORD Enclosed within the metal shell pictured on the front cover of Science News Letter, three Soviet scientists rose higher above the surface of the earth than man has ever been before, in an ascension from Moscow on September 30. It is the gondola of the Soviet free balloon USSR. […]

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  8. Humans

    From the October 7, 1933, issue

    ANCIENT MAP SHOWS HOW WORLD LOOKED TO COLUMBUS Startled to find the name Columbus mentioned on an old Turkish map of the Atlantic Ocean, Paul Kahle has subjected the map to closest study, finding on it important new clues to the discovery of America. In a report on his investigations, to appear in the forthcoming […]

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  9. Humans

    From the September 30, 1933, issue

    FIRST GLIMPSES OF A NEW WORLD Dr. George Roemmerts “Microvivarium,” which projects enormously enlarged images of living microscopic plants and animals on a screen, is a prime attraction of the Hall of Science at the Century of Progress. It has given thousands who have never looked through a microscope their first view of the amazing […]

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  10. Humans

    From the September 23, 1933, issue

    LEAFY SUCCULENTS SOLVE PROBLEM SET BY DESERT Desert plants have a particularly hard problem to solve, set by that old Sphinx, the desert itself, and if they fail to solve it, the penalty is the same as that exacted in the old Greek myth–they must die. They must spread a sufficient chlorophyll surface to the […]

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  11. Humans

    From the September 16, 1933, issue

    HERDS OF WILD ASSES STILL ROAM MONGOLIAN PLAINS Wild asses, which still roam the vast plains of Mongolia in great herds, are marvels of speed and endurance, according to Roy Chapman Andrews of the American Museum of Natural History, who has hunted and photographed them in the course of his many years of scientific exploration […]

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  12. Humans

    From the September 9, 1933, issue

    FLEET AS MERCURY The laboratory has yielded a photograph of striking beauty showing Dr. Joseph Slepian and Leon R. Ludwig, Westinghouse engineers, examining a product of their research. They have developed a new method of controlling mercury arc devices which is said to be more positive and many times faster in action than methods now […]

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