50 Years Ago

From the November 21, 1931, issue

TURKEYS The beautiful bronze turkeys that furnish the biggest specimens for the family festivities were domesticated before white men came to America. Cortez found them in the markets of Mexico, and showed that he was a gourmet as well as freebooter; for turkeys soon found their way to Spain and thence all over Europe, finally […]

From the November 14, 1931, issue

PHYSICISTS STUDY EFFECTS OF STRONG WINDS ON SKYSCRAPERS Another official government investigation is getting under way in Washington. The men involved in the new probe are studying a problem of vital concern to every city in America. The investigators working now are scientists, and their problem is to find out whether skyscrapers–including the 10- and […]

From the November 7, 1931, issue

HUDSON RIVER BRIDGE RIVALED FOR FAME BY NEW ARCHES While the completion of the great George Washington suspension bridge, which has hurled itself in one bold leap across 3,500 feet of the Hudson River from Manhattan to the New Jersey shore, is being celebrated, two other bridges, likewise the largest in the world of their […]

From the October 31, 1931, issue

CATS WERE WILD IN ANCIENT SOUTHWEST In ancient America, it was bad luck to meet a cat on a dark night. All the cats that the Indians knew were wildcats. Dogs were tamed and learned to follow Indian hunters and Indian children around, but cats walked by themselves, very wild and alone. The Indian pottery […]

From the October 24, 1931, issue

GLACIERS CAUSED GEOLOGICAL MOVING DAYS Evolution, not revolution is a nice-sounding catchword used on all sorts of occasions by all sorts of people, especially by conservative politicians posing as liberals. But a broad view of the evolutionary stage, recorded by a leading scientist who has just left it, indicates that evolution has often proceeded by […]

From the October 17, 1931, issue

MATERNAL CARES MULTIPLY WITH COMING OF COLD Winter has breathed a hint of its coming already, in puffs of frosty air that make us forget the heat of summer that is gone, even of the unseasonable hot spell of early September. But the coming of the cold bodes only ill for the cold-blooded creatures of […]

From the October 10, 1931, issue

X-RAYS FIND NEW BEAUTIES FOR STUDENTS OF FLOWERS Searching the secrets of a flowers heart acquires new esthetic significance at least, and may become of importance in plant physiology and anatomy, too, through an X-ray technique developed by Mrs. Hazel Engelbrecht of Des Moines. It is not the first time that X rays have been […]

From the October 3, 1931 issue

A SEA-GOING LIZARD FROM GALAPAGOS When Darwin, as a young naturalist just out of school, visited the Galpagos islands, he saw a number of things that helped to crystallize and precipitate in his mind the concept, already seeded there, that later revolutionized all biology and much of philosophy. Not the least provocative of speculation was […]

From the September 26, 1931, issue

FLASH WELDING JOINS METAL AMID SHOWER OF SPARKS A brilliant shower of sparks for a few seconds, and two pieces of steel have become one, with a union as strong as the original metal itself. The picture on the front cover from the Pittsfield, Mass., works of the General Electric Company illustrates a recent adaptation […]

From the September 19, 1931, issue

ORCHIDS THAT LOOK LIKE GIRLS Plucked from their stems and stood on the table, they are the daintiest little dancers imaginable–dancers in the latest fashionable costumes at that. Their skirts are long and concealing, tight over the slim hips and flaring widely at the bottom. The dancers stand poised, their arms thrown up and out, […]

From the September 12, 1931 issue

ELEPHANTS JAWBONE SHOWS LIKENESS TO SCOOP SHOVEL Where the idea of the present-day scoop shovel came from is suggested in the illustration on the cover of this weeks Science News Letter. When President Henry Fairfield Osborn of the American Museum of Natural History received the weird lower jawbone of an ancient Asian elephant, he was […]

From the September 5, 1931, issue

SEEING EYE TO EYE WITH A WHITE WASP The medieval Japanese, who sometimes closed up the fronts of their helmets with ferocious metal masks painted with vivid war paint, knew the right psychology for hand-to-hand encounters. It is much more disconcerting to be confronted with an immobile, wholly artificial hobgoblin face than to see that […]