National Geographic Magazine - UK September 2021

IF YOU’RE AGE 30 or older, you probably remember what you were doing when you heard about the events of September 11, 2001. It’s one of those indelible, where-were-you moments, like the attack on Pearl Harbor or the Kennedy assassination for earlier generations. This month, we commemorate the 20th anniversary of “9/11”—that instantly recognizable, vastly inadequate shorthand to describe a day that killed nearly 3,000 people and launched the longest war in modern U.S. history. Two stories in this issue explore 9/11. One’s an on-the-ground report from Afghanistan. The other features still life photography of seemingly ordinary objects—a pair of boots, a watch, a snapshot—that aren’t ordinary at all. These objects, some never before displayed, came from the rubble of the World Trade Center in New York, a field in…

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC LOOKING AT THE EARTH FROM EVERY POSSIBLE ANGLE VOL.240 NO.3…

ARRIVING AT the U.S. Supreme Court to photograph a collection of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s iconic collars less than two months after the justice’s death, Elinor Carucci was nervous but prepared. Knowing she’d have roughly six minutes to make images of each collar, Carucci had spent the previous day photographing makeshift replicas she cut from paper towels. Carucci says her goal was to capture the vibrancy and character of the cherished Ginsburg accessories: “It really was like looking at pieces of history.” The delicate collar that made Carucci cry is embroidered with a quote from Ginsburg’s husband, Martin: “It’s not sacrifice, it’s family.” For Carucci, it reflects the many facets of the justice’s identity: wife, mother, Jewish daughter of immigrants, second woman on the high court. Balancing disparate roles, Carucci notes,…

IN THIS SECTION Fossilized Feather Under Tahiti’s Waves Historic Wigmaking Invasives on the Menu ILLUMINATING THE MYSTERIES—AND WONDERS—ALL AROUND US EVERY DAY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC VOL.240 NO.3 ORIGIN TALES EXIST everywhere. In the United States there is the myth of Manifest Destiny, that European settlers were preordained to spread west across America. In China the remains of Homo erectus known as Peking man are used to claim an unbroken Chinese lineage going back at least 700,000 years, with suggestions that this was a direct ancestor and among the first in the world to harness fire. In India religious nationalists have suggested that fantastical legends as described in old Hindu epics aren’t allegories but actually happened. One prominent Indian scientist has even said that the tale of a woman who gave birth…

When scientists insisted in one of the world’s leading medical journals, the Lancet, in May 2020 that “genetic make-up” could be a possible factor in the varying COVID-19 outcomes seen among ethnic groups at the time, they echoed a strain of thinking that has persisted through medical literature for centuries. In 1793, when a yellow fever epidemic hit Philadelphia, white physicians claimed that Black people were naturally immune. In 2016 a study of around 200 medical students and residents published by researchers at the University of Virginia found that around half held at least one belief about “biological differences between Blacks and whites, many of which are false and fantastical in nature.” They included the myths that Black people have a higher tolerance for pain and have thicker skin.…

Fund to be reformed For decades, the UC Berkeley School of Public Health benefited from a research fund originally created to study eugenics. The school says the fund will be repurposed to repudiate its past, perhaps by establishing an antiracist institute. Name changed Health-care network MSI Reproductive Choices rebranded in 2020 so it’s no longer named for Marie Stopes (1880-1958. Over time, her support for family planning and women’s rights has been eclipsed by her support of eugenics. Repatriation planned A University of Pennsylvania museum apologized for possessing skulls (some from enslaved people) that a 19thcentury doctor unethically acquired and used to claim whites’ supremacy. The museum aims to return the skulls to “ancestral communities.”…