Vol. 50 | No. 10
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March 2020 | SMITHSONIAN 1
24
Thou Shalt Not
Underestimate
Florence
Nightingale
History’s most famous
nurse, born 200 years
ago, rose to glory caring
for wounded soldiers
in the Crimean War.
But the full range of her
innovations, from sta-
tistics to social reform,
is still coming to light
by Joshua Hammer
34
Explosive!
Wading into a Civil War
controversy, a blast-
injury expert off ers a
bold new explanation for
the mysterious deaths of
the crew aboard a Con-
federate submarine
by Rachel Lance
07 American Icon: Grandma Moses
- Subversive art?
10 Art: Zilia Sánchez
12 Wellness: Beauty queen - A tonic for what ails you
18 Enterprise: Madam C.J. Walker
20 Artifact: Nazi airplane
22 Crossword puzzle: Clues “R” Us
features
The author at the controls of a hyperbaric chamber at Duke University.
She detonated numerous black powder charges to study the impacts
of the lethal torpedo carried by the HL Hunley.
prologue
44
Beasts of the
Northern Wild
Scientists brave the
deep snows and frigid
cold of arctic Alaska
in winter to study one
of its most furtive and
ferocious denizens: the
wolverine
Photographs by
Peter Mather
Text by Arik Gabbai
56
The Legend of
Limberlost
She was a writer as pop-
ular in her day as J.K.
Rowling is now. Yet you
won’t hear about Gene
Stratton-Porter unless
you visit the vanishing
Midwestern landscape
she helped save
by Kathryn Aalto
09
04 Discussion
80 Ask Smithsonian
You’ve got questions.
We’ve got experts
Cover: Art by Nigel Buchanan.
This original portrait of Florence
Nightingale incorporates portions of
her ingenious data visualizations.
March 2020
WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH