This Month in the Archives

Dive into 172 years of groundbreaking research

This Month in the Archives With an All Access Subscription, you’ll have exclusive access to 172 years’ of groundbreaking articles by leading experts in their fields. In this month’s newsletter, we’re celebrating World Environment Day, kites for summer fun and science, and that favorite of pagans and astronomers alike, Summer Solstice. SUBSCRIBE

World Environment Day

Pesticides made this pelican egg too fragile to survive, 1970. We still live on planet Earth. Here’s how we’re learning to keep our home clean. January 1946: “Is DDT poisonous?” Insecticides can be hugely beneficial to humans, but this early article was unaware of the knock-on effects of introducing this chemical into the environment. October 1961: Research shows that the products of combustion are subtly harmful to city dwellers. April 1970: A growing understanding of how pesticides move through the environment and endanger creatures they were not intended to harm. October 1993: Los Angeles, poster child for bad air, checks in with some encouraging progress.

Go Fly a Kite

A Chinese bird kite, complete with flapping wings, from 1888. Get outside, enjoy the weather, and play with one of our oldest inventions. It’s far more than a toy: kites have a long history in religious ceremonies, aeronautics, meteorology, and all sorts of experiments—including electricity generation. March 1888: This article looks at varied forms of kite in use in China (some two millennia after they were invented there). February 1902: The modestly titled “Some Aeronautical Experiments” covers early aviation research with kites and gliders by two brothers from Dayton, Ohio—Wilbur and Orville Wright. April 1906: Researchers try using Alexander Graham Bell's tetrahedral kites to carry antennas for sending telegraph messages more clearly over longer distances. October 2012: Strong ocean breezes at high altitudes could be turned into electricity by the “kinetic kite”—an airborne wind turbine.

The Summer Solstice

A reconstruction of Stonehenge, oriented to the rising sun of the summer solstice The longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere has been, from the archaeological record, an important date for all of recorded human history. February 1915: Camille Flammarion of the Astronomical Society of France waxes poetical on the solstice. August 1922: Stonehenge was known for its alignment to the summer solstice—but was otherwise an enigma. January 1974: The astrolabe, used for computing the positions of the sun, was an early analogue computer. March 2011: Patient archaeology shows how Stonehenge fit into a huge ceremonial landscape on Salisbury Plain.

Current Issue

Our closest star has a much more exciting biography than scientists once assumed. New research illuminates the sun's past and potential future. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory looks at the sun from space. Toys to help your baby develop their cognitive ability are entertaining but probably don’t work Endometriosis causes pain and problems for almost 200 million women worldwide A roundup of the biggest questions in Science. Watch this space for the answers For more highlights from the archives, you can read June's 50, 100 & 150 Years Ago column.   READ THIS ISSUE Enjoy the journey! Dan Schlenoff, editor of “50, 100 & 150 Years Ago”

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