National Geographic History

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FROM THE EDITOR

Civil War Surgeon’s Pit Reveals Soldiers’ Fates • A pioneering study of human bones found at Manassas National Battlefield Park exposes the life-or-death choices of Civil War combat surgeons.

THE KINDEST CUT

Connecting Two Continents

Vitus Bering: Explorer of Dire Straits • Charged by Peter the Great to explore the territory between Asia and North America, this Danish-born sailor braved brutal conditions just to reach eastern Siberia. From here, he discovered the strait that bears his name at the cost of colossal hardship and, ultimately, tragedy.

THE LOOK OF A HERO

BERING’S BURIAL

Out the Window: The Defenestration of Prague • Four hundred years ago, a group of Bohemian nobles flung three men out a window, an act that triggered the Thirty Years’ War, one of the worst conflicts in European history.

TALES OF TOWERS

The Fall Guys

THE BUILDER KING • The Bible depicts Nebuchadrezzar II and his city as doomed, but to his own people, he restored Babylon to glory.

PAST PASSION

THE GREAT KING OF BABYLON

DEPORTATION AND DESTRUCTION

COMING UPON NEBUCHADREZZAR’S BABYLON

DREAM INTERPRETATION

THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES • Standing for a little more than 50 years in the third century B.C., Rhodes’s titanic statue of Helios made a colossal impact on Western art, history, and imagination.

The Bronze Giant

GOODS AND GODS

SIZE MATTERS

CASTING DOUBT

A LEGEND WITH LEGS

KEEPERS OF THE FLAME • Chosen as young girls, the priestesses of Vesta, goddess of the hearth, swore a 30-year vow of chastity and in turn were granted rights, privileges, and power unavailable to other women in Rome.

TENDING ROME’S ETERNAL FLAME

THE VESTALS AT HOME AND AT PRAYER

TRAINING THE NOVICES

A ROMAN TRADITION?

LIFE BEGINS AT 40?

THE HIGH PRICE OF BREAKING SACRED VOWS • A Vestal Virgin found guilty of incestum, being impure, was immured, walled up alive in an underground chamber and left to die alone in the dark.

VESTALS ON TRIAL

THE SISTINE CHAPEL • WHEN AWARDED THE COMMISSION TO PAINT THE SISTINE CHAPEL, MICHELANGELO WAS DOUBTED BY CRITICS. SILENCING THEM, HIS BEAUTIFUL BRUSHSTROKES CAME TO EMBODY THE PEAK OF RENAISSANCE ART.

LIFE OF AN ARTIST

A RIVAL’S PLAN

ART IN THE CHAPEL

MALE MODELS, FEMALE FORMS

IN THE BEGINNING

CONTORTIONS AND CREATION

NOAH’S FLOOD

THE ARTIST AS AN OLD MAN

COVER UP

THE “LAST JUDGMENT”

THE ASSASSINS • High in the mountains inside a secret fortress, the Nizari Ismaili, a small Muslim sect, struck terror into the massive powers fighting for control of the Holy Land in the Middle Ages. Dubbed the Assassins by their enemies, the Nizari held power for just three centuries, but their impact would last for centuries.

Assassination Origination

BELLICOSE BEVERAGES?

FACE-TO-FACE WITH THE ASSASSINS

DEATH TO THE VIZIER

THE FALL OF ALAMUT

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TOP GUNS OF WORLD WAR I THE BIRTH OF COMBAT AVIATION

THE DUTCH GENIUS OF COMBAT AVIATION

RED VERSUS BLACK: THE TRIPLANES

WORLD WAR I FLYING ACES

Gonur Tepe: Lost City of the Bronze Age • Four thousand years ago, the Oxus Civilization arose in Central Asia. Linking Mesopotamia to the Indus Valley, Gonur Tepe was capital of this vibrant culture, rediscovered in the 20th...