Sunday Stills: Explore an Alien Solar System, High Society in Rome, and More

READ: Penguin Robots View in web browser. Sunday Stills ISSUE 28 Sunday, November 16, 2014 News Children of the Civil War PHOTOGRAPHS BY WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY AND PETER ESSICK, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC “They’re a true link to another part of this country’s history. Whether Confederate or Union, they’re a treasure. The stories they tell today are the stories they heard as they sat on their daddy’s knee.” —Gail Lowman Crosby, president of the Real Daughter Club for the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) How many people alive today can say that their father was a Civil War soldier who shook hands with Abraham Lincoln in the White House? Fred Upham can. Despite sounding like a tall tale and a mathematical impossibility, it’s documented truth. Fred’s father, William, was a private in the Union Army’s Second Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment. He was severely wounded at the First Battle of Bull Run, in 1861, and later personally appointed by President Lincoln to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Fred’s in exclusive company—the dwindling group of children of soldiers who fought, North against South, 150 years ago. READ STARSTRUCK The Birth of an Alien Solar System PHOTOGRAPH BY ALMA (NRAO/ESO/NAOJ); C. BROGAN, B. SAXTON (NRAO/AUI/NSF) Astronomers have snapped the best image ever seen of the actual birth of new planets around a young, sunlike star. The astonishingly detailed photo reveals the planet-forming dust disk around the infant star HL Tau. Only one million years old, HL Tau sits in the constellation Taurus, the Bull, and is some 450 light-years from Earth. READ Proof Umberto Pizzi’s Rome: High Society, Paparazzi Style PHOTOGRAPH BY UMBERTO PIZZI Legendary Italian paparazzo Umberto Pizzi has spent a career documenting the excessive lives of the elite. “I wasn’t really interested in celebrities,” Pizzi says. “I was really just interested in taking photos and telling people’s stories, regardless of their social status. The photos I took of the socialites were often more of a critique of their behavior than anything else.” LOOK NEWS Fierce Women Who Smoked Pot, Got Tattoos, and Killed—and Loved—Men PHOTOGRAPH BY DEAGOSTINI/GETTY IMAGES The real Amazons were long believed to be purely imaginary. They were the mythical warrior women who were the archenemies of the ancient Greeks. Every Greek hero or champion, from Hercules to Theseus and Achilles, had to prove his mettle by fighting a powerful warrior queen. We know their names: Hippolyta, Antiope, Thessalia. But they were long thought to be just travelers’ tales or products of the Greek storytelling imagination. A lot of scholars still argue that. But archaeology has now proven without a doubt that there really were women fitting the description that the Greeks gave us of Amazons and warrior women. READ THE EXPLORER PROJECT Biological Illuminations Marine biologist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer David Gruber studies animals that glow and shine underwater. Using special filters, he captures dazzling sights of marine creatures that use light—through bioluminescence or fluorescence—to interact in dark habitats. WATCH Show Your Support: SHOP DONATE SUBSCRIBE TRAVEL BECOME A MEMBER You are receiving this email because bpi.hgmp.jusgein@blogger.com is signed up to receive National Geographic communications. If you prefer not to receive emails from us, please unsubscribe. To ensure that you receive your National Geographic emails, please add ngs@e.nationalgeographic.com to your address book now. Learn how. Contact Us | Privacy Policy | About Us | Customer Service National Geographic | 1145 17th Street N.W. | Washington, D.C. 20036 Copyright © 2014 National Geographic Society. All Rights Reserved.