In 1970 - the trials and triumphs of endangered species, from elephants to red wolves to bald eagles - it was certainly a sign that when our first issue reported the fate of the snow dragon elephant,
The number in the wild has dropped from 40,000 to just 3,000.
Over the next 20 years, in story after story, the magazine reported on ways and means of saving endangered habitats and species.
While assessing the effects of the Endangered Species Act, which first became law in 1973, the public has been distracted by confrontations involving snail darts.
But significant progress has been made over the years.
California condors have a chance of escaping extinction.
The same goes for red wolves, whose wild populations were exterminated before being bred in captivity and released into the wild.
Eastern brown pelicans and American alligators have mostly returned.
International efforts appear to have saved California gray whales.
Banning ivory sales could help African elephants survive.
Our national symbol, the bald eagle, has been removed from the endangered list, and gray wolves are once again prowling the West.
It is sometimes said that the Endangered Species Act, which was reauthorized by Congress this year, is an attempt to outlaw extinction.
In fact, it is about mitigating the depredation of humans, especially the destruction of critical habitats, which continues at a disturbing rate.
The most spectacular rescue also involved the American Peregrine Falcon.
Devastated by DDT and habitat loss, peregrine falcons have become extinct in the east, while in the west their numbers have declined by 90%.
Today, through captive breeding, the bird has returned to every state in its original range.
1971 - Solar Energy: After a dazzling debut, its prospects seemed less sunny than anyone else's, Smithsonian Institution editors had high hopes for solar power in 1971, but today, non-renewable energy
-- Coal, natural gas, oil, nuclear energy -- still account for more than 90% of our energy.
Hydropower and timber production account for less than 6%.
Solar and wind energy?
Only 0.2%.
The problem is cost: Solar energy costs twice as much as the average U.S. energy price.
The King Tut Show in 1972 demonstrated the method in London, with large crowds lining up and even camping overnight to buy tickets.
They awaited the "Treasure of Tutankhamun," a spectacular display of gleaming animals, statues and rich jewelry, including the boy king's stunning gold funeral mask, Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun died in 1352 B.C., and in the late 1970s Tutankhamun took King Tut on a tour of the United States, broadening the museum's public reach, with projects such as "British Treasures" (1985) and "
Exhibitions such as "Circa 1492" (1991) set the style.
These days, as costs rise and funding dwindles, large exhibitions may have become obsolete, but the museum's talent and care continue.
1973 - Sickle Cell Anemia: No Cure, But Advances in Treatment Twenty years ago, sickle cell anemia began to attract serious national attention, in part because of the character in our story, Dr. Rudolph Ellsworth Jackson
.
He is an African-American blood researcher who has just been named director of a National Institutes of Health task force aimed at preventing and treating the disease.
Sickle cell is a blood disorder that is transmitted genetically.
It mainly afflicts black people, especially young children, who are very painful and dangerous.
About 10 percent of black Americans have this trait but do not develop the disease.
If you have it, some of the hemoglobin in your body will occasionally start to curl up and stick together, clogging blood vessels and reducing blood flow to tissues.
Some children with sickle cell suffer strokes.
They are also at risk of meningitis and pneumonia.
In 1973, and in the years since, 30 percent of babies with sickle cell died before age 5.
Only 16% live beyond the age of 30.
BNow, newborn screening for sickle cell is standard in 43 states, so parents who haven't had themselves tested know what to expect from their children.
There are many things we can do.
Doctors like Virgil Mackey at the Medical College of Georgia can now reduce the risk of multiple strokes with repeated blood transfusions.
Babies with sickle cell are also given regular doses of penicillin, starting in infancy and continuing until they are older, generally around age 5, when sudden infection is most likely to occur.
Recent research suggests that hemoglobin-altering drugs, such as hydroxyurea, can help prevent suffering in sickle cell patients.
Hydroxyurea, in particular, appears to significantly reduce the incidence of acute chest syndrome, one of the disease's most lethal complications.
There are still 72,000 people in the United States living with sickle cell.
But more than 85% of people can live to be 20 years old, and half can live to be over 50 years old.
"When I went to medical school in 1955, no one was living past the age of 20," said Dr. Samuel Chalach, the lead investigator of the recent hydroxyurea test. 1974 - For years, recycling was an idea whose
The time was coming; now it was "no money left. No payback," read the epitaph on a fake tombstone. He died in Oregon on September 30, 1972.