Odette Klippel

08/11/2023

Freshwater silver eels are prepared for smoking in the Netherlands. Silver eels are sexually mature American or European eels, so-called for their metallic appearance at this stage of life.
(For more pictures of the amazing colors of our world, buy the National Geographic book Life in Color.)

01/11/2023

Migratory gulls take flight from a cedar tree being washed downstream by a glacial river in British Columbia, Canada

01/11/2023

26/10/2023

Tourists visit a scenic overlook called Oedolgae Rock on Jeju Island, South Korea. This picture originally appeared in a September 1975 story profiling South Korea and its response to external conflicts and internal pressures.

21/10/2023

Young Vietnamese Buddhists stand outside the Phuoc Hue Temple in Sydney, Australia. To correlate with Sydney hosting the 2000 Summer Olympics, the August 2000 issue's cover story was about the city and its cultural diversity.

17/10/2023

A man balances on Chicago's John Hancock Center while fixing a cable. The photo was taken for a story in the February 1989 issue examining the lives of those who lived, worked, and met in the tower.

02/09/2023

Thousands of N***s Escaped to South America After World War II

After the end of World War II, as many as 9,000 high-ranking N**i officers escaped punishment in Germany and fled abroad, most of them to South America. Over 5,000 started a new life in Argentina, the rest were scattered across Brazil, Paraguay and other countries.

At the beginning of World War II, Argentina already had a large German community. President Juan Peron sympathized with the Third Reich and helped set up routes in Spain and Italy, through which N**i officers escaped. He also gave them false passports and new identities.

With the help of the Vatican and relief organisations like the Red Cross, more and more N***s poured into South America, building a network of contacts that made it easier for the rest of them to flee. In the decades after the war, some were tracked down and brought back to Germany, however many N***s escaped justice.

One of the most famous N***s who found his way to South America was Adolph Eichmann. He was an SS officer in charge of Hitler's final solution - sending millions of Jews to death camps all across Europe. He lived in Buenos Aires until 1960 when a team of Israeli intelligence officers captured him and got him out of the country. After his trial in Jerusalem, he was hanged in 1962.

Another famous N**i was Joseph Mengele, a doctor who conducted medical experiments at the Auschwitz death camp, where he often used prisoners as guinea pigs. He spent several years in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay where he died in 1979.

01/09/2023

More than a hundred years after it had disappeared, Australia's first submarine was finally discovered. The submarine, called AE-1 , went missing on September 14, 1914, with a crew of 35 on board. It was the first Allied submarine loss of the war.

After decades of searching, the missing Australian sub was found about 300 metres underwater, off the coast of Papua New Guinea. It appears to be well-preserved and in one piece. Experts are now trying to examine the wreck and find out why the sub sank. They think it was probably an accident and not because of enemy fire.

The sub was on a mission to occupy German New Guinea, one of the German colonies in the Pacific.

In the past, there were 13 government - funded searches for the sub but, until now, none of them proved successful. When the submarine was found navy officials held a commemorative service for the crew that the Australian navy had lost. Families were contacted and told that the oldest naval mystery in Australian history had finally been solved.

31/08/2023

Chinese inventions have changed the world during the course of history. From paper money to gunpowder and the compass, many things we use today come from ancient China. Most of them date back to the Song Dynasty, which ruled the Asian empire between 960 and 1280 A.D.

When Marco Polo came to China in the 13 th century he discovered a very modern and civilized society. The Chinese engaged in trading, especially on rivers and canals. China at that time was highly developed, far more than Europe.

Many people travelled during the Song Dynasty. They built cities and took their own culture with them. Many of the largest cities of the world could be found in China during this period.

It was during this era that drinking tea was at the height of its popularity. People made very beautiful porcelain bowls, which they drunk out of. China, as we often call it, was produced especially for the royal family and for newly opened restaurants where rich people ate.

The invention of gunpowder changed the way wars were conducted. It led to the manufacturing of guns and even rockets. Without gunpowder, later inventions, like the car engine would not have been possible. Historians think that the Mongols brought gunpowder to Europe.

Printing was originally developed by Buddhist scholars. They copied texts that they gave to those who were preparing for examinations. The government also printed manuals for farm work and interesting articles about medicine. Because the Chinese alphabet is so complicated movable type printing was created.





Printing also had an effect on the Chinese economy. Texts about new farming methods that were successful in one region were printed and brought to other places in China. One of these new innovations in agriculture was the mass production of rice, introduced by a new type of rice that was grown in Vietnam. Farmers began growing crops not only for themselves but to sell at markets.

In order for economy to develop the Chinese needed a good transportation system. During the Song Dynasty canals were built to connect the main rivers. The invention of the compass allowed Chinese navigators to sail on open seas. They began to trade with countries in Southeast Asia, like Taiwan and the Philippines. Later on the Chinese expanded their trading to India and the eastern part of Africa.

The Chinese also invented sails that could be moved, in contrast to the early fixed sails that the European navigators had at the beginning of the Age of Exploration.

Because there were so many rivers and waterways in China people needed a way to get from one side of the river to the other. They designed what a rainbow bridge that could span one bank of the river with the other without a pillar in the middle of the river.

All in all the Song dynasty was a remarkable period in Chinese history with many inventions that make our world today a better place to live.

30/08/2023

Egyptian archaeologists have discovered a tomb that dates back 4,400 years. Found near the famous pyramids at Giza, it probably belongs to a woman known as Hetpet, who was a female priest and closely connected to the royal family of the Fifth Dynasty.

Hetpet is well-known among ancient Egyptian archaeologists. Even though her mummy has not yet been found, some of her private belongings were discovered over a century ago.

The tomb found in the western part of the Giza necropolis is made out of mud brick and is in good shape. Its wall paintings show hunting and fishing scenes as well as animal offerings and monkeys gathering fruit.

Excavators unearthed 300 cubic meters of earth before they found the tomb. They hope there may be more discoveries to be made in what they call a very promising area of the cemetery. Even though much of the area has been thoroughly examined in the past centuries, modern technologies may still reveal new findings under the desert surface. Increased digging is also going on in Luxor and the Valley of the Kings.

Authorities hope that the recent discovery will help boost Egypt's tourism industry which has been declining since the Arab Spring of 2011.

09/08/2023

The secret history of chocolate

Deep in the South American rainforest is … a chocolate tree? One-foot-long bright yellow pods hang from its branches. Inside are small, bitter seeds that give the tree its name: cacao (cuh-COW). Those seeds are what we use to make chocolate.

The seeds—which grow only near the Equator—don’t look or taste delicious. But ancient people figured out how to use them to make tasty treats. (In fact, the first part of the seed’s scientific name, Theobroma cacao, translates to "food of the gods" in Greek.) Check out the timeline below for the sweet scoop on the history of chocolate.

(Historians don’t always know the exact dates of historical events. That’s why you’ll see a "ca" next to some of the years on these pages. It stands for "circa," meaning "around.")

3300 B.C.
The earliest people known to have used the cacao plant are the ancient Mayo-Chinchipe people of what’s now Ecuador, a country in South America. Experts aren’t sure whether these people used the plant for food, drink, or medicine. But they do know the culture used cacao often since they found traces of theobromine—a natural chemical compound that comes from the plant—in artifacts found in archaeological sites throughout the region.

ca 1800 B.C.
The ancient Olmec people of Mesoamerica (what’s now Mexico and Central America) begin using cacao seeds—also called cocoa beans—to brew warm, flavored drinks. Historians aren’t sure how the Olmec figured out that the plant’s bitter beans would make tasty beverages. But one guess is that when they ate the fruit surrounding the seeds, they’d spit the seeds into a fire, which gave off a pleasing smell.

ca 8TH CENTURY A.D.
Cha-ching! The Maya, another group of ancient people from Mesoamerica, start using cocoa beans as money. Archaeologists have even found counterfeit beans made of clay that people tried to pass off as the real deal.

1500s
Many Aztecs, ancient people who lived in what’s now central Mexico, are drinking cacao every day, mixing the seeds with chilies to make a spicy, frothy beverage. In 1519, Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés reported that Aztec ruler Moctezuma II drank 50 cups a day. Cortés brings the drink back to Spain in 1528, where the Spaniards make one big change—to add sugar.

1600s-1700s
Chocolate houses—similar to coffeehouses today—become popular gathering spots for rich Europeans and Americans to meet over a hot chocolate drink. During the Revolutionary War, which lasts from 1775 to 1783, wounded soldiers sip the beverage to warm them up and give them an energy boost; troops are sometimes even paid with cocoa beans. In 1785, Thomas Jefferson predicts that hot chocolate will become as popular as tea or coffee.

1847
A company called J.S. Fry and Sons of England adds extra cacao butter to liquid chocolate, turning it solid and creating the first mass-produced chocolate bars. Over the next several decades, chocolate makers add milk powder to their recipes to create milk chocolate.

LATE 1800s
Chocolate is still kind of … chewy. So in 1879, Rodolphe Lindt of Switzerland comes up with a process called conching, in which a machine stirs the chocolate until it gets that melt-in-your-mouth texture. Dozens of different brands start making their own chocolate bars with the conching process.

EARLY 1900s
At the beginning of the 20th century, the main ingredient in chocolate—cocoa—becomes much cheaper. Chocolate is no longer a treat for just rich people, and stores around the world are stocked with affordable chocolate bars for everyone.

TODAY
Chocolate can now be found in grocery stores, candy shops … and on the runway. Salon du Chocolat, the world’s biggest chocolate festival, features a chocolate fashion show in Paris, France, every year, with clothes made of the sweet treat. The outfits are too fragile to be sold, so some are put on display after the festival in what must be the best-smelling exhibit ever.