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In this section you will find current event articles that relate to the real-life events, topics, and people found in The Adventures of Indiana Jones. Educators can use these current events to connect our past with the present day. To see current articles for a specific Indy Adventure, please click the appropriate link below. For the most recent articles, please scroll down.
Young Indiana Jones Connections
Feature Film Connections
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Temple of Doom
Last Crusade
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Archaeologists May Have A Bone To Pick With Herbivores
8/4/2011
My First Adventure
When you see news stories with headlines like “Crocodile Ate Our Human Ancestors,” do you ever wonder how the archaeologists knew that the bones had been chewed by a certain creature? This is harder than it seems because carnivores aren’t the only creatures munching on bones, and herbivores are not the strict vegans we think they are. Herbivores eat bones. They’re not delving in to get the yummy marrow, though. Herbivores chew only on dry bones and only when they’re mineral-deprived; the bones provide essential nutrients, phosphorus and a bit of sodium.
Minter’s Ring: The Story of One World War II POW
8/2/2011
Trenches of Hell
In the spring of 1962, the United States Navy was excavating a site in Inchon, Korea, when the discovery of human remains led officers to believe they had come across the site of a prisoner-of-war camp. More than a decade earlier, during the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur commanded some 75,000 United Nations ground forces and more than 250 ships into the Battle of Inchon—a surprise assault that led, just two weeks later, to the recapture of Seoul from the North Korean People’s Army. But the 1962 Inchon excavation led to an unexpected find.
Machu Picchu, Before and After Excavation
7/22/2011
My First Adventure
The ruins of Machu Picchu are covered in jungle growth in this 1911 photograph taken when Yale archaeologist Hiram Bingham first came to the site a century ago this week. Bingham was surprised to find that the ancient Inca sites he visited in Peru, including Machu Picchu, weren't as hidden or deserted as he imagined they would be.
WWI underground: Unearthing the hidden tunnel war
6/10/2011
The WWI Episodes
Archaeologists are beginning the most detailed ever study of a Western Front battlefield, an untouched site where 28 British tunnellers lie entombed after dying during brutal underground warfare. For WWI historians, it's the "holy grail". When military historian Jeremy Banning stepped on to a patch of rough scrubland in northern France four months ago, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
Watch a Trombone’s Shock Wave
6/2/2011
The Mystery of the Blues
When I think of a shock wave, I think “explosion,” like the ones on “Mythbusters” (where you can often see the resulting shock wave when the hi-speed video is played back in slow motion). I don’t think of musical instruments. But perhaps I should. In a 1996 paper from the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Mico Hirschberg of the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands and colleagues documented shock waves emanating from trombones played at fortissimo (very loud) levels and predicted that similarly shaped “bright” instruments, like trumpets, that have a segment of cylindrical pipe after the mouthpiece would also produce these shock waves.
An Unforgettable Photo of Martha Graham
6/1/2011
Espionage Escapades
Barbara Morgan’s 1940 image of Martha Graham in the ballet Letter to the World may be the most famous photograph ever taken of an American dancer. It ranks, in honor, with Ansel Adams’ photographs of Yosemite and Walker Evans’ of small-town churches, and it bears much the same message: Americans’ belief in the flinty, frank truth of their vision of life, as opposed, say, to European decorativeness and indirection.
Wormlike Parasite Detected in Ancient Mummies
5/31/2011
My First Adventure
A tiny, wormlike parasite that plagues people worldwide also infected ancient Africans, new analyses of mummies reveal for the first time.
Neanderthals Made a Last Stand at Subarctic Outpost?
5/13/2011
My First Adventure
A hardy band of Neanderthals may have made a last stand for their species at a remote outpost in subarctic Russia, a newfound prehistoric "tool kit" suggests. The Ural Mountains site "may be one of the last [refuges] of the Neanderthals, and that would be very exciting," said study leader Ludovic Slimak, an archaeologist at France's Université de Toulouse le Mirail.
Neanderthals' Last Stand Possibly Found
5/12/2011
My First Adventure
A Neanderthal-style toolkit found in the frigid far north of Russia's Ural Mountains dates to 33,000 years ago and may mark the last refuge of Neanderthals before they went extinct, according to a new Science study.
Broadway’s Top Ten Musical Flops
5/11/2011
The Scandal of 1920
In Mel Brooks’ The Producers, washed-up theater producer Max Bialystock and wishy-washy accountant Leo Bloom figure they can get rich quick with a Broadway flop if they raise more money than they need to stage the show. (Their plan ultimately backfires and the pair end up in prison for fraud.) In real life, the creative minds that conspire to put on a show aim for greatness, but in the highly competitive New York theater scene, more shows bomb than succeed.