The TIME Magazine Vault

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‘Autumn’s Chemistry’

As fall begins, we turn once again to TIME's 1941 explanation of the science behind the leaves' changing colors:
"From hedgerow, lawn and wooded hill
Departs the summer's chlorophyll;
The elms and hickories lose their green
And glow instead with carotene,
While sumacs, maples redden in
A burst of anthocyanin—
And TIME is moved to tell its clients
The reason why in terms of science"

‘Autumn’s Chemistry’

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TIME—Photograph by Lyle Owerko

If You Want to Humble an Empire

"This was the bloodiest day on American soil since our Civil War, a modern Antietam played out in real time, on fast-forward, and not with soldiers but with secretaries, security guards, lawyers, bankers, janitors," wrote TIME's Nancy Gibbs after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. "It was strange that a day of war was a day we stood still. We couldn't move — that must have been the whole idea — so we had no choice but to watch."

If You Want to Humble an Empire

TIME—Photograph by Lyle Owerko

New York Firefighters amid the rubble of the World Trade Centre.

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September 11, 2001

TIME's special issue on Sept. 14, 2001, covered the heartbreaking tragedy that changed New York City and America forever. "Terrorism has struck America before," wrote Managing Editor James Kelly, "but never this brazenly and never with such heartbreaking destruction. As my colleagues and I watched the horrific events, we decided to devote a special issue to memorializing this day and to get it into our readers' hands as quickly as possible."

September 11, 2001

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The Battle of the Sexes

Rafael Nadal just won the men's singles final at the 2019 U.S. Open. Take a look back at TIME's coverage of one of the biggest tennis matches in American history. It was Sept. 20, 1973, that nearly 50 million TV viewers tuned in to watch tennis' much-anticipated Battle of the Sexes. "In three straight sets that lasted 2 hr. 5 min.," TIME reported the following week, "Billie Jean King, 29, the pride of women's tennis, briskly dispatched Robert Larimore Riggs, the huckster who had hustled the world of spectator sportsmen into believing that you really can go home again."

The Battle of the Sexes

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September Is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month

As this year's World Alzheimer's Awareness Month begins, it's worth noting that—while the disease remains heartbreakingly intractable—awareness has increased greatly in the past few decades. In the early 1980s, when TIME first began writing about Alzheimer's, the idea had to be explained to readers as such: "Aberrations [of memory] mark the onset of Alzheimer's disease (AD), the insidious and heart-breaking malady of advancing age," the magazine noted in 1983. "The memory lapses, confusion and dementia inevitably get worse."