Yellow Fever

Top Regional Attractions Academy of Natural Sciences 1900 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy.; 215-299-1000. www.ansp.org . Amazon Voyage: Vicious Fishes & Other Riches - Exhibit on biodiversity, field research, resource management & Amazon culture. Closes 12/31. $10; $8 seniors, students, military, children 3-12; free for children under 3. Mon.-Fri. 10 am-4:30 pm, Sat.-Sun. 10 am-5 pm. American Swedish Historical Museum 1900 Pattison Ave.; 215-389-1776. www.americanswedish.

The searchers were in a nearly pitch-dark, third-floor room in the abandoned Lazaretto quarantine station and hospital when the flashlight on the floor flickered on, then off. No one had touched it. The black-clad group sitting on the dusty floor clocked the time: 10:15 p.m. "We're here to learn about you. We're here to learn from you," said Mark Davis of the Pennsylvania Anomalous Society Team (PAST), a group that researches the history and paranormal activity of area buildings.

Samuel Powel was nicknamed the "Patriot Mayor," but was he? Powel has the distinction of being the last mayor of Philadelphia under British rule and the first after American independence, but new research is calling into question his early commitment to the cause. Samuel Powel, born in 1738, was a lifelong Philadelphian. In 1759, he graduated from the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania), inherited his grandfather's Philadelphia properties (making him one of the wealthiest young men in the colonies)

Ned Warwick is a former editor with The Inquirer It's a museum few people know exists, housing the collection of a man about whom most people are only vaguely aware. And yet the Stephen Girard Collection provides an extraordinary look at one of the most remarkable figures in the history of Philadelphia and of this country. The collection, housed on the second floor of Founders Hall on the Girard College campus in Fairmount, rekindles in all its day-to-day detail the life and times of a man who, when alive, was America's richest person.

The discovery of seven graves in the basement of a home undergoing renovation in the city's Fairmount section is a reminder that Philadelphia is dotted with forgotten burial grounds. The origins of the bones - found in the graves on the 800 block of North 20th Street - has not been determined. But records show that one of the city's many potter's fields was located nearby, at North 19th Street and Fairmount Avenue. The burial ground served as a last resting place for many of those who died at Bush Hill, a former estate that was first used as a hospital during the 1793 yellow-fever outbreak and then became the site of the city's Municipal Hospital for Contagious Diseases until 1855.

Like an anxious bomb squad watching while a fuse burns short, the world's mosquito experts are bracing for a bang that seems inevitable. Throughout the tropics, populations of dangerous, disease-carrying mosquitoes are rebounding, and the prospects are grim indeed. "They're back, and it's like we made them mad," said virologist Barry Beaty. The mosquito Aedes aegypti, which transmits yellow fever and dengue, has recently spread disease in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and other parts of the Caribbean.

A history of Philadelphia's 1793 yellow fever epidemic, a biography of West Chester native and civil-rights leader Bayard Rustin, a critique of the Soviet Gulag, and novels by veterans Scott Spencer, Shirley Hazzard and Edward P. Jones are among this year's nominees for the National Book Awards. The National Book Foundation announced the nominations yesterday in New York. An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 (Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin)

The headline read, "In times of uncertainty, how much more can we take?" (Inquirer, Nov. 4). We don't know, but we have a choice. We can curl up in a corner, wringing our hands, paralyzed by anticipation and fear. Or we can pick ourselves up and conduct our lives as well as we can in light of our new circumstances. The survival of the human species has always been due to our ability to adjust to our changing environment. Why would we stop now? We don't have to begin each day by listening to an hour-by-hour drip of bad news on CNN; we can begin each day by listening to our favorite music station on the radio and listen to only headline news.

The column in Sunday's Currents, "Stem cell research at a crossroads," written by Brooke Ellison of the Empire State Stem Cell Board, was a surprising viewpoint from someone on an ethics committee. Ethics is about choosing to do the harder right, instead of the easier wrong; it's about making the tough choice when the easier choice is more expedient. Regardless of how history sees President Bush in total, he was correct in his tough choice on embryonic stem cell research. Yes, countless people will die because science has yet to catch up with some diseases as rapidly as perhaps possible, but this is as it has always been.