Though her Turkish name Hürrem meant “laughing one,” she proved better at breaking barriers —ﬁrst by marrying the sultan, and later by directing more of the Ottoman Empire’s affairs than any woman before her.
When Spanish settlers came to America’s Southwest in the late 1500s, they brought a much older irrigation practice that both distributed water and organized communities: the acequia. Today, nearly 1,000 of them are still ﬂowing.