Artifacts

None

Dispatch from Stonehenge, Day 1

March 31st: The Excavation Begins

None

Dispatch from Stonehenge, Day 2

April 1st: An Ill Wind Blows

None

Looting Iraq

No one was prepared for the pillaging of Baghdad's Iraq Museum in 2003, but Marine officer Col. Matthew Bogdanos, improvised an investigation

None

Monumental Mission

Assigned to find art looted by the Nazis, Western Allied forces faced an incredible challenge

None

Breuer Chair, 1926

Marcel Breuer's Bauhaus minimalism redefined a household basic

None

Protecting the Priceless

How one retired Army Reserve Major taught soldiers to save artworks and antiquities during wartime

None

Understanding the Lasting Allure of the Rosetta Stone

An Egyptologist explains the importance of the artifact

None

How Pan Am's Founder Juan Trippe Turned Americans Into Frequent Fliers

This antique globe was once owned by the fabled airline executive, who ushered in modern air travel

In Mexico, the molinillo stirs passions as well as chocolate.

A Historic Kitchen Utensil Captures What it Takes to Make Hot Chocolate From Scratch

A 1930s tool was used to whip chocolate beverages into a frothy blend

None

Trash Becomes Treasure

None

To Return Priceless Artifacts, or Not

Marine archaeologists rescued the shipwrecked H.L. Hunley (above, a computer rendering) in August 2000 more than 135 years after it sank during the Civil War.

Saving Our Shipwrecks

New technologies are aiding the search for one Civil War submarine, and the conservation of another

The site covers some 80,000 acres. UNESCO named it a World Heritage Site in 1983.

Saving Machu Picchu

Will the opening of a bridge give new life to the surrounding community or further encroach upon the World Heritage Site?

Though sundials have been around 3,000 years, William Andrewes (indicating the lateness of the hour in his garden in Concord, Massachusetts) is perhaps the first to build one showing the time in multiple places simultaneously.

The Shadow Knows

Why a leading expert on the history of timekeeping set out to create a sundial unlike anything the world has ever seen

Preservationists (including Allimam Achahi, far left, and Abdel Kader Haidara) are trying to rescue the city's rare manuscripts from centuries of neglect. "They must be protected," says Haidara.

The Treasures of Timbuktu

Scholars in the fabled African city, once a great center of learning and trade, are racing to save a still emerging cache of ancient manuscripts

These whale-oil lamps were found in the Arabia, along with bullwhips, doorknobs, pickles and more.

Time Capsule

A riverboat's telltale contents included 133-year-old pickles. Want one?

James McNeill Whistler's palette, c. 1888-90.

Refined Palette

Scholars say this 19th-century artifact could have belonged to the celebrated American painter

In most Akan states, gold-ornamented sandals identify a ruler. It is taboo for a chief to walk barefoot; to do so, followers believed, would invite disaster.

West African Gold: Out of the Ordinary

The inventive goldwork and royal regalia of Ghana's Akan people —on display in a new exhibition— are drawn, strikingly, from daily life

The family of Cesar Chavez donated this jacket to the National Museum of American History shortly after the labor leader's death.

When Union Leader Cesar Chavez Organized the Nation's Farmworkers, He Changed History

Cesar Chavez' black nylon satin jacket with the eagle emblem of the United Farm Workers is held in the Smithsonian collections

None

Towering Mysteries

Who built them and why? An amateur archaeologist tries to get to the bottom of some astonishing structures in Tibet and Sichuan Province, China

Page 37 of 39