Articles

Mick Moloney leads the Green Fields of America at the 2017 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

How One Impromptu Jam Session Spawned a Sweeping Irish-American Music Revival

For 40 years, Green Fields of America has told traditional Irish stories through song

Where’s my bus?

Dozens of U.S. Cities Have ‘Transit Deserts’ Where People Get Stranded

Living in these zones makes it hard to access good jobs, health care and other services

A Honey Badger and Mole Snake Fight to the Death

A hungry honey badger and a fearless mole snake are locked in a deadly battle, with survival at stake

These black- and red-colored pigments reveal that humans were using pigments, potentially to communicate status or identity, by around 300,000 years ago.

New Research

Colored Pigments and Complex Tools Suggest Humans Were Trading 100,000 Years Earlier Than Previously Believed

Transformations in climate and landscape may have spurred these key technological innovations

Kewpies were the creative invention of illustrator Rose O'Neill.

Women Who Shaped History

The Prolific Illustrator Behind Kewpies Used Her Cartoons for Women’s Rights

Rose O’Neill started a fad and became a leader of a movement

Small differences account for a shooter’s consistency.

The Math Behind the Perfect Free Throw

A basketball computer program simulates millions of trajectories in search of the ideal shot

Ahmad Shah (r. 1909–25) and his cabinet by Assadullah al-Husayni naqqash-bashi, 1910

In Persia’s Dynastic Portraiture, Bejeweled Thrones and Lavish Decor Message Authority

Paintings and 19th century photographs offer a rare window into the lives of the royal family

How to Calculate the Danger of a Toxic Chemical to the Public

The risk of any toxin depends on the dose, how it spreads, and how it enters the body

A 1988 Flight From Denver Crashes in Bad Weather

It's January 19, 1988, and Trans-Colorado Flight 2286 is attempting to land at Durango La Plata Airport

In a letter of 1770, Benjamin Franklin described tofu ("tau-fu") to his friend John Bartram as a sort of cheese made from "Chinese Garavances"—what we would call soybeans.

Ben Franklin May Be Responsible for Bringing Tofu to America

How a letter of 1770 may have ushered the Chinese staple into the New World

How It All Began: A Colleague Reflects On the Remarkable Life of Stephen Hawking

The physicist probed the mysteries of black holes, expanded our understanding of the universe and captured the world's imagination, says Martin Rees

Calvin and Hobbes, the influential and popular comic strip by Bill Watterson about a boy and his stuffed tiger that ran in thousands of newspapers worldwide during its run from 1985-1995.

This Artist Deconstructed His Love and Fascination for <i>Calvin and Hobbes</i>

Tony Lewis finds a new way of writing poetry, through artistry, and his assemblage of cut-up dialog balloons from Bill Watterson’s much-loved comic strip

Dr. Frankenstein at work in his laboratory

What Frankenstein Can Still Teach Us 200 Years Later

An innovative annotated edition of the novel shows how the Mary Shelley classic has many lessons about the danger of unchecked innovation

What surprises will this year’s tournament have in store?

Can a Computer Model Predict the First Round of This Year's March Madness?

Two mathematicians at Ohio State University are using machine learning to forecast tournament upsets

How the Battle of Jutland Pushed Britain to the Limit

Going into World War I, the British Navy tasted success for well over a century. By 1916, they finally had an adversary that would test their abilities

Byaku Gunjo

Peek into the Colorful History of the World's Largest Pigment Collection

<i>An Atlas of Rare & Familiar Colour</i> combs through the rainbow that makes up the Forbes Pigment Collection

The Proliferation of Happiness

A professor of consumer culture tracks the history of positive psychology

Amdavad Ni Gufa

These Unique Buildings in India Just Won the Biggest Award in Architecture

The 90-year-old is the first Indian architect to win the Pritzker Prize

An artist's interpretation of two giant pterosaurs in the Late Cretaceous.

New Research

What Doomed the Pterosaurs?

Killed off in their prime, the leathery fliers may have been living too large for their own good

At the time of capture, the Smithsonian's coelacanth specimen weighed about 160 pounds and measured a little less than five and a half feet long.

How the Smithsonian’s Coelacanth Lost Its Brain and Got It Back Again

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the discovery of a fish believed to have gone the way of the dinosaurs 70 million years ago

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