Articles

Unpublished Photos by Gordon Parks Bring a Nuanced View of 1950s Black America

An exhibit in Boston highlights unpublished photos from the acclaimed <i>Life</i> magazine photographer

Think Big

Why String Theory Still Offers Hope We Can Unify Physics

Evidence that the universe is made of strings has been elusive for 30 years, but the theory's mathematical insights continue to have an alluring pull

Why the Leatherback Turtle Has a Skylight in its Head

How do animals with poor vision see in dark locales?

What Does 'Happy New Year' Even Really Mean?

Physicists engage in a strange debate about whether time really passes

From the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

There Are 120 Years of Lakota History on This Calendar

The visual recording of life in the nation sheds light on a vanished culture

London Mayor Boris Johnson released his book, The Churchill Factor, in November 2014.

London Mayor Boris Johnson on Winston Churchill's Cheekiest Quotes

London's mayor talks about his new Churchill biography, 50 years after the British Bulldog's death

January 2015 marks 50 years since the death of Winston Churchill, shown here in 1943, known for his writing and speeches.

The Illustrious History of Misquoting Winston Churchill

Saying exactly what Churchill said isn’t easy—or cheap

King led a throng of 25,000 marchers through downtown Montgomery in 1965.

The Radical Paradox of Martin Luther King’s Devotion to Nonviolence

Biographer Taylor Branch makes a timely argument about civil right leader’s true legacy

The wounded soldiers above were photographed at a hospital in Fredericksburg, Virginia, between 1861 and 1865.

Ask Smithsonian 2017

Did Civil War Soldiers Have PTSD?

One hundred and fifty years later, historians are discovering some of the earliest known cases of post-traumatic stress disorder

How Did Right-Handedness Evolve? And More Questions From Our Readers

You asked, we answered

How to Create a Virtual Organism

Through OpenWorm, scientists are hoping to allow anyone with a computer to unlock the secrets of animal behavior

Guadalupe Peak and El Capitan: a landscape “lonely as a dream,” wrote Edward Abbey.

Evotourism ®

When Texas Was at the Bottom of the Sea

A hike to the “top of Texas,” the world’s most famous fossil reef, leads to a new sense of the sublime

Asked to choose one artifact, the Smithsonian's Undersecretary for Arts, History and Culture Richard Kurin selected this spinning wheel from the collections of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

For Every Object, There Is a Story to Tell

A Smithsonian curator is asked to select just one artifact

NASA is using nighttime pictures of Earth to track energy use during cultural holidays.

NASA Can See Your Holiday Lights From Space

Scientists can use holiday lights during Christmas and Rammadan as a proxy for overall energy use in urban areas

Great Lakes Brewery's Christmas Ale is one winter beer you should definitely try this season.

The Best Winter Beers to Try This Holiday Season

We spoke with hops and malts expert William Bostwick about the right quaffs to drink while the weather is cold

Singer and plastic-clothing designer Pharrell Williams at the "Raw For The Oceans" event at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

The Top 12 Ocean Stories That Made Waves in 2014

The seas served up some compelling headlines this year, from celebrity fashion to solving the mystery of the melting starfish

7th Place: Butter daisy (Melampodium divaricatum) flower at 2x magnification. Fluorescence. Oleksandr Holovachov, Ekuddsvagen, Sweden.

Some of the Most Beautiful Things in Nature Come in the Tiniest of Packages

The winners of the 2014 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition capture a rat brain, the mouthparts of a vampire moth and other small wonders

For years now, the U.S. Navy has been looking for a way to fuel fighter jets aboard aircraft carriers out in the open ocean without having to rely on refueling ships.

Fuel from Seawater? What's the Catch?

Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory recently flew a model plane using a liquid hydrocarbon fuel they sourced from the ocean

Earth's layers.

What We Can Learn by Digging Up the Secrets of Earth's Deep Carbon

Diamond computers and subsurface life are just some of the topics being investigated by scientists in the Deep Carbon Observatory network

Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) embraces Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) in a famous scene from the 1939 epic film Gone with the Wind.

How Gone With the Wind Took the Nation by Storm By Catering to its Southern Sensibilities

From casting to its premiere, how Southerners viewed the film made all the difference

Page 532 of 1280