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A snorkeler explores a shallow lagoon surrounded by rock islands in Indonesia

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Hypatia murdered

History & Archaeology

Hypatia, Ancient Alexandria’s Great Female Scholar

An avowed paganist in a time of religious strife, Hypatia was also one of the first women to study math, astronomy and philosophy
By Sarah Zielinski

Arts & Culture

Smithsonian magazine 7th Annual Photo Contest

Check out the 50 shots our editors named finalists and help pick a winner!
By Smithsonian magazine

Pho Spice Garden buffet

Travel

Searching for Hanoi's Ultimate Pho

With more Americans sampling Vietnam's savory soup, a noted food critic and an esteemed maestro track down the city's best
By Mimi Sheraton

New York City harbor

History & Archaeology

The Search for the Guggenheim Treasure

Loot valued at $20 million lies off the coast of Staten Island, and Ken Hayes is on the hunt for the sunken silver bullion
By Christopher Solomon

Chinese tea plantation

History & Archaeology

The Great British Tea Heist

Botanist Robert Fortune traveled to China and stole trade secrets of the tea industry, discovering a fraud in the process
By Sarah Rose

Rescued horses

Travel

The Mustang Mystique

Descended from animals brought by Spanish conquistadors centuries ago, wild horses roam the West and may be running out of room
By Abigail Tucker

Whale bones in Barrow Alaska

Science & Nature

Barrow, Alaska: Ground Zero for Climate Change

Scientists converge on the northernmost city in the United States to study global warming's dramatic consequences
By Bob Reiss

Construction around old mosque Kashgar

History & Archaeology

Demolishing Kashgar's History

A vital stop on China's ancient Silk Road, the Uighur city of Kashgar may lose its old quarter to plans for "progress"
By Joshua Hammer

Homo heidelbergensis sculpture

Arts & Culture

Sculpting Evolution

A series of statues by sculptor John Gurche brings us face to face with our early ancestors
By Abigail Tucker

Home Funeral

People & Places

Capturing Appalachia's "Mountain People"

Shelby Lee Adams' 1990 photograph of life in the eastern Kentucky mountains captured a poignant tradition
By Abigail Tucker

Lockport New York

People & Places

Joyce Carol Oates Goes Home Again

The celebrated writer returns to the town of her birth to revisit the places that haunt her memory and her extraordinary fiction
By Joyce Carol Oates

Dolley Madison rescue of George Washington portrait

History & Archaeology

How Dolley Madison Saved the Day

As invading British troops approached in August 1814, the first lady coolly took command of the White House
By Thomas Fleming

Ardipithecus ramidus life appearance and bones

Science & Nature

The Human Family's Earliest Ancestors

Studies of hominid fossils, like 4.4-million-year-old "Ardi," are changing ideas about human origins
By Ann Gibbons

Rick Potts

Arts & Culture

Q and A: Rick Potts

The Smithsonian anthropologist turned heads in scientific circles when he proposed that climate change was the driving force in human evolution
By Beth Py-Lieberman

evolution faces

Science & Nature

A Closer Look at Evolutionary Faces

John Gurche, a “paleo-artist,” has recreated strikingly realistic heads of our earliest human ancestors for a new exhibit
By Abigail Tucker

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