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Subjects including the arts and humanities, government, nature, people, recreation, science and societyDiscover Smithsonian articles related to the arts, history, science and popular culture.
Athletes Are Exceptionally Fast Visual Learners
Professional football, hockey, soccer and rugby players are significantly better than amateurs or non-athletes at processing fast-moving, complicated scenes
February 01, 2013 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Primal Screens: How Pro Football Is Amping Up Its Game
Pro football is turning to screens--some massive, others on smart phones--to try to keep its fans entertained.
February 01, 2013 |
By Randy Rieland
Drone Couture: Designing Invisibility
While scientists work toward perfecting the invisibility cloak, one designer has already developed a line of clothing that makes people invisible...to robots
February 01, 2013 |
By Jimmy Stamp
Faces From Afar: Two Canadian Travelers Bring Love, Goodwill and Water Filters to the Needy
Give a man a glass of water, and you may quench his thirst. But teach him to build a water filter, as Rod and Ingrid McCarroll are doing, and he'll have clean water for life
February 01, 2013 |
By Alastair Bland
Lemurs Are the Most Endangered Mammals on the Planet, And This Adorable Baby Is Their Future
The vast majority of lemur species are facing extinction, but this baby Coquerel's safika is trying to help
February 01, 2013 |
By Colin Schultz
The Uncertain Promise of Freedom’s Light: Black Soldiers in The Civil War
Sometimes treated as curiosities at the time, black men and women fighting for the Union and organizing for change altered the course of history
February 01, 2013 |
By Leah Binkovitz
The FBI Once Freaked Out About Nazi Monks in the Amazon Rainforest
In October 1941, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover received a strange bit of war intelligence in a classified document
February 01, 2013 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Solving the Mystery of Owls’ Head-Turning Abilities
New research shows how owls can swivel their heads around without cutting off blood supply to their brains
February 01, 2013 |
By Marina Koren
A Nike Shoe, Now a Part of the Smithsonian
The Flyknit racer is currently in the collections of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
February 2013 |
By Leah Binkovitz
New Books, Reviewed: Animal Emotions, Deconstructing Detroit and the Science of Winning
Taking a closer look at some of the newest releases in non-fiction
February 2013 |
By Chloë Schama
Why the Best Success Stories Often Begin With Failure
One writer’s unexpected bout of unemployment inspired him to catalogue the misadventures of those who came before him
February 2013 |
By Amy Crawford
When Did Humans Come to the Americas?
Recent scientific findings date their arrival earlier than ever thought, sparking hot debate among archaeologists
February 2013 |
By Guy Gugliotta
Air Pollution Has Been a Problem Since the Days of Ancient Rome
By testing ice cores in Greenland, scientists can look back at environmental data from millennia past
February 2013 |
By Joseph Stromberg
How Climate Change Affects the Smithsonian
Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough looks at how our scientists are studying our changing climate
February 2013 |
By G. Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
Where is the Costa Concordia Now?
The ship that went aground one year ago is slowly but surely being turned upright and salvaged
February 2013 |
By Mark Strauss
The Unsuccessful Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln
On the eve of his first inauguration, President Lincoln snuck into Washington in the middle of the night, evading the would-be assassins who waited for him in Baltimore
February 2013 |
By Daniel Stashower
Welcome to America’s Dinosaur Playground
Countless bones and a billion years of geological action make Dinosaur National Monument the go-to park for fossil finds
February 2013 |
By Mary Roach
An Illustrated Guide to the World’s Creation Myths
Each culture has its own version of how the universe began. Artist Noah MacMillan brings this “visual vocabulary” to life
February 2013 |
By Leah Binkovitz
The Psychology Behind Superhero Origin Stories
How does following the adventures of Spider-Man and Batman inspire us to cope with adversity?
February 2013 |
By Robin Rosenberg
