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Science
Theater of Relief
Medical procedures used to be a scream-filled endurance test until doctors at this Boston institution learned to tame the pain of patients
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When Germany Built a Flying Train 125 Years Ago, a City Coalesced Beneath It. It Has Moved Royalty, Commuters and Tourists—and One Elephant—Ever Since
When there was no room on the ground, towns in the Wupper Valley looked to the skies and built a suspension railway that became a source of pride and connection
Smart News
Scientists Just Learned That This Bat Eats Birds Midflight. A Renaissance Painter May Have Known About It Hundreds of Years Ago
Kazakhstan’s Iron Age ‘Golden Man’ and Other Elite Scythians of Eurasia Inherited Their High Social Status, Ancient DNA Suggests
Smallpox Scabs That British Doctors Used to Inoculate Patients May Have Introduced the Deadly Disease to Australia, New Research Suggests
New Images Reveal That This Asteroid Is Actually Two Conjoined Space Rocks. They Form a Peanut-Shaped Object Called a ‘Contact Binary’
The City of Boston Discovered One of the Oldest Known Gravestones of a Free Black American, Who Shared a Name With the Massachusetts Capital
Latest Features
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Travel
Rediscovering America’s Original Grand Tour
Follow along as we retrace the route one journalist laid out in “The Fashionable Tour,” from New York City to Niagara Falls, when memories of the fight for independence were still fresh
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History
How to Build a Character
Silence Dogood. Richard Saunders. Benevolus. Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim. All were pen names that allowed Franklin to say things he couldn’t have otherwise said
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Most Popular
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Special Report
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America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark
A Smithsonian magazine special issue in celebration of the nation's 250th
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Photo of the Day
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Podcast
Smithsonian Podcast: There’s More to That
Smithsonian magazine covers history, science and culture in the way only it can — through a lens on the world that is insightful and grounded in richly reported stories. In There’s More to That, meet the magazine’s journalists and hear how they discover the forces behind the biggest issues of our time.
Latest Episodes
The Remarkable, Amazing Stories of Route 66 Reflect the Twists and Turns of 100 Years of Americana
April 23, 2026 | 34 minutes
History
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Take an Exclusive Look at Three Newly Discovered Medieval Shipwrecks in Menorca’s ‘Cove of Mysteries’
Meteorological tsunamis likely sank the 13th-century trading vessels, whose cargo included objects from both Christian kingdoms and Moorish communities on the Iberian Peninsula
Science
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A Rare Comet Made History as the Third Known Interstellar Object to Fly Through Our Solar System. Studies Are Now Revealing the Mysterious Conditions in Which It Formed
In the latest research, telescope observations of 3I/ATLAS examine its chemical structure and suggest that it took shape in a peripheral region of a relatively calm planetary system
Innovation
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100 Years Ago, Students Across the U.S. Took the First SAT. Today, Relatively Few Colleges Require the Test. Where Is It Headed?
The standardized exam has evolved over the past century, all in the name of testing for college readiness. Now, it has become a symbol of the American higher education system
Travel
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From a Sea Turtle Release to an Outhouse Race, These Ten Fourth of July Traditions Celebrate America Like No Other
Revelers typically mark Independence Day with a barbecue and fireworks show, but these festivities across the country offer quirky alternatives
Arts & Culture
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Rembrandt Began a Biblical Painting. Another Artist Finished It ‘Rather Crudely.’ Now, Restorations Have Revealed the Long-Lost Original
An art dealer stumbled across “Let the Little Children Come Unto Me” at a German auction house in 2014. Experts have now carefully removed layers of overpaint from the forgotten masterpiece
At the Smithsonian
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This Building Hosted Lincoln’s Inaugural Ball and Displayed the Declaration of Independence. Today, It’s Home to Two World-Class Art Museums
The Old Patent Office Building now houses the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. A new exhibition spotlights the structure’s rich history of encouraging innovation