Meilan Solly

Meilan Solly

 

Meilan Solly is Smithsonian magazine's associate digital editor, history.

After a queen ant successfully mates with multiple males, she chews off her wings, returns to the ground and starts a new colony

Swarms of Flying Ants Overtaking Great Britain Show Up as Rain on Radar

Once a year, the winged insects take to the skies and engage in mating rituals

The incomparable Bob Ross

New Investigation Answers Pressing Question: Whatever Happened to All of Bob Ross’ Paintings?

The artist produced almost 30,000 paintings over the course of his lifetime

The researchers' findings don’t necessarily portend Ciomadul’s imminent eruption, but they do suggest it's worth taking a second look at seemingly extinct volcanoes

Magma Lurks Below This ‘Extinct’ Volcano in Romania

Rocks in the upper crust beneath Ciomadul are, on average, 15 percent molten, with some areas reaching as high as 45 percent

L to R: Preparatory sketch for "Scylla" and 1938 oil painting of "Scylla"

Tate Acquires Archive of Works by Little-Known Surrealist Ithell Colquhoun

The collection, featuring some 5,000 sketches, drawings and commercial artworks, promises to instigate a 're-evaluation of her whole career'

The two divers spent an hour or so swimming alongside the giant barrel jellyfish.

Divers Encounter a Human-Size Jellyfish Off the Coast of England

Barrel jellyfish typically grow to a length of up to 3 feet, but this one measured closer to 5 feet long

Sadie Roberts-Joseph founded the Baton Rouge African-American Museum because she believed "If you don’t know where you came from, it’s hard to know where you’re going”

Sadie Roberts-Joseph, Slain Activist, Showed How Museums Can Raise Up Their Communities

Baton Rouge police described the museum founder, whose death has been ruled a homicide, as a 'tireless advocate of peace'

Researchers previously believed that traces of animal fat left in pottery stemmed from feasts held by Stonehenge's builders.

Did Stonehenge’s Builders Use Lard to Move Its Boulders Into Place?

Animal fat residue found on ceramic vessels suggests the ancient Britons who built the monument greased their wooden sledges with lard

The perpetrator rips pages in half horizontally

A Literary Vandal Is Ripping Pages Out of Books and Putting Them Back on Shelves

The so-called 'book ripper' has targeted more than 100 volumes at a library and charity bookshop in the English town of Herne Bay

Poker poses a challenge to A.I. because it involves multiple players and a plethora of hidden information.

This Poker-Playing A.I. Knows When to Hold 'Em and When to Fold 'Em

Pluribus won an average of around $5 per hand, or $1,000 per hour, when playing against five human opponents

Thanks to Bly's efforts, conditions at the women's asylum greatly improved

A Nellie Bly Memorial Is Coming to Roosevelt Island

The journalist famously wrote a six-part exposé cataloging the 10 days she spent at an asylum on Blackwell’s Island

An olive python swallows an Australian freshwater crocodile whole

See a Python Swallow a Crocodile Whole

A kayaker captured the gruesome photographs while exploring a swamp in Queensland, Australia

The bombs likely lie in an unexplored 22-hectare section of the archaeological site

Pompeii Is Home to Multiple Undetonated World War II Bombs

A statement by the Archaeological Museum of Pompeii assures the public that there is 'no risk for visitors'

Lead author Emily Fobert says, “The presence of light is clearly interfering with an environmental cue that initiates hatching in clownfish"

Thanks to Light Pollution, We're Losing Nemo

In trials, light-exposed eggs hatched normally as soon as scientists removed an overhead LED designed to simulate artificial light conditions

Olafur Eliasson, "The Cubic Structural Evolution Project," 2004

Consider the Nature of Perception at Olafur Eliasson's New Show

Tate Modern retrospective features some 40 works pulled from the artist's decades-long career

The nine sculpted heads were recovered at Heathrow Airport in 2002

Hundreds of Artifacts Looted From Iraq and Afghanistan to Be Repatriated

The trove, currently stored at the British Museum for safekeeping, includes 4th-century Buddhist sculpture fragments and 154 Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets

The team derived acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, from a plant wall polymer called lignin.

Researchers Develop Plant-Based, Eco-Friendly Method to Produce Tylenol

Current manufacturing processes rely on coal tar, which is produced using fossil fuels

Mary Ann Brown Patten, photographed by an unidentified artist, 1857

How the Camera Introduced Americans to Their Heroines

A new show at the National Portrait Gallery spotlights figures including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lucretia Mott and Margaret Fuller

The original 3,000-year-old lion sculpture was destroyed during the razing of Baghdad's Mosul Museum

Lion of Mosul Statue Brought Back Through 3-D Printed Replica

The resurrected sculpture is featured in the Imperial War Museum’s 'Culture Under Attack' exhibition

Catastrophic disasters like the pair of cyclones that devastated Mozambique earlier this year, seen here, can over shadow more commonplace, smaller-scale events, including intense heatwaves, storms and flooding.

One Climate Crisis Disaster Occurs Every Week, U.N. Official Warns

Governments should prioritize 'adaptation and resilience' measures designed to curb the effects of ongoing lower-impact climate events, experts say

President Amin at Buvuma Island, October 1971

Thousands of Newly Unearthed Photographs Document Ugandans’ Life Under Idi Amin

Around 150 of the images are now on view at the Uganda Museum in Kampala

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