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Articles

Bar pilots risk life and limb to guide ships across the "Graveyard of the Pacific."

Steering Ships Through a Treacherous Waterway

Braving storms with high seas a group of elite ship pilots steers tankers and freighters through the Columbia River

"Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history," Darwin (c.1880) said of a future in which his hard-won findings would be tested.

What Darwin Didn’t Know

Today’s scientists marvel that the 19th-century naturalist’s grand vision of evolution is still the key to life

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Wild Things: Life as We Know It

Honeyeater birds, sea slugs, tree frogs, and more

Dedicated donor: In 1925, ten-year-old Orrin Nash gave what he could.

Thinking Ahead

In 1925, 10-year-old Orrin Nash gave all he could to help the Smithsonian

Bill Fitzhugh maps the blacksmith’s shop’s floor, 2008. The Smithsonian research vessel PItsuilak rides at anchor in the bay. Fitzhugh and his team live aboard the boat, which takes its name from the Inuit word for a seabird, during their excavations.

The Basques Were Here

In arctic Canada, a Smithsonian researcher discovers evidence of Basque trading with North America

Classic Protest Songs from Smithsonian Folkways.

Jukebox: A Child Shall Lead Them

Panamanian termites (Termes panamaensis).

Faster Than a Speeding Bullet

Landscape photographer Frank Gohlke has a new show at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Q and A: Frank Gohlke

Abraham Lincoln's gold watch.

What’s Up

Newborn David B. Miller had the company of his mother (covered by sheets), grandfather (masked) and photographer father.

Family of Man’s Special Delivery

It took three generations to produce Wayne F. Miller’s photograph of his newborn son

It has been reported that by the end of the century, redheads will be extinct.

Requiem for the Redhead

The next great extinction—Carrot Tops

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Letters

Readers Respond to the December Issue

Partaking in an old but ambiguous rite, blue "devils" (in Paramin, with mouths colored by dyed bubble gum) offer spectators a deal: pay, or get rubbed with body paint.

Up Close at Trinidad’s Carnival

What’s behind the raucous pre-Lenten rite? An intrepid scholar hits the streets of Trinidad to find out

Higham (at Ban Non Wat) says villagers "don't relate to the bones they find."

Bodies of Evidence in Southeast Asia

Excavations at a cemetery in a Thai village reveal a 4,000-year-old indigenous culture

Charles Darwin

Evolution and Equality

What do Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, and the Freedom Riders have in common with each other?

The Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s Contested Legacy

Great Emancipator or unreconstructed racist? Each generation evokes a different Lincoln. But who was our sixteenth president?

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February Anniversaries

Momentous or Merely Memorable

After a mob attacked a bus with protesters in Alabama in 1961, hundreds more joined the cause.

The Freedom Riders, Then and Now

Fighting racial segregation in the South, these activists were beaten and arrested. Where are they now, nearly fifty years later?

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin helped shape the modern world.

How Lincoln and Darwin Shaped the Modern World

Born on the same day, Lincoln and Darwin would forever influence how people think about the modern world

Despite the summer influx of tourists, says the author, the town "remains at heart a working harbor."

The Vineyard in Winter

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks delights in the allure of Martha’s Vineyard’s off-season

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