Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Articles

None

Snubbing the Icons

None

Digital Sculptures

Edward Bernard's "Orbis eruditi", comparing all known alphabets as of 1689

An Alphabet of Pictures

GRAND PRIZE WINNER
A winter dawn in a New Zealand pasture

4th Annual Photo Contest Winners and Finalists

See the winning photos from our 2006 contest

The Finnish capital, facing the Baltic Sea (residents frequent the quay), enjoys a setting that has long enthralled visitors, including a Frenchman in 1838: "This town stretches over a vast peninsula...," he wrote, "the sea surrounds it on all sides."

Helsinki Warming

The city of Sibelius, known as a center for innovative technology and design, now stakes its claim as an urban hotspot

In Lisbon's Rossio Square, Pistolesi's computer-aided stitching together of 12 distinct images yields one, he says, that is "like a painting."

Circling Squares

A 360-degree perspective on some of Europe’s most alluring public spaces

None

Next Stop, Squalor

Is poverty tourism “poorism,” they call it exploration or exploitation?

None

Highlights & Hotspots

Some of this year’s noteworthy European events

Several dozen companies, such as Manhattan Rickshaw, operate in the United States.

Rickshaws Reinvented

The ancient transportation takes a modern turn

None

Squirrelologist

None

Wild Things: Life as We Know It

Gray seals, alligators and the world’s largest flower

Although Brazil protected indigenous territories in the 1980s, many miners and loggers ignore Native boundaries; they see cultural mapping as a threat.

Rain Forest Rebel

In the Amazon, researchers documenting the ways of native peoples join forces with a chief to stop illegal developers from destroying the wilderness

Sometime after 1938, a forger, perhaps oblivious to the document's historic nature, tried to boost its value by painting Byzantine-style illuminations on a few of its pages.

Reading Between the Lines

Scientists with high-tech tools are deciphering lost writings of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes

Pallid sturgeons, which can reach six feet long and live 60 years, flourished for eons in murky American waters.

Curtains for the Pallid Sturgeon

Can biologists breed the “Dinosaurs of the Missouri” fast enough to stave off their extinction?

None

DeLorean Tremens

Hold onto your flux capacitors, time machines have nearly arrived

Cowbirds (a male, above) "are more highly evolved than we previously thought," says Jeff Hoover.

Wiseguys with Wings

“Mafia” cowbirds muscle warblers into raising their young

"If global warming's worst predictions come true in 100 years," says Fabio Carrera, "the real issue is preserving Venice as a liveable place—not stopping the occasional tide from coming in."

Venice’s Uncertainty

A new floodgate system should protect the city from high tides—unless climate change interferes

Page 1220 of 1332