Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Articles

The Glomar Explorer, the ship that served as home base for the submarine-retrieval mission of Project Azorian. The Glomar Explorer's cover story was that it was doing deep sea mining research.

During the Cold War, the CIA Secretly Plucked a Soviet Submarine From the Ocean Floor Using a Giant Claw

The International Spy Museum details the audacious plan that involved a reclusive billionaire, a 618-foot-long ship, and a great deal of stealth

None

Are Birds Dinosaurs and Your Other Questions Answered

Cat-loving paleontologist answers your questions in the National Museum of Natural History’s YouTube series, “The Doctor Is In.”

Mosquito-borne diseases, such as Zika, malaria and Rift Valley Fever, threaten billions of people around the world.

How Scientists Use Climate Models to Predict Mosquito-Borne Disease Outbreaks

The ebb and flow of rainy seasons corresponds with the hatching of millions of mosquitoes—and the spread of diseases they carry

Marion Donovan demonstrates the "Boater," around 1950.

Meet Marion Donovan, the Mother Who Invented a Precursor to the Disposable Diaper

The prolific inventor with 20 patents to her name developed the “Boater,” a reusable, waterproof diaper cover in the late 1940s

As every exhausted new parent knows, sometimes babies don’t want to sleep in stationary cribs.

A History of Cribs and Other Brilliant and Bizarre Inventions for Getting Babies to Sleep

Generations of parents have relied on contraptions, both clever and crazy, to give their infants—and themselves—some rest

Signmakers Stanley Sawicki and Stanley Palka prepare several thousand picket signs in 1950 for a possible Chrysler auto workers' strike over employee pensions.

Separating Truth From Myth in the So-Called ‘Golden Age’ of the Detroit Auto Industry

The post-war era’s labor unrest and market instability has seemingly been forgotten in the public’s memory

Crocker's Car heads to Promontory Summit in 1869. The car shuttled railroad president Leland Stanford from Sacramento to officially complete the transcontinental railroad, and probably also carried the iconic Golden Spike to the ceremony.

The Last Remaining Rail Car That ‘Witnessed’ the Transcontinental Railroad’s Momentous Day

‘Crocker’s Car’ brought the tycoon Leland Stanford to connect the East Coast to the West in 1869

Bald cypresses along the Black River in North Carolina.

North Carolina Bald Cypresses Are Among the World’s Oldest Trees

Some of the trees along the Black River provide a window into climates dating back thousands of years

The museum worked with San Francisco ad agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners to feed hundreds of news interviews, quotes from Dalí's autobiography and other written works, and archival video footage into an artificial intelligence system to recreate the artist.

With a Little Help From A.I., the Dali Museum Brings the Famed Surrealist to Life

Visitors to the museum in St. Petersburg, Florida can meet Salvador Dalí “in person”

Life reconstruction of the bizarre membranous-winged Ambopteryx longibrachium.

Newly Discovered Bat-Like Dinosaur Reveals the Intricacies of Prehistoric Flight

Though Ambopteryx longibrachium was likely a glider, the fossil is helping scientists discover how dinosaurs first took to the skies

Tien Fuh Wu (standing in the back, on the left) and Donaldina Cameron (seated, center) with a group of women who may have been Mission Home staffers.

The Women Who Waged War Against Sex Trafficking in San Francisco

“The White Devil’s Daughters” examines the enslavement of Chinese women in the late-19th century and how it was defeated

The Red Caboose Motel.

Celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad by Sleeping in a Train Car

These authentic cabooses, mail cars and train cars from U.S. railways have been converted to sleeping quarters for train fanatics

Francis Rogallo (above, in 1959 in a wind tunnel at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia) along with his wife Gertrude, originally conceived of their paraglider in the mid-1940s to make aviation more practical and economically available to more aviators.

The Paraglider That NASA Could Have Used, but Didn’t, to Bring Astronauts Back to Earth

Francis Rogallo’s invention would have brought returning space vehicles in for a runway landing, instead of an ocean splashdown

Chinese laborers at work with pick and shovel wheelbarrows and one horse dump carts filling in under the long secret town trestle which was originally built in 1865 on the Present Souther Pacific Railroad lines of Sacramento.

The Transcontinental Railroad Wouldn’t Have Been Built Without the Hard Work of Chinese Laborers

A new exhibit at the National Museum of American History details this underexamined history

A starfish floating on the coral reef, Dominican Republic.

One Million Species at Risk of Extinction, Threatening Human Communities Around the World, U.N. Report Warns

A global assessment compiled by hundreds of scientists found that humans are inflicting staggering damage on the world’s biodiversity

Tony Cragg is just one of the many celebrated artists whose work can be viewed at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in England.

Six of the World’s Most Spectacular Sculpture Parks

From New York to Norway, these galleries without walls all debut new exhibitions this spring and summer

Scallops can have up to 200 eyes, although scientists still don't know exactly how they all work together to help the mollusks see.

What Scallops’ Many Eyes Can Teach Us About the Evolution of Vision

Scallop eyes, which function similar to telescopes, are even more complex than scientists previously knew

Pioneers' Flatboat, originally published in black and white in The Century Magazine (volume 92, May to October, 1916).

Recounting the Untold History of the Early Midwestern Pioneers

In his new book, historian David McCullough reveals how the New England settlers made their mark on the U.S.

Page 258 of 1322