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A German artillery shell hits the cathedral

History of Now

The Debate Over Rebuilding That Ensued When a Beloved French Cathedral Was Shelled During WWI

After the Notre-Dame de Reims sustained heavy damage, it took years for the country to decide how to repair the destruction

The National Museum of American History has in its collection this Autoped motor scooter from 1918.

Pop History

The Motorized Scooter Boom That Hit a Century Before Dockless Scooters

Launched in 1915, the Autoped had wide appeal, with everyone from suffragettes to postmen giving it a try

An image of a lion, like the designs on Lydian coins during the Iron Age

What Was the World’s First Currency and More Questions From Our Readers

You’ve got questions, we’ve got experts

This artist's-concept illustration depicts the spacecraft of NASA's Psyche mission near the mission's target, the metal asteroid Psyche.

Future of Space Exploration

NASA Prepares to Build Spacecraft Bound for a Metal Asteroid

The Psyche spacecraft, headed to an asteroid with the same name, will explore a metal world thought to be the leftover core of a destroyed planet

Alaska Resources Library and Information Services (ARLIS) provides the public with an extensive selection of birds as part of its collection of items that are available for circulation.

This Library in Anchorage Lends Out Taxidermic Specimens

All you need to check out a snowy owl or a mounted rockfish is a library card

The childhood game of "cooties" has endured among schoolchildren.

A Brief History of Cooties

Why a 100-year-old game is still spreading across our playgrounds

Qumangapik, age 16, hunts seals near Thule. Inuit were exempted from the 2010 European Union law banning the trade of seal products.

At the Edge of the Ice

Deep inside the Arctic Circle, Inuit hunters embrace modern technology but preserve a traditional way of life

"Super tomatoes" or regular tomatoes?

How Scientists Are Recapturing the Magic of a Beloved, Long-Lost Tomato

Wiped out by disease and market demands, the Rutgers tomato may be making a comeback

Featuring a small plastic hinge binding both pieces together, this clever container became the perfect way to conceal treats from prying eyes.

Thank One of America’s Most Prolific Inventors for the Hinged Plastic Easter Egg

Donald Weder holds some 1,400 U.S. patents for inventions, including the ubiquitous egg and a process for making plastic Easter grass

A rendering of the lobby of the Statue of Liberty Museum, featuring the statue's original torch

A New Museum Sheds Light on the Statue of Liberty

The revamped building will open in May

Smithsonian Voices

A Smithsonian Art Historian Reflects on American Artists and Their Fascination With Notre-Dame

Senior curator Eleanor Harvey on why the cathedral has been beloved by American artists for years

Almost all of Cannon’s large paintings (above: Three Ghost Figures, 1970), are portraits, often in electric shades of orange, purple and brilliant blue. Many vividly depict Native Americans as living, sometimes flawed individuals.

How T.C. Cannon and His Contemporaries Changed Native American Art

In the 1960s, a group of young art students upended tradition and vowed to show their real life instead

Volunteers in southwest Germany are using ninth-century techniques to construct the medieval monastery.

The World’s Weirdest Architectural Feat Involves Building a Cathedral With Ninth-Century Tools

In a German forest, artisans fleeing modernity build a time machine to the medieval age

Bettie Closs and Owen Kovalik anxiously await their turn on stage at the 2016 national spelling bee.

The History of the Spelling Bee

Even in the age of autofill, America is still in love with the centuries-old tradition

Hobo King Dutch, who first set out to ride the rails when he was 10 years old, meets up at the festival’s boxcar with Britt resident John Pratt.

The Last of the Great American Hobos

Hop a train to Iowa, where proud vagabonds gather every summer to crown the new king and queen of the rails

Smoke and flames rise from Notre-Dame Cathedral on April 15, 2019.

Last Night, I Watched Notre-Dame Burn

Our own travel writer, in Paris yesterday, recounts her experience witnessing the devastating fire at the cathedral

Three generations of the Marsili family at home in Siena, Italy. From left: Maria Elena; Letizia and her son Ludovico; matriarch Maria Domenica.

The Family That Feels Almost No Pain

An Italian clan’s curious insensitivity to pain has piqued the interest of geneticists seeking a new understanding of how to treat physical suffering

Empress Dowager Cixi by Katharine A. Carl, 1903

New Scholarship Is Revealing the Private Lives of China’s Empresses

Lavish paintings, sumptuous court robes, objets d’art tell the stories of Empress Cixi and four other of the most powerful Qing dynasty women

The arrestingly modern hominin at the Neanderthal Museum, near Dusseldorf, is the work of renowned paleo-artists Adrie and Alfons Kennis.

What Do We Really Know About Neanderthals?

Revolutionary discoveries in archaeology show that the species long maligned as knuckle-dragging brutes deserve a new place in the human story

A photographic plate of the 1919 total solar eclipse, taken by Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin and Charles Rundle Davidson during an expedition to Sobral, Brazil. The 1919 eclipse was used by Arthur Eddington, who observed it from the island of Principe off the west coast of Africa, to provide the first experimental evidence of Einstein's theory of relativity.

What the Obsolete Art of Mapping the Skies on Glass Plates Can Still Teach Us

The first pictures of the sky were taken on glass photographic plates, and these treasured artifacts can still help scientists make discoveries today

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