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Articles

Byaku Gunjo

Peek into the Colorful History of the World’s Largest Pigment Collection

An Atlas of Rare & Familiar Colour combs through the rainbow that makes up the Forbes Pigment Collection

The Proliferation of Happiness

A professor of consumer culture tracks the history of positive psychology

Amdavad Ni Gufa

These Unique Buildings in India Just Won the Biggest Award in Architecture

The 90-year-old is the first Indian architect to win the Pritzker Prize

An artist's interpretation of two giant pterosaurs in the Late Cretaceous.

New Research

What Doomed the Pterosaurs?

Killed off in their prime, the leathery fliers may have been living too large for their own good

At the time of capture, the Smithsonian's coelacanth specimen weighed about 160 pounds and measured a little less than five and a half feet long.

How the Smithsonian’s Coelacanth Lost Its Brain and Got It Back Again

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the discovery of a fish believed to have gone the way of the dinosaurs 70 million years ago

Human evolution is ongoing, and what we eat is a crucial part of the puzzle.

How Cheese, Wheat and Alcohol Shaped Human Evolution

Over time, diet causes dramatic changes to our anatomy, immune systems and maybe skin color

Google Japan Now Has Street View From a Dog’s Perspective

It’s like riding an Akita around Japan

Cimarron, Kansas

Daydream About Summer With These Color-Drenched Photos of the Great American Fair

Photographer Pamela Littky set off across the United States to discover why these timeless summer festivals have such staying power

The progress of democracy seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient, and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history."--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835. From the series Great Ideas of Western Man, by Jacques Nathan Garamond, 1955

How Do We Restore Trust in Our Democracies?

Museums can be a starting point, says David J. Skorton, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution

Is this machine adding an antenna to the fabric?

Embroidering Electronics Into the Next Generation of ‘Smart’ Fabrics

Is an archaic sewing skill a key to connected, sensing, communicating fabrics of the future?

'Cattle Kate' and Postmaster Averill, lynched. Stockmen a Sweetwater, Wyo., July 21, end the career of a lawless pair of depredators - swung from a cottonwood at the rope's end. Undated illustration.

Women Who Shaped History

The Tragedy of Cattle Kate

Newspapers reported that cowgirl Ella Watson was a no-good thief who deserved the vigilante killing that befell her, when in reality she was anything but

A statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee is lowered to a truck for removal Friday, May 19, 2017, from Lee Circle in New Orleans.

How I Learned About the “Cult of the Lost Cause”

The mayor of New Orleans offers his reading list for anyone looking to better understand the real history of Confederate monuments

Abigail Spencer as Lucy Preston, Malcolm Barrett as Rufus Carlin, and Matt Lanter as Wyatt Logan travel to 1918 in the first episode of season two of "Timeless"

'Timeless' Recapped

Buckle Up, History Nerds — “Timeless” Is Back and As Usual, Gets the Facts Mostly Right

In a new editorial series, we recap the NBC show that puts a new twist on American history

Charles Syphax was among the slaves taken to George Washington Parke Custis’ plantation in Arlington, Virginia. He ran the dining room at the huge mansion known as Arlington House (above), which still stands on the grounds of the cemetery.

How the African-American Syphax Family Traces Its Lineage to Martha Washington

Resources at the African American History Museum deliver a wealth of opportunity for genealogical research

Alexander Mok (left) tests a cardiopulmonary assessment device with exercise physiologist Casey White (right) at Massachusetts General Hospital.

When Doctors Need New Medical Tools, These Students Are Up To the Challenge

Medical device design courses are more than just good education

These two covers are emblematic of the popular "Golden Hours" papers

The 19th-Century “Golden Hours” Convention Brought Young Readers Together to Meet Their Literary Heroes

The dime novels and story papers entertained boys and launched a popular culture we still consume today

Unfortunately, there’s not an unlimited amount of daylight that we can squeeze out of our clocks.

One Hundred Years Later, the Madness of Daylight Saving Time Endures

The original arguments Congress made for ‘springing ahead’ have been thoroughly debunked. So why are they still being used today?

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