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Articles

Thousands of clay caterpillars, like this one glued to a leaf in Hong Kong, were used to measure how often predators are eating insects around the world.

New Research

Sacrificing Fake Caterpillars in the Name of Science

Ersatz insects are helping ecologists figure out why bugs are more likely to become meals near the equator

Some of the cave dwellings in Old Khndzoresk.

Armenia

Explore an Ancient Cave City in Armenia

Residents lived in Old Khndzoresk up until the 1950s

Langston Hughes by Edward Henry Weston, 1932

Why Langston Hughes Still Reigns as a Poet for the Unchampioned

Fifty years after his death, Hughes’ extraordinary lyricism resonates with power to people

Amanda Lawrence, lead technician, collections program. With a green sea turtle Chelonia mydas

Why These Humans Are Museum Treasures, Too

A portrait photographer captured 24 staffers from the National Museum of Natural History posing with their favorite artifacts from the collections

John Frankenheimer's classic The Manchurian Candidate built upon the idea of brainwashed GIs in Korea.

History of Now

The True Story of Brainwashing and How It Shaped America

Fears of Communism during the Cold War spurred psychological research, pop culture hits, and unethical experiments in the CIA

Some studies have shown that humans can learn to track scents like canines.

New Research

In Some Ways, Your Sense of Smell Is Actually Better Than a Dog’s

Human noses are especially attuned to picking up odors in bananas, urine and human blood

A page from fifteenth century Armenian physician Amirdovlat Amasiatsi’s botanical encyclopedia, Useless for the Ignorant, housed in Matanadaran.

Armenia

Why a Modern Cosmetics Company Is Mining Armenia’s Ancient Manuscripts

Armenia’s folk remedies and botanical traditions are getting a new look

Draft of The Balfour Declaration with handwritten notes, 1917

World War I: 100 Years Later

How a Single Paragraph Paved the Way for a Jewish State

The Balfour Declaration changed the course of history with just one sentence

Torrance Coste of the Wilderness Committee illustrates the immensity of the missing Carmanah cedar in 2012.

Future of Conservation

How Thousand-Year-Old Trees Became the New Ivory

Ancient trees are disappearing from protected national forests around the world. A look inside $100 billion market for stolen wood

Austria

25 Marie Antoinette-Inspired Destinations

Destinations in Vienna, Paris and beyond for travelers interested in tracing the footsteps of the infamous French queen

A giraffe skin disease was first described in the mid-1990s in Uganda and evidence of the disease has been spotted in numerous other countries, including Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana.

Future of Conservation

How a Tiny Worm is Irritating the Most Majestic of Giraffes

They sound horrifying and look worse. A Smithsonian researcher is investigating the cause of these grotesque skin lesions

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden still loves card catalogs.

The Librarian of Congress Weighs In on Why Card Catalogs Matter

The tech is gone, but it’s not forgotten. Carla Hayden explains why

Ornithologist John Gould's illustrations of finches collected by Charles Darwin on the Galápagos Islands show the physical differences that the men relied on in dividing them into different species.

Future of Conservation

What Does It Mean to Be a Species? Genetics Is Changing the Answer

As DNA techniques let us see animals in finer and finer gradients, the old definition is falling apart

World War I: 100 Years Later

How World War I Changed Weather Forecasting for Good

Prior to the Great War, weather forecasters had never considered using mathematical modeling

The Bath School bombing in 1927 remains the deadliest school massacre in U.S. history.

History of Now

The 1927 Bombing That Remains America’s Deadliest School Massacre

More than 90 years ago, a school in Bath, Michigan was rigged with explosives in a brutal act that stunned the town

Monument Avenue In Richmond, Virginia

What Richmond Has Gotten Right About Interpreting Its Confederate History

And why it hasn’t faced the same controversy as New Orleans or Charlottesville

A little protection over here, please?

Future of Conservation

How America Can Help Save a Non-American Species: The Mighty Giraffe

Giraffes aren’t native to the U.S. But listing them as an endangered species could offer them much-needed protection

Scimitar-horned oryx calf

Spring Brings a Wave of Baby Animals to the Zoo

Seven different endangered species born so far at the National Zoo and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute

Chocolate, coffee and tea all played a role in overturning a medical theory that had dominated the Western world for more than a millennium.

How Coffee, Chocolate and Tea Overturned a 1,500-Year-Old Medical Mindset

The humoral system dominated medicine since the Ancient Greeks—but it was no match for these New World beverages

Schwarzkopf's helmet, a PASGT, represents "how technology and innovation work together in the field of ground-forces protection,” says Frank Blazich, Jr., the Smithsonian's curator of modern military forces.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

How the Military Helmet Evolved From a Hazard to a Bullet Shield

With the development of Kevlar and advanced industrial design, soldiers are now better protected from traumatic brain injury

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