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Sirocco, currently MIA, has helped millions connect with the island’s endangered wildlife.

Future of Conservation

Seduced By a Rare Parrot

What can conservationists learn from New Zealand’s official “spokesbird,” a YouTube celebrity who tries to mate with people’s heads?

Alexander Kerensky, as Minister of War, meets with other military officials.

World War I: 100 Years Later

In a Czar-less Russia, Winning Was Easy. Governing Was Harder.

Now without a sovereign, Russia’s provisional government sought to maintain peace at home while waging a world war

Fish leave bits of DNA behind that researchers can collect.

Scientists Can Tell What Fish Live Where Based On DNA in the Water

A new study of the Hudson River estuary tracked spring migration of ocean fish by collecting water samples

You can't sit with us. You smell like poo.

New Research

Gut Check: Mandrills Sniff Poop to Avoid Peers With Parasites

Researchers have documented one of the first instances of social avoidance in a non-human animal

Marking the centennial of the American patent system, participants gathered for a "Research Parade" in Washington, D.C., November 23, 1936.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

These 20th-Century Technologists Sure Knew How to Throw a Party

To mark the centennial of the American Patent System in 1936, a group of innovators gathered to throw a deliciously creative celebration

Wedding dresses make from locally-produced silk on display at the Suzhou Tiger Hill Wedding Market.

This Is the Wedding Dress Capital of the World

In Suzhou, China, step inside one of the world’s largest silk factories and see where wedding dresses come from

What’s the Environmental Footprint of a T-Shirt?

In-depth life cycle analyses are teaching us more about the environmental costs of the things we wear

Anne Bonny and Mary Read are just two of the famous female pirates who pillaged their way to fame.

Women Who Shaped History

The Swashbuckling History of Women Pirates

When women roamed the high seas in search of fortune, freedom, and sometimes revenge

An artist's rendering of the new species Teleocrater rhadinus hunting a cynodont, a close relative of mammals.

New Research

Before There Were Dinosaurs, There Was This Weird Crocodile-Looking Thing

A new analysis of an ancient enigma offers clues as to how dino evolution unfolded

Ingenious leafcutter ants have developed a successful symbiotic relationship with the fungi they farm. New genetic analysis helps pinpoint when, and why.

New Research

How Ants Became the World’s Best Fungus Farmers

Ancient climate change may have spurred a revolution in ant agriculture, Smithsonian researchers find

Women of the Salvation Army relied on ingenuity to serve up thousands of donuts to WWI soldiers.

World War I: 100 Years Later

The Women Who Fried Donuts and Dodged Bombs on the Front Lines of WWI

Even if they had to use shell casings as rolling pins, the donuts still got made

View of the exhibition Body Worlds Pulse Gunther von Hagens that counts the history of human body in the 21st century at Discovery Times Square in New York in the United States.

Why Are We So Obsessed With Dead Bodies?

Body Worlds taps into a long, fraught history of humans displaying the deceased for “science”

The cracked-plate portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Alexander Gardner, 1865, albumen silver print

A Smithsonian Historian Wanders the “Bardo,” Exploring the Spiritual World of the 19th Century

George Saunders’ new novel, “Lincoln in the Bardo” recalls the melancholy that hung over a nation at war

After extreme weather swept from the plains states to the Ohio River valley in fall 1926, levees began bursting in the Lower Mississippi Valley in March of ’27 and kept breaking through May.

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 Laid Bare the Divide Between the North and the South

The 1927 disaster exposed a country divided by stereotypes and united by modernity

A noninvasive brain-computer interface based on EEG recordings from the scalp.

Melding Mind and Machine: How Close Are We?

Researchers separate what’s science from what’s currently still fiction when it comes to brain-computer interfacing

The critically acclaimed director James Gray took on the story of explorer Percival Fawcett's search for a lost city in Amazonia.

How Director James Gray Discovered the Insanity Behind the Search for “The Lost City of Z”

A story of Victorian-age madness and exploration in the South American jungle is coming to a theater near you

Busting apart this aging dam on the Jeremy River in Connecticut opened up 27 kilometers of salmon habitat and spawning gravel for the first time in close to 300 years. Other fish will benefit too, including the eastern brook trout, sea lamprey, American eel, and river herring.

The Environmental Price of Dams

Why some conservationists are demolishing dams in the name of rivers and fish

The material—the black blocks between the two plates, pictured here—could be used with cooking pots to charge phones or jewelry to power health sensors.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

Is This New Material a Game Changer for Thermoelectricity?

Researchers at the University of Utah have developed an inexpensive, non-toxic material that converts heat to electricity

Ex-president Theodore Roosevelt speaks to crowds in Mineola, New York, in support of US entry into the First World War, 1917

World War I: 100 Years Later

Why Teddy Roosevelt Tried to Bully His Way Onto the WWI Battlefield

Tensions ran high when President Wilson quashed the return of the former president’s Rough Riders

Construction on the Pentagon was completed in January 1943. With about 6.4 million square feet, it is still today the world’s largest low-rise office building.

Ask Smithsonian 2017

Why Is the Pentagon a Pentagon?

Planners battled to ensure the building kept its unique shape

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