Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Articles

A young chimpanzee looks on during an outing to an island in the Douala-Edea National Park in Cameroon, on December 15, 2024.

From Chimps Eating Medicinal Plants to Footprints Tracking Our Early Relatives, Here Are the Most Significant Human Evolution Discoveries of 2024

Smithsonian paleoanthropologists explore how the year brought us closer to understanding ancient human relatives and origins

One of the ceremonial double ikat textiles acquired by the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art in 2024

Eleven Fascinating Acquisitions That Joined the Smithsonian’s Vast Collections in 2024

This year, the Institution collected everything from the stunning shell of an extinct cephalopod to a Blue Origin rocket booster

In 2024, engineers used a fluorescent protein found in some jellyfish to create a non-toxic spray that highlights fingerprints at a crime scene.

Seven Scientific Discoveries From 2024 That Could Lead to New Inventions

From indestructible tardigrades to body-merging comb jellies, animals can teach humans so much about medicine, robotics, aging and survival

In Still Life With Brioche, c. 1890, Victoria Dubourg Fantin-Latour captures the buttery crust of a signature pastry. Known for her tablescapes, she met her artist husband Henri when both were copying the same painting at the Louvre.

Feast Your Eyes on These Paintings From the Impressionist Era

A new exhibition at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville will bring the food world of the late 19th century to its gallery walls

Loaded with leather and sheepskins, Salvatore Gungui tightens his headscarf. Although only men dress as Mamuthones, the scarf adds a feminine element.

Coastal Cities of Europe

See the Mysterious Winter Parade That Brings Tourists to the Remote Island of Sardinia

Since ancient times, a town on the Italian isle has marked the season with a grim costumed festival

Find your nearest dark-sky site and mark your calendars for these stunning astronomical spectacles in 2025.

11 Dazzling Celestial Events to See in 2025, From a Total Lunar Eclipse to Rare Planetary Alignments

Keep your eyes on the sky this upcoming year for a chance to spot breathtaking meteor showers, a special view of Saturn and a blood-red moon

A 1951 ad. The FDA informed Kraft in 2002 it could no longer market Velveeta as a cheese. 

The Gooey Goodness of Velveeta Was a Smash Hit From Its Very Cheesy Start

How Emil Frey whipped up a smooth dairy sensation after two years of tinkering

Martin Van Buren in 1860. 

Martin Van Buren Created America’s Partisan Political System. We’re Still Recovering

The eighth president of the United States, the so-called little magician, saw political parties as the key to achieving power

Works entering the public domain include The Sound and the Fury, the first recordings of Rhapsody in Blue, Popeye, Tintin and The Broadway Melody.

Happy Public Domain Day! Popeye, ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ ‘The Sound and the Fury’ and Thousands of Other Captivating Creations Are Finally Free for Everyone to Use

On January 1, 2025, copyrights will expire for books, films, comic strips, musical compositions and other creative works from 1929, as well as sound recordings from 1924

James Earl Carter, Jr. by Robert Clark Templeton, 1980

The Lasting Legacy of Jimmy Carter, Dead at 100

Smithsonian curators remember and honor the 39th president’s uncompromising idealism

The Original Vienna Snow Globe Factory produces roughly 300,000 snow globes per year.

How an Experiment to Amplify Light in Hospital Operating Rooms Led to the Accidental Invention of the Snow Globe

The origins of the decoration lie in Vienna’s 17th district, where the inventor’s descendants are still making them for collectors around the world

Daniel Bachman at home in Madison County, Virginia, with his trusty Martin D-18 guitar.

A Brilliant Folk Musician Turned the Natural Sounds of the Blue Ridge Mountains Into Powerful Songs

Daniel Bachman is on a mission to evoke Virginia’s past through strange medleys of sounds

Fascinating finds unveiled in 2024 ranged from a jade Maya funerary mask to a Roman dodecahedron.

Cool Finds

Seventy-Seven Fascinating Finds Revealed in 2024, From a Mysterious ‘Anomaly’ Near the Great Pyramid of Giza to a Missing Portrait of Henry VIII

The year’s most exciting discoveries included musket balls fired in the early days of the American Revolution, a lost composition by Mozart and a medieval chess piece

Some people are genetically built to require less sleep than the rest of us.

Why Do Some People Thrive on So Little Sleep?

Short sleepers cruise by on four to six hours a night and don’t seem to suffer ill effects

Though they feed along coral reefs, hawksbills return to the beach to nest. Shane Gross, recently named 2024 Wildlife Photographer of the Year, captured this image in Barbados.

Can a New DNA Database Help Save This Incredible Sea Turtle?

The shells of the hawksbill sea turtle have been used for luxury items for centuries, but with the species now endangered, new technology is pinpointing where protections are needed most

Maritime archaeologist Tamara Thomsen discovered this 1,200-year-old dugout canoe in Lake Mendota, Wisconsin, in June 2021.

Archaeologists Are Finding Dugout Canoes in the American Midwest as Old as the Great Pyramids of Egypt

In the waterways connected to the Great Lakes, researchers uncover boats that tell the story of millennia of Indigenous history

The giant Santa statue near the Santa Claus House in the town of North Pole, Alaska

Why Is Santa From the North Pole? Here’s How the Legend Originated and Why Different Towns Lay Claim to It

Santa Claus is usually good news for tourism—and locales all over the world embrace their proximity to the Christmas figure

The former Motor City masterpiece-turned-American-ruin was on the brink of demolition until 2018, when Ford committed to a billion-dollar restoration project returning it to its Gilded Age grandeur.

Detroiters Have a Newly Restored Michigan Central Station to Be Thankful for This Holiday Season

With funding from Ford Motor Company, the long-dilapidated building is being transformed into a technology and innovation hub

A scorpionfish swims along an unnamed seamount on the Nazca Ridge in the Pacific Ocean.

The Ten Most Awe-Inspiring Ocean Moments of 2024

From animal journeys across oceans to the discovery of dozens of new species in the deep sea, these stories wowed us

Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, a new James Mangold film

Based on a True Story

The Real Story Behind ‘A Complete Unknown’ and Bob Dylan’s Early Career, From His Arrival in New York City to When He ‘Went Electric’

A new film starring Timothée Chalamet tracks Dylan’s evolution from an acoustic folk singer to a rock ‘n’ roll superstar

Page 41 of 1322