Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Articles

While excavating at Bluefish Caves in northern Yukon during the 1970s and 1980s, Canadian archaeologist Cinq-Mars found cut-marked horse bones and other traces of human hunters that seemed to date to 24,000 years ago—thousands of years before the Clovis people.

What Happens When an Archaeologist Challenges Mainstream Scientific Thinking?

The story of Jacques Cinq-Mars and the Bluefish Caves shows how toxic atmosphere can poison scientific progress

Surfers take to the water in Montauk, where a shark nursery was discovered offshore last summer.

Future of Conservation

Can Social Media Give Sharks a Better Reputation?

A nonprofit called Ocearch is naming tagged sharks and giving them Twitter and Instagram accounts to ease fears and aid in conservation

Pedestrians walking by the the Dwarfs of Wroclaw on Świdnicka Street, the main shopping street in the city.

Where to Hunt for the World’s Smallest Monuments

Don’t overlook these tiny statues in cities around the world

Flame retardants and lead in Mardi Gras beads may pose a danger to people and the environment.

The Toxic Truth Behind Mardi Gras Beads

Every year, 25 million pounds of plastic beads made by Chinese factory workers get dumped on the streets of New Orleans

Thaddeus Kosciuszko

The Polish Patriot Who Helped Americans Beat the British

Thaddeus Kosciuszko engineered the colonial defenses in some of the Revolution’s most critical battles

For years, boys at Fernald State School were subjected to experiments using radioactive tracers in oatmeal.

A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Radioactive Oatmeal Go Down

When MIT and Quaker Oats paired up to conduct experiments on unsuspecting young boys

Engineers tested the new technology with this poster at a Seattle bus stop.

In Smart Cities of the Future, Posters and Street Signs Can Talk

University of Washington engineers show how “smart” posters can send a message via FM radio waves to smartphone or car radio

Frescoes inside the Brömserhof, the building where Siegfried's Mechanical Musical Instrument Museum is housed.

Europe

This Medieval Knight’s Manor Houses Over 350 Mechanical Musical Instruments

From tiny music boxes to the bus-sized Orchestrion, Siegfried’s Mechanical Music Cabinet in Germany’s Rhineland is the perfect musical detour

The Innovative Spirit fy17

Charging Ahead: The Future of Batteries

Battery research is at a tipping point, and it’s never been more important

Puerto Ricans were granted U.S. citizenship on the eve of America's entry into the First World War. This picture comes from 1906 and shows the officer staff of the Regiment of Infantry.

Puerto Ricans Got U.S. Citizenship 100 Years Ago—But Their Identity Remains Fraught

Even a century later, those who live in the U.S. territory have little autonomy

Patrick O'Brien, "Dinosaur and Volkswagen," Gigantic, 1998, oil on canvas - How big is “gigantic?” Patrick O'Brien shares his life-long fascination with the illustrations of prehistoric animals in children's books with a new generation of young readers. Other images in Gigantic compare dinosaurs with modern devices such as monster trucks, cherry pickers and tanks. O’Brien lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Art Meets Science

A New Exhibition Explores the Science and Math in Children’s Book Illustrations

The 29 artworks on display capture the wonder in nature, engineering and discoveries

The Kirtland’s warbler is one of North America’s most endangered bird species.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

Scientists Track, For the First Time, One of the Rarest Songbirds on Its Yearlong Migration

The journey of the Kirtland’s warbler is discovered thanks to a combination of the latest tiny technology and centuries-old solar location methods

Diller's gag lines were typed and meticulously filed into 48 drawers of a large, beige Steelmaster cabinet on wheels.

How Many Volunteers Does It Take to Transcribe Phyllis Diller’s 53,000 Jokes?

Playing around in this massive joke file is like a crash course in brash humor

How a Soap Opera Virus Felled Hundreds of Students in Portugal

The “Strawberries With Sugar” outbreak is just one example of mass hysteria, which goes back centuries

Furano, Japan

12 Mesmerizing Places to Watch Flowers Bloom

Because there’s no better way exalt the end of winter than with millions of tulips, poppies and roses

The Amazon rainforest appears wild and untouched by humanity, but people have been shaping its biodiversity for millennia.

New Research

The Supposedly Pristine, Untouched Amazon Rainforest Was Actually Shaped By Humans

Over thousands of years, native people played a strong role in molding the ecology of this vast wilderness

Einstein enjoyed a 20-year friendship with African-American civil rights leader and actor Paul Robeson (far right). Also shown are former vice president Henry Wallace (left) and Lewis L. Wallace of Princeton University (second from right).

How Albert Einstein Used His Fame to Denounce American Racism

The world-renowned physicist was never one to just stick to the science

The World of Radio (detail) by Arthur Gordon Smith

The Romance and Promise of 20th-Century Radio Is Captured in This Mural

At the Cooper Hewitt, a rare opportunity to view “The World of Radio” with its masterful vignettes celebrating the Modern age

Page 416 of 1324