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One series of photographs in particular is exciting for the unique perspective. It was taken from an angle no one had seen before. “In his camera lens you can see the back of Clarence Darrow, and you can see the face of William Jennings Bryan,” historian Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette says.

The Scopes Trial Redefined Science Journalism and Shaped It to What It Is Today

Ninety years ago a Tennessee man stood trial for teaching evolution, a Smithsonian archives collection offers a glimpse into the rich backstory

The Allosaurus was a true terror of the Jurassic world.

What Killed the Dinosaurs in Utah’s Giant Jurassic Death Pit?

Paleontologists are gathering evidence that may help crack the 148-million-year-old mystery, including signs of poisoned predators

Tissue samples in test tubes, like the one D.C. high school student Asia Hill is holding above, are wrapped tin foil and dropped into the team's portable liquid nitrogen tank.

These Scientists Hope to Have Half the World’s Plant Families on Ice By the End of Summer

Teaming up with botanical gardens, researchers at the Natural History Museum are digging deep into garden plant genomics

Lake Jökulsárlón shimmers with the reflection of a magnificent iceberg. This lake, located at the edge of Vatnajökull, Iceland’s largest ice cap, formed slowly when part of the glacier began to recede in the 1920s. The glacier continues to calve (split), releasing more icebergs into the expanding lake.

A New Photo Exhibition Depicts Just How Dramatic Mother Earth Can Be

Iceland, the land of fire and ice, brings vivid focus to the raw power of a geophysically active Earth

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New Research

Bumblebees Are Getting Squeezed by Climate Change

Across North America and Europe, the insects are just not keeping up with shifting temperatures

Urban Explorations

The Stories Behind Disneyland’s Hidden Wonders

As the amusement park celebrates its 60th anniversary, here’s the truth behind some of its more unusual features

Hello, Pluto! We <3 you, too.

New Research

Pluto Probe Finds Surprises Ahead of Its Close Encounter

From dark poles to weird “whales”, New Horizons is giving us a taste of the historic science we can expect from its visit to Pluto

Urban Explorations

There Are New World Heritage Sites, Here Are the Ones You Should Travel to Now

This year, 24 sites from across the globe have been added to the heralded Unesco list

Ash and aerosols pour out of the erupting Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland in 2010.

Anthropocene

Sixth-Century Misery Tied to Not One, But Two, Volcanic Eruptions

The ancient event is just one among hundreds of times volcanoes have affected climate over the past 2,500 years

The 7-by-6-foot video wall on view at the National Air and Space Museum closes the 93 million mile gap between the Earth and the Sun.

These Two Scientists Turned Data From the Sun Into a Work of Art

After collecting real-time data from the sun, two astrophysicists got to tinkering with video game components and the outcome is breathtaking

The rolling hydraulic bridge at London’s Paddington Basin built in 2004 curls up on itself like a pillbug.

A Look Into the Innovative Mind of One of the World’s Most Inventive Architects

A new show at the Cooper Hewitt reveals the process behind designer Thomas Heatherwick’s projects

Apple I computer, 1976, Steve Jobs (Patent no. 7166791) and Steve Wozniak (Patent No. 4136359). The Apple I computer became a leader in personal computing. Originally marketed to hobbyists only primarily as a fully assembled circuit board, purchasers had to add their own case and monitor in order to create a working computer.

Tracing the History of American Invention, From the Telegraph to the Apple I

More than 70 artifacts, from an artificial heart to an Etch A Sketch, grace the entryway to the American History Museum’s new innovation wing

The "Queer Threads" exhibition, which ran in early 2014, examined the diversity of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer experiences.

Urban Explorations

What it Took to Create the World’s First Gay Art Museum

Charles Leslie’s passionate half-century of homoerotic art collecting offers a mirror for the history of gay history itself

The world as we knew it.

Anthropocene

How Geography Shaped Societies, From Neanderthals to iPhones

This weeks’ episode of Generation Anthropocene discusses efforts to quantify social development and the cultural retention of the Navajo

Digital artist Jeremy Sutton's finished painting captured the many elements of the event.

This Is How You Live Paint an Event

Artist Jeremy Sutton painted on his iPad while musicians performed and visitors played virtual reality games at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument

Twenty of the West’s Leading Water Managers Raft Colorado’s Yampa River

In a historic drought, a group of decision makers take to the water to discuss the future of rivers

The hydrophobic bacteria that coat the ceilings of some dark lava caves produce a gorgeous golden sparkle.

How Bacteria Make This Underground, Awe-Inspiring Cave Shine Gold

These underground tubes at Lava Beds National Monument include sparkling gold ceilings that even NASA wants to study

Entrance to the new "American Enterprise" exhibition at the National Museum of American History.

How Curators Wrestled With the Complex Story of American Business

The broad and sometimes difficult history of business in the U.S., its rogues, heros, successes and failures, is the dynamic story in a new exhibition

Our dynamic home.

Anthropocene

The Top Five Conversations About Earth in the Age of Humans

The Generation Anthropocene podcast brings you stories from the front lines of Earth science, history and philosophy

Ornamental weathervanes once adorned the cupolas of the stand-alone Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants, hinting at a bygone folk era and forecasting the multi-directional dominance of its corporate future.

How Colonel Sanders Made Kentucky Fried Chicken an American Success Story

A weathervane from the Smithsonian collections is emblematic of Harland Sanders’s decades-long pursuit to make his chicken finger-lickin’ good

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