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Not Besse Cooper’s hands

Besse Cooper, World’s Oldest Person, Passes Away

Born in 1896, Besse Cooper was came into a world that was vastly different than the one she just left

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Nine Gift Ideas For the Science-Loving Art Enthusiast on Your List

Be it a book, movie, calendar or game, these picks are perfect for the hardest-to-shop-for people on your list

A reconstruction of Homo erectus, the first hominid to reach a modern height.

How Death Played a Role in the Evolution of Human Height

A longer life expectancy might have allowed members of the genus Homo to grow taller than earlier australopithecines, researchers propose

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Birds Harness the Deadly Power of Nicotine to Kill Parasites

And city birds are stuffing their nests with cigarette butts to poison potential parasites

Blame Napoleon for Our Addiction to Sugar

Prior to 1850, sugar was a hot commodity that only society’s most wealthy could afford

The articulated, almost-complete hand of Hagryphus giganteus.

H is for Hagryphus

An articulated hand found in southern Utah complicates the story of North America’s feathery, beaked oviraptorosaurs

Photography by Diana Zlatanovski. Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology malacology collection.

Collecting the World’s Collections of Small Oddities One Day at a Time

A Q&A with Diana Zlatanovski on how she came to collect collections, what they say about design, and how to be a collector without becoming a hoarder

Popcorn and cranberry chain

Five Ways to Deck Your Halls With Food this Christmas

There are lots of ways to use goods in the pantry to make your digs a little merrier

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Take Two Pills and Charge Me in the Morning

Health and medical mobile apps are booming. But what happens when they shift from tracking data to diagnosing diseases?

Elroy and Grandpa Jetson play “spaceball” (1962)

Grandpa Jetson is Way Cooler Than Grandpa Simpson

Montague Jetson is 110 years old—and loving it

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Sick of Fluorescents? New Technology Provides Flicker-Free Light

A new advance in lighting could soon bring a silent, consistent glow that’s easy on the eyes to an office near you

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UPDATE: Spidernaut Dies at Natural History Museum

After 99 days in space, the museum’s new jumping spider made it only five days before dying of natural causes

Dining aboard the RMS Caronia, from a 1950s World Cruise brochure.

Dress Codes and Etiquette, Part 3: The Death of the Dinner Jacket on Open Water

Are the days of wearing just a tuxedo t-shirt just over the horizon?

It took many, many long sea voyages and much tedious charting to produce the first crude maps of the world. Today, travelers are increasingly abandoning even the best maps in favor of electronic navigation devices.

Have GPS Devices Taken the Fun out of Navigation?

With the rise of the digital age, the fascinating skills of map reading and celestial navigation are becoming lost arts

Even Legos can be a gift for human evolution enthusiasts.

A Holiday Gift Guide for the Whole Human Family

An offering of books, bumper stickers, artwork and other knickknacks for the hominid enthusiast on your gift list

Smithsonian Under Secretary for History, Art and Culture, Richard Kurin will discuss the dazzling, outsized life of diva May Yohe, the subject of his new biography.

Events December 4-6: May Yohe, DC Demographics and Kenyan Water

This week, a new book on an old diva, a panel on the capital’s Latino populations and a documentary about waterways in Kenya

The enlightened truth of the role of fire in human evolution.

Fire Good. Make Human Inspiration Happen.

New evidence suggests that fire may have influenced the evolution of the human mind

A composite false-color image of fire in space. The bright yellow traces the path of a drop of fuel, shrinking as it burns, producing green soot.

In Space, Flames Behave in Ways Nobody Thought Possible

Combustion experiments conducted in zero gravity yield surprising results

Sir Dr. NakaMats is one of the greatest inventors of our time; his biggest claim to fame is the floppy disk.

Dr. NakaMats, the Man With 3300 Patents to His Name

Meet the most famous inventor you’ve never heard of – whose greatest invention may be himself

Only a sophomore in high school, Jack Andraka may have invented a new test for a deadly form of cancer.

Jack Andraka, the Teen Prodigy of Pancreatic Cancer

A high school sophomore won the youth achievement Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award for inventing a new method to detect a lethal cancer

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