Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Articles

In 1912, as the HMS Titanic was going down, Sarnoff was involved with using early radio equipment to transmit information about the ship’s demise.

Before Steve Jobs: 5 Corporate Innovators Who Shaped Our World

The former head of Apple comes from a long line of American innovators who changed society

Steve Jobs -- no longer the CEO at Apple

Steve Jobs Gets a Standing O

The Apple CEO’s resignation has prompted an outpouring of tributes you rarely, if ever, see for corporate executives

Sketch of Capote. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the artist

Truman Capote, America’s Author-Celebrity

Just a few decades ago, one of the country’s biggest superstars was a writer. Capote’s story goes from pariah to celebrated socialite and back again

Big Bird and the gang star in "One World, One Sky" at the planetarium

Weekend Events August 26-28: One World, One Sky; American Sabor; Glory Days

Hurricane Dean, a category 5 storm, rampaged through the Caribbean in 2007

Food For Emergency Situations

While it’s hard to be the consummate kitchen maven in the face of disaster, it’s still possible to manage food prep without a fully functional kitchen

Artist Donald E. Davis' depiction of the asteroid impact which played a critical role in the end-Cretaceous extinction.

Pixar Rewrites Dinosaur History

What if the cataclysmic asteroid that forever changed life on Earth actually missed the planet and giant dinosaurs never went extinct?

A building in the northern reaches of Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, that was destroyed in the 1938 hurricane

The Great New England Hurricane of 1938

Katharine Hepburn’s Connecticut beach house and 8,900 other homes were swept into the sea

1976 NFL metal lunchbox

The List: Smithsonian’s Top 11 Football Artifacts

The Smithsonian’s unique collection of football art, memorabilia and unusual artifacts

Computers are coming closer and closer to mimicking the human brain.

When Computers Get Brains

IBM scientists say their “cognitive” chip is a key step toward developing computers that think and learn more like human beings and less like calculators

From the upcoming Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory: (l to r) Bruce Sinofsky, Damien Echols and Joe Joe Berlinger

Paradise Lost’s Joe Berlinger on the Roots of his West Memphis Three Films

The director of the award-winning documentary reflects on what it was like to film a “real-life Salem Witch Trial”

The final product, a hopefully delicious one at that

The Sweet and Sour of Pickling

There is a reason, I discovered, that households of yore required at least one full-time homemaker to keep things running smoothly

The Smithsonian Castle Building is closed today; however, all museums and the National Zoo are open.

Smithsonian Museums and National Zoo Are Open Today, but the Castle Remains Closed

The museums are open today, but assessment of any damages from yesterday’s earthquake will continue throughout the day

A skeletal restoration of Smok wawelski. The black parts are missing elements of the skeleton.

The Dinosaur That Wasn’t

Even so, a terrestrial, 16-foot, carnivorous crocodile-like predator is not something I would like to meet in a dark alley (or anywhere else, really)

With the Beartooth Mountains looming to the west in the morning light, team members set up the coring rig on Polecat Bench.

Wyoming Paleontology Dispatch #8: Polecat Bench Badlands

Can the team drill past an ancient river channel?

The contiguous bedrock on the east coast allows energy to pass more efficiently and travel farther. That is why the earthquake on Tuesday was felt over such a broad geographic range.

Q&A: Smithsonian’s Elizabeth Cottrell on the Virginia Earthquake

A Smithsonian geologist offers her expertise on the seismic event that shook much of the mid-Atlantic this week

Earthquake hazard map for the United States

Earthquake in Washington, D.C.

Today’s shaking may have been unexpected, but Washington isn’t the only unlikely location for an earthquake in the United States

All museums are closed today, after a 5.9 magnitude earthquake.

Smithsonian Museums Close for the Afternoon After 5.9 Earthquake Hits Washington, D.C.

The Smithsonian museums, including the Zoo, are closed for the remainder of the day

Sand sculpture dinosaurs, as seen in Albufeira, Portugal

Dinosaur Sighting: Portugal’s Sandy Dinosaurs

The sculpture shows a group of carnivorous dinosaurs chowing down on a sauropod, much like the dinosaurs of the country’s Lourinhã Formation must have done

Mrs. Grace Humiston, a.k.a. "Mrs. Sherlock Holmes"

“Mrs. Sherlock Holmes” Takes on the NYPD

When an 18-year-old girl went missing, the police let the case grow cold. But Grace Humiston, a soft-spoken private investigator, wouldn’t let it lie

Waiting

Law and Order: More Culinary Crimes

Those who live outside the law sometimes meet their downfall through their relationship with food

Page 901 of 1322