Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Articles

The Voodoo Museum "is an entry point for people who are curious, who want to see what's behind this stuff," says anthropologist Martha Ward.

The New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum

Wooden masks, portraits and the occasional human skull mark the collections of this small museum near the French Quarter

Visitors to the missile museum may touch a Titan II, which stands 103 feet tall.

Titan Missile Museum

In Sahuarita, Arizona, in the midst of a retirement community, tourists can touch a Titan II missile, still on its launch pad

The surf is always up at this "way cool" California museum, which celebrates the sport and its legends.

The California Surf Museum

Learn about the evolution of the surfboard from 1912 through 2008 in this small gallery in Oceanside, California

Quack medicine? Inhaling the breath of a duck, according to the exhibit, was once used to cure children of thrush and other disorders of the mouth and throat.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology

A throwback to the private museums of earlier centuries, this Los Angeles spot has a true hodgepodge of natural history artifacts

Brad Penka can't say enough about barbed wire's winning of the West.

The Kansas Barbed Wire Museum

With more than 2400 variations of barbed wire, this La Crosse, Kansas, museum has a lot to teach the non-farmers out there

Whimsy runs riot at Harvey Ladew's Maryland estate, from a library with a shelf that swings open to reveal a secret entrance to the gardens to the topiary hedges, featuring a fat man walking a tiny dog, and a rider and hounds in hot pursuit of a fox.

Ladew Topiary Gardens

Clipped hedges and a house full of antiques are the main attractions for this museum north of Baltimore, Maryland

The museum was established as a place where medical students could study specimens. Shown here is a 3-D image of a male skeleton from a recent exhibition.

The National Museum of Health and Medicine

This Silver Spring, Maryland site scares and educates, with displays of prosthetic eyes, amputated limbs and incomplete skeletons

The library in the Ava Gardner Museum is filled with portraits painted by Bert Pfeiffer, who vowed to paint one of Ava every year.

The Ava Gardner Museum

What started as a childhood friend’s collection has grown into a full-fledged museum just miles from the movie star’s hometown

The winner of the 1911 Indianapolis 500 averaged about 75 mph, less than half the winning speed in today's race.

One Hundred Years of the Indy 500

A century ago, the first Indianapolis 500 race started in high excitement and ended in a muddle

None

Risky Businesses

On track to take off

"We expect a fight every moment," a Confederate private reported from Virginia, where New York's 8th militia, pictured, camped.

June 1861: Anticipating the Onslaught of the Civil War

The “Races at Philippi” and Virginia is split in two and more from what happened in the Civil War in June 1861

None

June Anniversaries

Momentous or Merely Memorable

Christie purchased Greenway in 1938. Years later, she recalled the spell that the estate had cast on her: "a white Georgian house of about 1780 or '90, with woods sweeping down to the Dart...the ideal house, a dream house."

Where Agatha Christie Dreamed Up Murder

The birthplace of Poirot and Marple welcomes visitors looking for clues to the best-selling novelist of all time

As a child, Agatha Christie spent countless summer weekends at Beacon Cove, at the northern edge of Torquay, a resort town in the county of Devon, in southwest England.

The Picturesque Torquay, England

The seaside town beckons vacationers and Agatha Christie pilgrims alike

Kenko had little trouble living with the idea that things were getting worse. "The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty," he wrote.

The Timeless Wisdom of Kenko

A 14th-century Japanese essayist’s advice for troubled times runs the gamut from quirky to prescient

At the base of Mount Everest sits Everest ER, a medical clinic that deals with headaches, diarrhea, upper respiratory infections, anxiety and other physical ailments daily.

Inside the ER at Mt. Everest

Dr. Luanne Freer, founder of the mountain’s emergency care center, sees hundreds of patients each climbing season at the foot of the Himalayas

Eileen Collins, the first female pilot and first female commander of a space shuttle mission, photographed by Annie Leibovitz, 1999.

Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz, Norman Rockwell Featured in NASA|ART

These famous artists and many others are among those with works in the Air and Space Museum’s newest art exhibit

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot, walks on the surface of the Moon near the leg of the Lunar Module (LM) "Eagle" during the Apollo 11 exravehicular activity (EVA). Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong, commander, took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. While astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin descended in the Lunar Module (LM) "Eagle" to explore the Sea of Tranquility region of the Moon, astronaut Michael Collins, command module pilot, remained with the Command and Service Modules (CSM) "Columbia" in lunar orbit.

Events May 31-June 3: Space Race, George Ault, Mummies Sneak Peek, Meet a Scientist

The event listings for the week of May 31, 2011

The reconstructed skeleton of "Brontosaurus" from W.D. Matthew's 1915 book Dinosaurs.

Two Views on How to Make a Baby Sauropod

It took a long time—and a new understanding of sauropod lifestyles—to figure out whether they laid eggs or gave birth to live young

Mint chocolate chip ice cream

Inviting Writing: Food and Sickness

The one food I had thought to stock was a half-gallon of ice cream—mint chocolate chip—and once the nausea passed it became my sustenance for the next week

Page 927 of 1327