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Tab soda cans

Inviting Writing: Addicted to Tab

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Bonobos Tell Each Other Where to Find the Yummy Foods

Matina Kalcounis-Rueppell deciphers the ultrasonic chatter, shown here plotted on a spectrograph, of a deer mouse.

The Mystery of the Singing Mice

A scientist has discovered that high-pitched sounds made by the small rodents could actually be melodious songs

"We're just seeing the start of matching patients with the right drug and seeing rapid improvements," says Dr. Brian Druker.

A Triumph in the War Against Cancer

Oncologist Brian Druker developed a new treatment for a deadly cancer, leading to a breakthrough that has transformed medicine

Spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi) hangs by tail with mouth open.

Wild Things: Spider Monkeys, Fire Ants, Hagfish and More…

Dinosaur “thunder thighs” and fast-flying moths

Northern Michigan's rocky coast, shown here is a Presque Isle cove, has long beckoned as a summer playground. The picturesque region, wrote American naturalist Edwin Way Teale, is "a land of wonderful wilderness."

The Wonderful Wilderness of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

Immortalized by Longfellow, the Midwest’s preferred vacation spot offers unspoiled forests, waterfalls and coastal villages

The missions—built between 1769 and 1823 and extending in a chain of 600 miles from Sonoma to San Diego—stand as symbols of California's Spanish colonial past. Pictured is San Miguel's bell tower.

A Tour of California’s Spanish Missions

A poignant reminder of the region’s fraught history, missions such as San Miguel are treasured for their stark beauty

Recalling vistas created in the 9th to 12th centuries for Japan's aristocracy, islands are connected by a graceful bridge. Landscape architect Hoichi Kurisu's intention was to express "ancient wisdom."

Florida’s Lush Japanese Gardens

A thousand years of Japanese landscape designs unfold at the Morikami Museum in Delray Beach

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Letters

Deciphering the universe is a "Grand Challenge." Shown here is Galaxy M100.

Synergies

Alain Touwaide, a science historian in the botany department at the National Museum of Natural History, has devoted his career to unearthing lost knowledge.

What Secrets Do Ancient Medical Texts Hold?

The Smithsonian’s Alain Touwaide studies ancient books to identify medicines used thousands of years ago

Sculptor Ousmane Sow creates pieces rooted in Africa and Europe.

A Larger-Than-Life Toussaint Louverture

The Haitian revolutionary joins the Smithsonian Museum of African Art’s collection

Frederick Eugene Ives' photochromoscopy plates "are perhaps the first color photographs of San Francisco.

The 1906 San Francisco Quake in Color

Recently discovered photographs depict the aftermath of the devastating California earthquake in a new light

See artist Preston Singletary's Raven Steals the Sun, 2008, at the American Indian's Heye Center in New York City until September 5.

What’s Up

With the rise of information theory, ideas were seen as behaving like organisms, replicating by leaping from brain to brain, interacting to form new ideas and evolving in what the scientist Roger Sperry called "a burstwise advance."

Ask Smithsonian 2017

What Defines a Meme?

Our world is a place where information can behave like human genes and ideas can replicate, mutate and evolve

A parent hopes an authentic Roman banquet will bring the Latin language alive for their son.

Ad Nauseam

Recreating a Roman banquet seemed like a good idea

Pyramid at El Mirador

Extraordinary Discoveries

In archaeology and medicine

In 1966, Henry Carfagna, the Suffolk Downs track photographer, prepared to take his standard picture of the horses driving toward the wire when he saw a man run onto the track.

At Suffolk Downs, an Unintended Spectator

Photographer Henry Carfagna was in the perfect position to catch the moment when a horse race took a bizarre turn

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May 2011 Anniversaries

May 2011 Anniversaries

The peak of La Danta—one of the world's largest pyramids—pokes through the forest canopy. "All this was abandoned nearly 2,000 years ago," says archaeologist Richard Hansen. "It's like finding Pompeii."

El Mirador, the Lost City of the Maya

Now overgrown by jungle, the ancient site was once the thriving capital of the Maya civilization

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