Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Articles

None

A New Giant Tyrant, Zhuchengtyrannus

This is the story of a missing link that never was.

Piltdown Man, Paleoanthropology’s April Fool’s

This is the story of a missing link that never was

South Florida has a problem with giant pythons as demonstrated here by a ranger holding a Burmese python in the Everglades.

Attack of the Giant Pythons

The Smithsonian’s noted bird sleuth, Carla Dove, eyes smelly globs to identify victims in Florida

When a coronal mass ejection reaches Earth, solar particles stream along magnetic field lines, energize gases in the atmosphere and shine as norther lights.

Something New Under the Sun

Scientists are probing deep beneath the surface of our nearest star to calculate its profound effect on Earth

North and South Korea are collaborating to save one of the world's most endangered bird species, red-crowned cranes.

The DMZ’s Thriving Resident: The Crane

Rare cranes have flourished in the world’s unlikeliest sanctuary, the heavily mined demilitarized zone between North and South Korea

Splendid Fairy-wren (Malurus splendens splendens) calling.

Wild Things: Mongooses, Bladderworts and More…

Fairy-wrens, wasps, and a nearly 3,000 year old big toe

None

Letters

Readers Respond to the February 2011 Issue

Many of the tracks A.F. Van Order frequented were built of wood and banked to enable riders to go faster.

The Early, Deadly Days of Motorcycle Racing

Photographer A.F. Van Order captured the thrills and spills of board-track motorcycle racing in the 1910s

The Smithsonian's renowned Orchid Collection numbers more than eight thousand plants.

Bloom Time at the Smithsonian

Tom Mirenda helps maintain the nearly 8,000 orchids in the Smithsonian's collection.

Tom Mirenda on Orchids

The Natural History Museum’s orchid expert talks about the beloved flowers

See Helen Cordero's Storyteller figure is among the works in the "Small Spirits" exhibit at the American Indian Museum's Heye Center in New York until February 19, 2012.

What’s Up

Curator John Marciari discovered the Velázquez painting in a Yale storeroom and calls The Education of the Virgin "the most significant addition to the artist's work in a century or more."

A Velázquez in the Cellar?

Sorting through old canvases in a storeroom, a Yale curator discovered a painting believed to be by the Spanish master

Born in Seville in 1599, Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was the very embodiment of Spain's artistic golden age.

Velázquez: Embodiment of a Golden Age

The magic of Velázquez has influenced artists from his contemporaries to Manet and Picasso

Is the Internet rewiring our brains for the worse?

Turn on, Log in, Wise up

If the internet is dumbing us down, how come I’ve never felt smarter?

Fort Sumter

A Necessary Conflict

And an opportunity for re-examination

British historian Bettany Hughes brings Socrates to life 25 centuries after his death in The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life.

Bettany Hughes on Socrates

The biographer and author of a new book discusses what new there is to learn about the ancient Greek philosopher

Yuri Gagarin

April 2011 Anniversaries

Momentous or Merely Memorable

When President Abraham Lincoln learned that Union Army Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth had been killed, the president exclaimed, "My boy! My boy! Was it necessary this sacrifice should be made?"

The Death of Colonel Ellsworth

The first Union officer killed in the Civil War was a friend of President Lincoln’s

Non-Muslims use a wood ramp to enter the complex, home to the gilded Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine, and the Western Wall, holy to Jews.

Ask Smithsonian 2017

What Is Beneath the Temple Mount?

As Israeli archaeologists recover artifacts from the religious site, ancient history inflames modern-day political tensions

After Union troops refused to evacuate Fort Sumter, today a National Monument, Confederates opened fire.

The Civil War

Fort Sumter: The Civil War Begins

Nearly a century of discord between North and South finally exploded in April 1861 with the bombardment of Fort Sumter

Page 934 of 1322