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Arts & Culture

Marcel Breuer's proposed Roosevelt Memorial

Washington, D.C.

The Failed Attempt to Design a Memorial for Franklin Roosevelt

The debacle of the Eisenhower memorial is only the most recent entry in a grand D.C. tradition of fraught monuments

Pat Millin eyes an unridden Arctic wave moments before he paddles out

Meet the Insane Surfers Who Travel to the Arctic Ocean to Catch a Wave

Photographer Chris Burkard takes pleasure in working through the misery of the ice-cold waters of Norway

Actor Andy Serkis's motion-capture performance rendered into a photo-perfect computer-generated ape.

How New Motion Capture Tech Transformed Actors Into Creatures for “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”

The special effects team behind Gollum and King Kong took on its most-challenging feat yet: animating 2,000 apes in a real forest

The LACMA exterior as seen from Wilshire Boulevard.

Why Museums Don’t Need Gleaming New Buildings, Especially Not in Los Angeles

An award-winning architect suggests that the city reconsider its plans to raze its iconic art museum

A Citi Field hotdog. How does it compare with your home ballpark's?

The Hunt for the Best Ballpark Hot Dog

Tom Lohr has been traveling the country making his own list of All-Star franks. Who has the best one?

Looking for a New Place to Live? This Man Chose an Airplane

Oregon man Bruce Campbell created a home in a salvaged 727 aircraft

Soccer chants are an important part of the World Cup. German fans sang while watching their national team play against USA back in June.

World Cup 2014

What Makes Soccer’s Chants So Catchy?

Songs like “Olé, Olé, Olé” and “Seven Nation Army” are dominating soccer. Music experts weigh in on why that is

Willowsford is the first neighborhood to take Development Supported Agriculture mainstream.

Bringing the Farm to Your Backyard

Development Supported Agriculture is a growing trend in the housing world, and one subdivision is taking it mainstream

Pork and Anise Soup with Rice Noodles.

These Photos and Recipes of Authentic Thai Food Will Make You Drool for Curry

Food writer and photographer Jean-Pierre Gabriel spent 3 years traveling and developing the ultimate encyclopedia of Thai cuisine

Anyone with a touchscreen can help shape the constantly evolving Universal Typeface.

The Universal Typeface Project Averages the World’s Handwriting to Produce an Incredibly Average Font

With your help, ballpoint pioneer BIC aims to create a font as common as their pens

The yellow card is an elegant design solution that has been adopted by several sports.

World Cup 2014

Who Invented the Yellow Card?

Penalty cards are a surprisingly recent creation that were, perhaps unsurprisingly, inspired by traffic lights

14 Fun Facts About Fireworks

Number three: Fireworks are just chemical reactions

Visit These Iconic Forrest Gump Filming Locations

Unlike a box of chocolates, you can know what you’re going to get with these places from Gump’s epic life

Check out the Colonial Ties cocktail, or find a new favorite below.

Five All-American Cocktail Recipes from the Nation’s Top Mixologists

Raise a glass this summer to America’s vibrant cocktail history by whipping up some of these classic drinks

Samba school Mocidade Independente de Padre Miguel performs at the sambodromo during the carnival of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 03 March 2014.

World Cup 2014

Samba and Sway to These Brazilian Songs Compiled By Smithsonian Folkways

Take a virtual tour through the country’s diverse musical traditions

The Gurranes — Moonlight, Castletownshend, Ireland, 2005

11 Photographs of Mysterious Megaliths

Photographer Barbara Yoshida traveled across the globe to capture prehistoric stone monuments shrouded in moonlight

A vendor offers dates for sale on a roadside, as Muslims across the world prepare for the holy month of Ramadan, in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Five Ways to Eat Dates

During the month of Ramadan, millions of Muslims break fast with the superfood

Satay at Lau Pa Sat in Singapore

Three International Twists on BBQ

This summer, ditch the tired menu of burgers and hot dogs, and instead, try grilling Turkish kofte or slathering fish in Singapore’s spicy sambal sauce

Itinerant African American musicians played to so many different audiences that they had to be as versatile as a jukebox.

Before There was the Blues Man, There Was the Songster

A new release from Smithsonian Folkways celebrates the diverse sounds of turn-of-the-century itinerant musicians

New fabrication techniques and digital technologies are expanding the possibilities of the analog medium.

Forget Vinyl. Forget the Cloud. In the Future We’ll Listen to Music on UV-Cured 3D-Printed Resin

Musicians, developers, and inventors prove that there’s more to records than vinyl

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