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History

Central Park as seen in 1990, a year after the attack that put the "Central Park Five" in the headlines

How Central Park’s Complex History Played Into the Case Against the ‘Central Park Five’

The furor that erupted throughout New York City cannot be disentangled from the long history of the urban oasis

Fleet Adm. William D. Leahy stands directly behind President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who is seated between Winston Churchill (left) and Joseph Stalin (right), at the Yalta Conference during World War II.

The Hidden Power Behind D-Day

As a key advisor to F.D.R., Adm. William D. Leahy was instrumental in bringing the Allies together to agree upon the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe

Main Street in Deadwood, South Dakota.

See the Real Deadwood

From gunslingers’ graves to gold mines, the South Dakota city—and inspiration for the new ‘Deadwood’ movie—is steeped in Old West history

This hand-colored carte de visite depicts Virginia L. Molyneaux Hewlett Douglass, who married Frederick Douglass, Jr., the son of the famous African American leader. The mount is inscribed: “Mrs. Fredk Douglass.”

These Photo Albums Offer a Rare Glimpse of 19th-Century Boston’s Black Community

Thanks to the new acquisition, scholars at the Athenaeum library are connecting the dots of the city’s social network of abolitionists

"I fell in love with museums, especially the Smithsonian Institution. I like to say that I am the only person who left the Smithsonian twice—and returned," said Lonnie Bunch, who was appointed today to be the Smithsonian's 14th Secretary.

Lonnie G. Bunch III to Become the Smithsonian’s 14th Secretary

The founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Bunch represents the first insider to lead the Institution in decades

The Statue of Liberty and the new museum building on Liberty Island as seen from the approach by ferry.

The Americans Who Saw Lady Liberty as a False Idol of Broken Promises

Suffragists, African-Americans and Chinese immigrants all criticized the statue as representative of a nation that was not yet free for everyone

In 1954, John Kirklin of the Mayo Clinic created the Mayo-Gibbon heart-lung machine when he modified a design pioneered by John Gibbon. The machine is now in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

This 1950s Heart-Lung Machine Revolutionized Cardiac Surgery

Open-heart procedures evolved rapidly once Mayo Clinic surgeon John Kirklin made his improvements to an earlier invention

Women were involved with the computing field from its earliest days.

Women Who Shaped History

The Gendered History of Human Computers

It’s ironic that women today must fight for equality in Silicon Valley. After all, their math skills helped launch the digital age

The descendants of Cudjo Lewis and Abache (above) heard stories of the ship that tore their ancestors from their homeland and now the wreck of the Clotilda has been confirmed to be found in Alabama's Mobile River.

The ‘Clotilda,’ the Last Known Slave Ship to Arrive in the U.S., Is Found

The discovery carries intense personal meaning for an Alabama community of descendants of the ship’s survivors

Family photo of Elsye Mitchell

In 1945, a Japanese Balloon Bomb Killed Six Americans, Five of Them Children, in Oregon

The military kept the true story of their deaths, the only civilians to die at enemy hands on the U.S. mainland, under wraps

S.T.A.R. (2012) by Tuesday Smillie. Watercolor collage on board.

LGBTQ+ Pride

New Brooklyn Museum Exhibit Explores the Cultural Memory of Stonewall

Artists born after the galvanizing moment in gay rights history, which took place 50 years ago, present their interpretations

There’s still plenty of reason to know how to use this Morse telegraph key.

Morse Code Celebrates 175 Years and Counting

The elegantly simple code works whether flashing a spotlight or blinking your eyes—or even tapping on a smartphone touchscreen

Until engineers constructed the temporary dam in 1969, no one had seen the bare rock face of American Falls since March 30, 1848, when an ice jam from Lake Erie stopped the Niagara River.

When Niagara Falls Ran Dry

While seemingly a natural wonder of the world, the destination on the U.S./Canada border has been subject to human meddling for years

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Apollo at 50: We Choose to Go to the Moon

We Chose to Go to the Moon

A collection of stories to celebrate the semicentennial of the Apollo 11 mission

This lunar extravehicular visor assembly, photographed by Cade Martin at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar- Hazy Center, was worn by Neil Armstrong on the Moon in July 1969. Armstrong’s helmet visors were designed to protect against hazards, from micrometeoroids to infrared light.

Apollo at 50: We Choose to Go to the Moon

What You Didn’t Know About the Apollo 11 Mission

From JFK’s real motives to the Soviets’ secret plot to land on the Moon at the same time, a new behind-the-scenes view of an unlikely triumph 50 years ago

The Glomar Explorer, the ship that served as home base for the submarine-retrieval mission of Project Azorian. The Glomar Explorer's cover story was that it was doing deep sea mining research.

During the Cold War, the CIA Secretly Plucked a Soviet Submarine From the Ocean Floor Using a Giant Claw

The International Spy Museum details the audacious plan that involved a reclusive billionaire, a 618-foot-long ship, and a great deal of stealth

Marion Donovan demonstrates the "Boater," around 1950.

Meet Marion Donovan, the Mother Who Invented a Precursor to the Disposable Diaper

The prolific inventor with 20 patents to her name developed the “Boater,” a reusable, waterproof diaper cover in the late 1940s

As every exhausted new parent knows, sometimes babies don’t want to sleep in stationary cribs.

A History of Cribs and Other Brilliant and Bizarre Inventions for Getting Babies to Sleep

Generations of parents have relied on contraptions, both clever and crazy, to give their infants—and themselves—some rest

Signmakers Stanley Sawicki and Stanley Palka prepare several thousand picket signs in 1950 for a possible Chrysler auto workers' strike over employee pensions.

Separating Truth From Myth in the So-Called ‘Golden Age’ of the Detroit Auto Industry

The post-war era’s labor unrest and market instability has seemingly been forgotten in the public’s memory

Crocker's Car heads to Promontory Summit in 1869. The car shuttled railroad president Leland Stanford from Sacramento to officially complete the transcontinental railroad, and probably also carried the iconic Golden Spike to the ceremony.

The Last Remaining Rail Car That ‘Witnessed’ the Transcontinental Railroad’s Momentous Day

‘Crocker’s Car’ brought the tycoon Leland Stanford to connect the East Coast to the West in 1869

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