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History

The opposing voices in America's first great debate about global warming was between Thomas Jefferson and Noah Webster in 1799.

America’s First Great Global Warming Debate

Thomas Jefferson and Noah Webster argue over conventional wisdom that lasted thousands of years

During the Civil War, Fort Monroe served as the key staging ground for Northern campaigns against Norfolk, the Outer Banks of North Carolina and the Southern capital of Richmond.

Fort Monroe’s Lasting Place in History

Famous for accepting escaped slaves during the Civil War, the Virginia base also has a history that heralds back to Jamestown

This past June, racers, ages 8 to 17, took part in the 70th running of the Greater Washington Soap Box Derby.

The History of Soap Box Derby

For nearly 80 years, kids have steered their gravity-powered racers toward a coveted national championship

Mike Tyson's tattoo artist S. Victor Whitmill filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Entertainment this spring, claiming that the use of his design in the movie The Hangover Part II was copyright infringement.

Ten Famous Intellectual Property Disputes

From Barbie to cereal to a tattoo, a copyright lawsuit can get contentious; some have even reached the Supreme Court

Gerda Weissmann Klein, founder of Citizenship Counts, speaks to new citizens and students at a naturalization ceremony at the Maryland School in Phoenix, Arizona.

Gerda Weissmann Klein on American Citizenship

The Holocaust survivor, author and Medal of Freedom winner discusses liberation day and cherished freedoms

Clarence Darrow was a trial attorney made famous for his defense of a Tennessee educator accused of breaking a state law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Everything You Didn’t Know About Clarence Darrow

A newly released book brings new insight into the trial attorney made famous by the Scopes monkey trial

No recordings of Abraham Lincoln's voice exist since he died 12 years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, the first device to record and play back sound. Shown here is Lincoln delivering his famous Gettysburg Address in 1863.

Ask Smithsonian 2017

Ask an Expert: What Did Abraham Lincoln’s Voice Sound Like?

Civil War scholar Harold Holzer helps to decode what spectators heard when the 16th president spoke

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June Anniversaries

Momentous or Merely Memorable

"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

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Risky Businesses

On track to take off

A new Folkways album is one of many offerings for the war sesquicentennial.

Civil Discourse

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

Rose O'Neal Greenhow, Confederate spy

The Civil War

Women Spies of the Civil War

Hundreds of women served as spies during the Civil War. Here’s a look at six who risked their lives in daring and unexpected ways

On April 27, 1865—12 days after he shot Lincoln at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C.—Booth was shot in a Virginia barn. He died from his wound that day.

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Documenting the Death of an Assassin

In 1865, a single photograph was taken during the autopsy of John Wilkes Booth. Where is it now?

One of the most effective Union spies was Elizabeth Van Lew. Over a course of four years she quietly sent valuable intelligence to Union officers and even ran her own network of spies.

The Civil War

Elizabeth Van Lew: An Unlikely Union Spy

A member of the Richmond elite, one woman defied convention and the Confederacy and fed secrets to the Union during the Civil War

A circa 1925 woodcut by Unpo Takashima depicts Tokyo's Ueno district ablaze. "Each new gust of wind," reported Joseph Dahlmann, a Jesuit priest who witnessed the calamity from a hilltop, "gave new impulse to the fury of the conflagration."

The Great Japan Earthquake of 1923

The powerful quake and ensuing tsunami that struck Yokohama and Tokyo traumatized a nation and unleashed historic consequences

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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May 2011 Anniversaries

May 2011 Anniversaries

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

Pyramid at El Mirador

Extraordinary Discoveries

In archaeology and medicine

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