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History

The Smithsonian Castle

Fanciful and Sublime

In 1855 (the year of this daguerreotype), rocking horses symbolized middle-class affluence. Today, hand-carved horses are largely for the wealthy.

Happy Trails

As freshly carved toys or treasured heirlooms, well-bred rocking horses ride high in the affections of kids and collectors alike

George Washington, shown here in an 1853 lithograph, oversees his slaves at Mount Vernon.

Founding Fathers and Slaveholders

To what degree do the attitudes of Washington and Jefferson toward slavery diminish their achievements?

Cultivating Delight

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Passions

Nuts about history and bonkers for baseball

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Unearthing Athens’ Underworld

Throughout the decade-long construction of the city’s new metro, archaeologists have found a trove of treasures

After 41 days of grueling, round-the-clock diving, Cmdr. Bobbie Scholley and her dive team celebrated the turret's recovery.

Pieces of History

Raised from the deep, the Monitor’s turret reveals a bounty of new details about the ship’s violent end

As part of her cover, Frances Clayton took up gambling, cigar-smoking and swearing.

Covert Force

Hundreds of women fought in the civil war disguised as men

George Silk

Clutch Shot Clinches Fall Classic

Owens River, Sierra Nevada

California Scheming

Los Angeles’ insatiable thirst for water, which drained the Owens Valley, has ruined lives, shaped the city’s politics and provoked ongoing controversy

Born in Kenya in 1903 to Anglican missionaries, Louis Leakey (in his mother's arms outside the family's mud and thatch house) was initiated as a youth into the Kikuyu tribe. "I still often think in Kikuyu, dream in Kikuyu," he wrote in a 1937 autobiography.

The Old Man of Olduvai Gorge

Irrepressible Louis Leakey, patriarch of the fossil-hunting family, championed the search for human origins in Africa, attracting criticism and praise

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet warheads on Cuban soil could have attacked many major U.S. cities.

Learning from the Missile Crisis

What Really Happened on Those Thirteen Fateful Days in October

A doctor before she became an educator, Maria Montessori developed strategies and materials that, a century later, are being adopted by more and more classrooms (such as this one in Landover, Maryland).

Madam Montessori

Fifty years after her death, innovative Italian educator Maria Montessori still gets high marks

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Uncommon Valor

When two Naval officers entered the inferno of the Pentagon’s west flank to search for survivors, they put their own lives on the line

In the 1970s, Joe transformed into Atomic Man, a bionic bruiser whose fearlessness extended to cobras.

Macho in Miniature

For nearly 40 years, G.I. Joe has been on America’s front lines in toy boxes from coast to coast

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They Turned the Tide

Members of the Doolittle Raiders celebrate the 60th anniversary of the U.S. answer to pearl harbor

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Latino Legacies

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Joyous View

A biographer and his subject, William Clark, meet in St. Louis

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Iron Will

While William Clark is best known for the expedition he made with Meriwether Lewis, his later life was as historic and more consequential

Presley in a Sun Records promotional photograph, 1954

Boy Wonder

For a few fleeting moments in 1956, Elvis Presley was still an unaffected kid from Tupelo, Mississippi, and the road to stardom seemed paved in possibility

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