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History

Beginning next month, visitors will be able to meet baby panda cub Xiao Qi Ji in person.When the Zoo opens on May 21, visitors will be able to meet baby panda cub Xiao Qi Ji in person. But fair warning—he might be napping.

Smithsonian Announces the Zoo and Seven Museums Open in May

You’ll finally be able to see the baby panda in person; here’s our comprehensive list of what’s on view and tips for visiting

As part of the nation's westward expansion motives, some Midwesterners wanted to move the capital to St. Louis

The Ill-Fated Idea to Move the Nation’s Capital to St. Louis

In the years after the Civil War, some wanted a new seat of government that would be closer to the geographic center of a growing nation

Geraldine Ferraro and Walter Mondale by Diane Walker, 1984

Walter Mondale Never Won the Presidency, but He Changed American Politics Forever

A trove of Smithsonian artifacts document the man who was first to put a woman on the presidential ticket and reshaped the vice presidency

If you hike to the Minam River Lodge, thinking about the amazing food, including smokehouse bacon and foraged morels, may keep you going.

What a Vintage Guidebook Taught Me About Oregon’s Past and Present

Our writer takes a quirky trip through Oregon, from a wilderness lodge to a Gilded Age saloon to a town hidden underground

Peter Mark Roget compiled his influential thesaurus late in life.

Before He Wrote a Thesaurus, Roget Had to Escape Napoleon’s Dragnet

At the dawn of the 19th century, the young Brit got caught in an international crisis while touring Europe

The 1940 press pass for an AP reporter named Joe Abreu.

How the Associated Press Got Its Start 175 Years Ago

A newsworthy birthday for a venerable source of trusted reporting

Chinese poetry carved on the wall of the Angel Island Immigration Station in the San Francisco Bay.

Smithsonian Voices

Read Poems Left by Chinese Immigrants Arriving at Angel Island, the ‘Ellis Island of the West’

The primary mission of San Francisco’s Angel Island Immigration Station was to better enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and other anti-Asian laws

Cpl. Lawrence McVey poses at attention in a photographic postcard. The word "Hero" is inscribed at the top.

The Unmatched Bravery of the Harlem Hellfighters

A salute to the all-Black World War I fighting unit

Peace Corps volunteer Marya Cota-Wilson gives a gardening lesson in Costa Rica in the 1980s.

Why the Peace Corps’ Mission Is Needed Now More Than Ever

On its 60th anniversary, a moment of reckoning arrives for the nation’s globe-trotting volunteers

Illustration of the enslaved laborers moving cotton in New Orleans

Before the Civil War, New Orleans Was the Center of the U.S. Slave Trade

Untroubled by their actions, human traffickers like Isaac Franklin built a lucrative business providing enslaved labor for Southern farmers

Photograph for a Coca-Cola ad featuring Selena, 1994, by Al Rendon.

Smithsonian Voices

How Do We Remember Selena?

On the anniversary of her 50th birthday, honoring the legacy of the first Tejana singer to top the U.S. Billboard charts with her Spanish-language album

While the island’s dramatic connection to the Bay of Pigs invasion is all but unknown to the outside world, it is part of local lore.

The Florida Resort That Played an Unlikely Role in the Bay of Pigs Fiasco

Sixty years ago, the CIA-backed invasion of Cuba failed disastrously. It all began, here, on Useppa Island

Mug shots of Charles Ponzi, Boston financial wizard, taken during his arrest for forgery under the name of Charles Bianchi.

In Ponzi We Trust

Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul is a scheme made famous by Charles Ponzi. Who was this crook whose name graces this scam?

This view of Gemini VII from VI-A in December 1965 shows the spacecraft’s orbital configuration.

Smithsonian Voices

How Neil Armstrong Avoided Near-Disaster to Make the First Space Docking

Smithsonian curator Michael Neufeld recounts the harrowing details of when Gemini Vlll astronauts faced the first life-threatening, in-flight emergency

Tuskegee history professor Frank Toland speaks to the gathered students at the base of the Confederate monument.

Black Protesters Have Been Rallying Against Confederate Statues for Generations

When Tuskegee student Sammy Younge, Jr., was murdered in 1966, his classmates focused their righteous anger on a local monument

"The Grave of Bonaparte" sheet music, song and music by L. Heath, as performed by the Hutchinson Family Singers, Boston, 1843. "The Grave of Bonaparte," recalling the French leader who vanquished much of Europe before being defeated, reflected the Hutchinson Family Singers' concern for the cause of freedom abroad as well as at home.

Smithsonian Voices

How the Arts Have Inspired Social Change

Americans have a long tradition of inspiring and elevating movements for change using benefit concerts, song and other artistic traditions

The Soviet MiG-15, a formidable aircraft, shocked the West with its ability to do hit-and-run attacks. The National Air and Space Museum displays one of these jets in the Boeing Aviation Hangar of its Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.

The Day Soviet Aircraft Attacked American Pilots

On that April ‘Black Thursday’ 70 years ago, the air war over Korea changed as the Allies scrambled to counter the superior MiG-15 jet fighter

Christina Koch (left) poses for a portrait with Jessica Meir while preparing for their first spacewalk together.

Smithsonian Voices

Gender-Inclusive Language Puts an End to the Era of ‘Manned’ Spaceflight

It is time to honor six decades of women’s contributions to spaceflight, says the Air and Space Museum, with unbiased verbs like ‘crewed’ or ‘piloted’

An engraving from German zoologist Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen Der Natur, a 1904 book that celebrated the symmetry of nature

From Books Bound in Human Skin to Occult Texts, These Are Literature’s Most Macabre, Surprising and Curious Creations

A new tome takes readers into collector Edward Brooke-Hitching’s “madman’s library”

Self-educated scholar Dennis McCarthy has spent the past 15 years studying the many connections between Shakespeare and little-known translator and writer Sir Thomas North.

Did Shakespeare Base His Masterpieces on Works by an Obscure Elizabethan Playwright?

The new book “North by Shakespeare” examines the link between the Bard of Avon and Sir Thomas North

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