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What Your Favorite Book Looks Like in Colors

An artist reveals how each book has its own unique color spectrum

What explains the vivid colors of the strawberry poison-dart frog?

How Do Tropical Frogs Get Their Stunning Colors?

The vibrant hues that dot the rainforest landscape help them avoid predators and win mates

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Why the Smithsonian Just Can’t Quit Studying the Civil War

150 years later, the war is still in focus

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Contributors

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A History of 1945, Discoveries at Sea, Ben Franklin’s Sister and More Books Worth Your Read

Some of the best books to put on your reading list

McShea (in Posey Hollow): “Nobody has tried anything nearly as comprehensive.”

A Scientific Laboratory 170 Feet High in the Sky

Grand-scale ecology brings a Virginia forest under unprecedented scrutiny by Smithsonian researchers

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Two Faces, One Portrait

A collage artist combs through glamour shots of forgotten Hollywood actors to create compelling celebrity mashups

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Coming Soon: The Dream Chaser, a Nimbler Space Shuttle

This NASA-funded project could head into orbit within just a few years

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Summer Reads: Zombie Science, the American Revolution and Travels Across Italy

Looking for a good book? We’ve got some suggestions

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Dinosaur Extinctions, Titanic Deaths and More Questions From Our Readers

You asked our curators, they answered

McCoy with the Milky Way, which his Miami Indian forebears called the “Spirit Trail.”

Rediscovering a Lost Native American Language

Tim McCoy’s astronomy course is helping to revive the words of the Miami tribe

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The Education of a Bomb Dog

A top training academy works double time to meet skyrocketing demand for canines who can sniff out danger

In Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park, Tolerance is seven figures—one for each continent—sculpted of letters from world alphabets.

What Makes Houston the Next Great American City?

As Houston undergoes an ethnic and cultural transformation, its reputation grows as a place where people can dream big and succeed

The Lone Ranger mask from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

Is the New Tonto Any Better Than the Old Tonto?

A new film revives The Lone Ranger, but has it eliminated the TV series’ racist undertones

Fornaciari’s analysis of an anonymous 13th- to 15th-century female skeleton showed evidence of severe anemia.

CSI: Italian Renaissance

Inside a lab in Pisa, forensics pathologist Gino Fornaciari and his team investigate 500-year-old cold cases

Days after Jackie Mitchell (center) struck out Yankee superstars (from left) Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, the duo watched the female phenom demonstrate her fastball during spring training in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on April 4, 1931.

The Woman Who (Maybe) Struck Out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig

Of all the strange baseball exploits of the Depression era, none was more surprising than Jackie Mitchell’s supposed feat

The ATLAS detector, one of two experiments to spot the elusive Higgs boson in particle smashups at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, weighs as much as a hundred 747 jets and houses more than 1,800 miles of cable.

How the Higgs Boson Was Found

Before the elusive particle could be discovered—a smashing success—it had to be imagined

Jeannette Paillan, a Mapuche documentary filmmaker, was the inspiration for this 2012 textile, titled Lukutuwe (Fertility). Scanning the QR code embedded in the tapestry reveals a quotation from Paillan, in Spanish, about the importance of sustaining the Mapuche language.

What’s a QR Code Doing on That Blanket?

Artist Guillermo Bert is weaving together technology and Native American tradition

Leborgne’s brain (colorized photo) has appeared in numerous medical textbooks.

Discovering the Identity of a 150-Year-Old Patient

Who was “Monseiur Leborgne”?

The annual value of Japan's Manga Publishing Industry is $6 billion.

How Do You Rebrand a Country?

A look at Japan’s attempt to call itself “cool”

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