Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Past Imperfect

None

The Ugliest, Most Contentious Presidential Election Ever

Throughout the 1876 campaign, Tilden’s opposition had called him everything from a briber to a thief to a drunken syphilitic

David Curtis Stephenson, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, 1922

“Murder Wasn’t Very Pretty”: The Rise and Fall of D.C. Stephenson

The Grand Dragon of the Klan and prominent Indiana politician had a vicious streak that had horrifying consequences

None

The Neverending Hunt for Utopia

Through centuries of human suffering, one vision has sustained: a belief in a terrestrial arcadia

The Smoothest Con Man That Ever Lived

“Count” Victor Lustig once sold the Eiffel Tower to an unsuspecting scrap-metal dealer. Then he started thinking really big

Starfish Prime 0 to 15 seconds after detonation, photographed from Maui Station, July 9, 1962.

Going Nuclear Over the Pacific

A half-century ago, a U.S. military test lit up the skies and upped the ante with the Soviets

None

The Demonization of Empress Wu

“She killed her sister, butchered her elder brothers, murdered the ruler, poisoned her mother,” the chronicles say. But is the empress unfairly maligned?

Fanny Blanker-Koen crosses the finish line to become the first triple champion of the 14th Olympic Games.

The Paris Olympics

How Fanny Blankers-Koen Became the ‘Flying Housewife’ of the 1948 London Games

Voted female athlete of the 20th century, the runner won four gold medals while pregnant with her third child

A basilisk–a lethally poisonous monster hatched from a cock’s egg–illustrated in a mediaeval bestiary. Note the weasel gnawing at its breast; only they were impervious to basilisk venom.

On the Trail of the Warsaw Basilisk

None

Where the Buffalo No Longer Roamed

The Transcontinental Railroad connected East and West—and accelerated the destruction of what had been in the center of North America

Countess Markievicz in uniform with a gun, circa 1915

Daughters of Wealth, Sisters in Revolt

Gore-Booth sisters, Constance and Eva, forsook their places amid Ireland’s Protestant gentry to fight for the rights of the disenfranchised and the poor

None

The Woman Who Took on the Tycoon

John D. Rockefeller Sr. epitomized Gilded Age capitalism. Ida Tarbell was one of the few willing to hold him accountable

None

Quite Likely the Worst Job Ever

A British journalist provides us with a window into the lives of the men who made their living from combing for treasures in London’s sewers

None

The High Priestess of Fraudulent Finance

None

The Loneliest Shop in the World

Publicity photo for The Son of the Sheik

The “Latin Lover” and His Enemies

Rudolph Valentino fought a long battle against innuendo about his masculinity right up until he died. But now he seems to have won

None

The Ax Murderer Who Got Away

In 1912, a family of six was murdered by ax in the little town of Villisca, Iowa. Might these killings be linked to nine other similar crimes?

A nighttime German barrage on Allied trenches at Ypres

Fritz Haber’s Experiments in Life and Death

The German chemist helped feed the world. Then he developed the first chemical weapons used in battle

A Bolivian donkey of the 1850s. From Herndon and Gibbon, Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon (1854).

Run Out of Town on an Ass

According to legend, Queen Victoria, informed of an early president’s angry insult to her ambassador, struck Bolivia off the map. But is it true?

Etta Shiber

“I Was Looking Forward to a Quiet Old Age”

Instead, Etta Shiber, a widow and former Manhattan housewife, helped smuggle stranded Allied soldiers out of Nazi-occupied in Paris

Indian soldiers in the service of the East India Company-who outnumbered British troops in India five to one–loading cartridges.

Pass it on: The Secret that Preceded the Indian Rebellion of 1857

British officials were alarmed at the rapid distribution of mysterious Indian breads across much of the Raj

Page 4 of 8