Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Smart News

Cool Finds

Footage Recalls the Night Madison Square Garden Filled With Nazis

A short documentary shows the 20,000-strong rally held by the Nazi-supporting German-American Bund in 1939

Trending Today

Five Things You Didn’t Know About the Boy Scouts of America

The Boy Scouts will begin admitting girls next year, just one of many changes the organization has undergone over the years

A researcher uses a pipette to remove DNA from a micro test tube.

Trending Today

The Navajo Nation Might Lift a Longstanding Ban on Genetic Research

A policy written by tribal officials could help alleviate ethical concerns and guide genetic research and data sharing

Gardener Rob Gimpel harvests cabbage from the commemorative War Garden.

Cool Finds

A Century After WWI, a Victory Garden Sows Seeds of Remembrance

The Library of Congress is playing host to heirloom vegetables and traditional growing methods that date back to 1917

Cambodia's Angkor Wat, one of more than 1,000 world heritage sites designated by UNESCO

U.S. Pulls Out of Unesco for the Second Time

Citing bias against Israel, the U.S. breaks ties with UN agency it helped found

Intrepid Swiss scientists sampling wastewater at a treatment plant in Zürich

Stinking Rich: Swiss Sewage Contains $1.8 Million in Gold

But don’t start digging through the country’s sewer sludge just yet

Using "visual fingerprints" in works of art, Smartify can quickly ID that painting you want to know more about

App Aims to be the “Shazam” of the Art Museum

With a database of 30 museums worldwide and growing, Smartify can use your phone camera to identify and explain works of art

Little is known about the relation between these openings and climate change, but by studying them scientists hope to better tease out our impacts on this delicate system.

A Mysteriously Massive Hole in Antarctic Ice Has Returned

These holes are thought to be crucial elements of the currents driving the world’s oceans, and after 40 years, one has formed again

Cool Finds

Watch First Video of Sand Cat Kittens Romping in the Wild

The elusive kittens were documented sitting under a bush in the Moroccan Sahara last April

A transcription of 95-foot-long inscription written in Luwian has been translated for the first time since its 1878 discovery

Scholar Deciphers 3,200-Year-Old Inscription That Could Shed Light on the “Sea People”

But the Luwian language text’s unproven provenance calls its authenticity into question

Jutras came close to the record a few years ago, but his squash split, disqualifying it from competition. This year, he wasn't taking any risks.

Trending Today

Massive Green Squash Smashes Record for World’s Largest

Joe Jutras’ 2118-pound squash makes him the first person to earn the record for largest pumpkin, longest gourd and heaviest squash

Artist's depiction of a pulsar.

Cool Finds

World’s Largest Radio Telescope Spies Its First Pulsars

Still in its trial run, the China’s FAST radio telescope has already identified two new pulsars and perhaps a dozen more

Eight hundred pounds of dynamite exploding.

The Man Who Invented Nitroglycerin Was Horrified By Dynamite

Alfred Nobel–yes, that Nobel–commercialized it, but inventor Asciano Sobrero thought nitroglycerin was too destructive to be useful

Restoration Uncovers Four Figures Hidden in 17th-Century Painting

The discovery sheds new light on the painting’s anti-Catholic message

A plantation kitchen in Georgia in 1880.

These Were the First Cookbooks Published By Black People in America

These cookbooks and domestic guides offer historians a window into the experiences and tastes of black Americans in the 1800s

A man uses a mobile phone to photograph flowers placed on the names of concentration camps during the annual ceremony on Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, Thursday, April 12, 2018.

Reconstructed Auschwitz Letter Reveals Horrors Endured by Forced Laborer

Marcel Nadjari buried his letter hoping it would one day reach his family

A residential school in Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories.

Records of Residential School Abuse Can Be Destroyed, Canadian Supreme Court Rules

The federal government wanted to retain the documents, but survivors said they were promised confidentiality

This March 1843 portrait, taken in Washington, D.C., is the oldest known original photo of a U.S. president.

See the Earliest-Known Photograph of a U.S. President at the National Portrait Gallery in 2018

The museum recently acquired the 1843 daguerreotype of John Quincy Adams at the Sotheby’s photographs auction

50th Anniversary of the death of Che Guevara €1.00 Stamp based on artwork by Jim Fitzpatrick.

Why an Irish Stamp Has Reignited a Decades-Old Debate About Che Guevara’s Controversial Legacy

The commemorative stamp was issued to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of the guerrilla revolutionary

A 2014 eruption of Old Faithful, one of its many consistent outbursts

Geologists Map the Plumbing Beneath Yellowstone’s Old Faithful Geyser

Without turning over a stone, geologists imaged the subsurface supply for this iconic geyser

Page 633 of 1116