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Smart News / Smart News Arts & Culture

Two skeletons unearthed in Lechlade, England, date back to around 2200 B.C.

Cool Finds

Bronze Age Chieftain’s Remains Found Beneath U.K. Skate Park

The Beaker man was buried alongside four cowhide “rugs,” an eight-inch copper dagger and a wrist guard made of rare green stone

A Labrador retriever, but you probably knew that already, given that this pooch is America's most popular breed

Labrador Tops Most Popular Dog Breed List for 29th Year in a Row

The rankings stay much the same from year to year, but in 2019, Pembroke Welsh corgis broke the top ten for the first time

A meteorite found in the Sahara Desert, valued at more than $2.5 million.

Christie’s Auction House Offers 29-Pound Hunk of Moon for $2.5 Million

The rock crash-landed in the Sahara Desert after a presumed collision chipped it off the lunar surface

Emily Simpson's character in "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" shows off a diving beetle in front of the virtual museum.

Education During Coronavirus

Join a Smithsonian Entomologist and the Monterey Bay Aquarium for This Beetle-Centric ‘Animal Crossing’ Livestream

Airing on the aquarium’s Twitch channel at 4 p.m. EST today, the two-hour session will focus on the video game’s diverse insect population

Hoa Hakananai’a, a Rapa Nui sculpture from Easter Island

Education During Coronavirus

You Can Now Download 1.9 Million Free Images From the British Museum

The London institution’s online offerings include 280,000 newly added Creative Commons images

The game's art dealer, a cunning fox named Redd, sells Arnold Böcklin's Island of the Dead under the name Mysterious Painting.

Education During Coronavirus

Can You Spot Animal Crossing’s Art Forgeries?

Gamers are brushing up on their art history knowledge to spot Redd’s counterfeit creations

Archaeologists say this inscription of an ibex may be up to 5,000 years old.

Cool Finds

See Ancient Cave Art Found in Egypt’s Sinai Desert

The carvings, which depict animals including camels, leopards, cows and mules, may date back to 3000 B.C.

The Stenton House, circa 1865 to 1914

Philadelphia Will Memorialize Dinah, an Enslaved Woman Who Saved the City’s Historic Stenton House in 1777

Currently in the works, the new monument will honor her contributions and legacy with a contemplative space

Joy Harjo is the author of eight poetry books, among them The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, which received the Oklahoma Book Arts Award.

Women Who Shaped History

Joy Harjo, First Native American Writer to Be Named U.S. Poet Laureate, Reappointed for Second Term

Harjo, a member of the Muskogee Creek Nation, says the appointment “honors the place of Native people in this country, the place of Native people’s poetry”

Stream the free concert on YouTube tonight at 8 p.m. EST.

Virtual Travel

How to Watch the National Air and Space Museum’s Free Virtual Concert

Catch the musical event, featuring Sting, Death Cab for Cutie front man Ben Gibbard and other artists, on YouTube tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern time

A composite image combines ten new scans of Johannes Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring.

Art Meets Science

Researchers Reveal Hidden Details in Vermeer’s ‘Girl With a Pearl Earring’

New scans revealed the figure’s now-faded eyelashes and green backdrop, but her identity remains a mystery

Chincoteague ponies take a moment to graze after swimming across the Assateague Channel in 2015.

New Vaccine Offers Hope in Chincoteague Ponies’ Battle Against Swamp Cancer

Over the past three years, the disease has claimed the lives of seven of the famously resilient ponies

An 18th-century ink rendering of Hua Mulan on silk

Researchers Uncover New Evidence That Warrior Women Inspired Legend of Mulan

Nearly 2,000 years ago, women who rode horseback and practiced archery may have roamed the steppes of Mongolia

A previous version of the Land O'Lakes logo, featuring Mia, an indigenous woman dubbed the "Butter Maiden"

Land O’Lakes Drops the Iconic Logo of an Indigenous Woman From Its Branding

The story behind the image, and its removal, led to mixed reactions from the public, including native communities

The Leith glass factory's cone-shaped furnaces appear in the background of painter William Reed's Leith Races.

Cool Finds

Archaeologists Unearth Remnants of Lost Scottish Wine-Bottle Glass Factory

The 18th-century Edinburgh factory once produced a million bottles a week

Trimeresurus salazar, or Salazar’s pit viper, named for the Harry Potter character Salazar Slytherin

Meet the New Species of Snake Named After Salazar Slytherin of the Harry Potter Franchise

Perhaps the fictional Hogwarts founder would have appreciated the honor

Evidence suggests “[t]he piles outside the walls weren’t material that’s been dumped to get rid of it,” says archaeologist Allison Emmerson. “They’re outside the walls being collected and sorted to be resold inside the walls.”

Analysis of Pompeii’s Garbage Suggests the Ancient Romans Recycled, Too

The city’s residents sorted waste materials for reuse in future projects, according to new research

Some maintain that two spaces between sentences make paragraphs easier to read; others vehemently disagree.

Why Microsoft Word Now Considers Two Spaces After a Period an Error

Traditionalist “two-spacers” can still disable the function

The Anne Frank House created the series in hopes of reaching “young people who are less likely to pick up a book [but who] … do watch videos on social media.”

Education During Coronavirus

Why the Anne Frank House Is Reimagining the Young Diarist as a Vlogger

The controversial series stems from the museum’s desire to reach a younger generation by telling history in new ways

Prickles, a barefaced merino sheep who went unshorn for seven years after fleeing her home in Tasmania during a spate of 2013 bushfires

Prickles the Sheep Returns Home After Seven Years on the Lam(b)

After missing years of shears, the voluminous creature had ballooned to about five times the size of a typical sheep

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