Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Smart News / Smart News History & Archaeology

President Kennedy declassified images like this one that showed medium-range ballistic missile launch sites in the Cuban countryside

Cool Finds

How CIA-Backed Spies Detected Soviet Nukes First During Cuban Missile Crisis

A report from Yahoo News lays out how a network of agents detected Soviet operations on the island before a U-2 spy plane snapped the famous photos

General interior view of the Main Administration Building

Notre Dame University Will Cover Controversial Columbus Murals

The university’s president said the artworks memorialize a historic ‘catastrophe’ for native peoples

A series of brown spots dotting the tomb's wall paintings were thought to be microbes carried by modern visitors, but researchers found that the marks have actually been around since 1922 opening of the crypt

Decade-Long Restoration of Tutankhamun’s Tomb Finally Concludes

Conservators stabilized famed crypt’s wall paintings, introduced viewing platforms and barriers designed to limit visitor access to fragile areas

Macedonia's Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, left, speaks with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras prior to meeting on the sidelines of EU and Western Balkan heads of state at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, Bulgaria, Thursday, May 17, 2018.

Greek Lawmakers Approve Macedonia’s New Name

The decision brings an end to a 27-year-old conflict and paves the way for the Republic of North Macedonia to join the NATO alliance

Gemologist Brian Berger purchased the Indonesian opal last year

Cool Finds

Gemologist Finds Insect Entombed in Opal Rather Than Amber

The unusual specimen appears to contain an open-mouthed insect complete with ‘fibrous structures extending from the appendages’

Nazi official Rudolf Hess delivering a public address in 1937.

DNA Analysis Debunks the Rumor That Rudolf Hess Was Replaced by a Doppelgänger

For decades, rumors have swirled that the Nazi official imprisoned by the British was actually an imposter

Cool Finds

3,000-Year-Old Quinoa Found in Ontario

The batch of charred grain is the farthest north a now-extinct version of the crop has been found

The museum is located in the tiny Swiss town of Susch

This New Art Museum Is Housed Inside of a Swiss Cave

The brainchild of Polish art collector Grażyna Kulczyk, Muzeum Susch is a gallery “with a disruptive outlook”

Mock-up of the statue in place alongside the Segovian aqueduct

Why a Smiling Statue of Satan Is Stirring Up Controversy in Spain

Some Segovian locals say the affable bust is “offensive for Catholics, because it constitutes the glorification of evil”

Trending Today

Oops: 4,500-Year-Old Stone Circle Turns Out to Be 1990s Replica

Discovered in Scotland last November, the recumbent circle was made by a local farmer interested in the ancient monuments

Why Were Two Victorian Chess Pieces Hidden in a Barn?

They may have been intended to protect the property’s human and animal inhabitants from evil spirits

A portait of Omar Ibn Said made around the 1850s

Only Surviving Arabic Slave Narrative Written in the United States Digitized by Library of Congress

Omar Ibn Said, a wealthy intellectual from West Africa, wrote about his capture and enslavement in America

A photograph by Hugh Mangum from Photos Day or Night: The Archive of Hugh Mangum, edited by Sarah Stacke with texts by Maurice Wallace and Martha Sumler, Hugh Mangum’s granddaughter.

Photographer’s Innovative Pictures Captured Lesser-Seen Faces of Jim Crow South

Hugh Mangum’s portraits reveal his subjects’ array of emotions and defy stereotypical snapshots

Selection of gazelle bones from Space 3 at Shubayqa 6 displaying evidence for having been in the digestive tract of a carnivore.

Humans and Dogs May Have Hunted Together in Prehistoric Jordan

Bones at a settlement called Shubayqa 6 show clear signs of having been digested—but were much too large to have been eaten by humans

A man walks past the covered Confederate monument in Linn Park on August 18, 2017.

Alabama Judge Overturns Law That Protected Confederate Monuments

The city of Birmingham was sued when it erected plywood around a Confederate memorial in a downtown park

The Gardens of Agra

Cool Finds

Restored Mughal Gardens Bloom Once More Along Agra’s Riverfront

Two of the 44 original historic gardens and structures have been rescued in an ambitious conservation project

Unidentified compiler, "Girlfriends' Album," 1905

Celebrate the Art of Scrapbooking With This New York Exhibition

The show at the Walther Collection Project Space features more than 20 volumes filled with quotidian images, scribbled notes and miscellaneous ephemera

Cool Finds

Easter Island Statues May Have Marked Sources of Fresh Water

A spatial analysis of the island’s moai and ahu seem to line up with ancient wells and coastal freshwater seeps

Bernice "Bunny" Sandler

Trending Today

Remembering “Godmother of Title IX” Bernice Sandler

Sandler, often known as “Bunny,” played an important role in creating the landmark legislation

Cool Finds

Egyptian Schoolboy’s 1,800-Year-Old Lesson to Go on Display

The British Library took the exercise out of storage as part of an upcoming exhibition on the history of writing

Page 203 of 346