Smart News: History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine

Rosa Parks addresses a crowd in 1989 on the 25th anniversary of the signing of the civil rights legislation.

The Library of Congress Now Has Rosa Parks’ Personal Letters

The loan of over 10,000 documents from the Civil Rights icon’s personal life reveals her complexity and inner struggles—as well as one solid pancake recipe

February 9, 2015

A Buddhist monk prays in a temple. Scientists recently discovered the mummified body of a Buddhist monk some say is in a long-term trance.

Cool Finds

Is This Mummy Dead…Or Meditating?

Some Buddhists claim this well-preserved monk is in a deep meditative state

February 6, 2015

An Enigma deciphering machine from the German navy

Cool Finds

Notes From Alan Turing’s Code-Breaking Days Found in Roof Insulation

The rare code-breaking documents include sheets used to calculate settings for the machine working on “Enigma”

February 5, 2015

The USSR is alive and well in a bunker in Lithuania.

Cool Finds

This Fake Gulag Will Let You Pretend the Soviets Are Still in Power

Barking dogs, harsh guards and brutal imprisonment in a bunker where the USSR never fell

February 5, 2015

Cool Finds

Thomas Jefferson Conducted Early Smallpox Vaccine Trials

When an English doctor discovered a safer kind of immunity, someone had to spread the word to America

February 4, 2015

Vatican with the Tiber River and St. Peter's Basilica

New Research

Two of the Vatican’s “Ancient” Egyptian Mummies Are 19th Century Fakes

Specimens once thought to be the remains of children or animals are likely a product of the 1800’s “mummy mania”

February 3, 2015

"Young people run down a snowy hill with enthusiasm, ca. 1940" in Chicago

Cool Finds

Visit 1940s Chicago With a Film Discovered at a Garage Sale

The film, produced in around 1945, offers a thorough, fact-filled tour of the city

February 2, 2015

A skull shows evidence of trepanation, an early form of neurosurgery that called for a hole cut into the skull.

New Research

Scientists Try Out 2,300-Year-Old Brain Surgery Techniques

Experiments conducted by a Siberian research team shed light on the neurosurgical methods evident in three Iron Age skulls

January 30, 2015

Friendship Nine members Clarence Graham, Willie Thomas Massey, David Williamson Jr., James F. Wells and Willie E. McCleod (L-R) stand in front of the renamed Five & Dine diner in Rock Hill, South Carolina, on December 17, 2014

Trending Today

The “Friendship 9” Who Sat At A White-Only Lunch Counter Have Been Cleared

The men who participated in a South Carolina sit-in were sentenced to 30 days hard labor in 1961

January 29, 2015

Miguel de Cervantes is best known for creating Don Quixote, a whimsical knight.

Cool Finds

Did Archaeologists Just Find Miguel de Cervantes, 400 Years After His Death?

A centuries-old crypt could hold the answer to the mystery of Cervantes’ missing remains

January 28, 2015

Jean Valentine, a former Bombe machine operator, shows a drum of the machine in Bletchley Park Museum in Bletchley, England.

Cool Finds

Women Were Key to WWII Code-Breaking at Bletchley Park

Female operators and mathematicians play a greater role in the history of computers and code-breaking than most realize

January 27, 2015

Cool Finds

Mostly the Old And Ill Ate Breakfast Until the Rise of the Working Man

Romans disdained the meal, few ate it in the Middle Ages, but most eat breakfast now

January 27, 2015

The naturally mummified body of Ötzi is seen in a cooling chamber at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano.

New Research

The 61 Tattoos of Ötzi, the 5,300-Year-Old “Iceman”

Scientists have mapped the body art of one of archeology’s biggest super stars in hopes to better understand the role tattoos played in early civilization

January 27, 2015