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Smart News / Smart News History & Archaeology

The ashram's entrance was once closed to visitors, who had to sneak in or bribe a guard.

Cool Finds

Abandoned Beatles Ashram Is Opened to the Public for the First Time in a Long, Long, Long Time

Get back to the site of the Fab Four’s disastrous meditation retreat

Maybe the white whale just wanted a hyphen.

Cool Finds

Why Does Moby-Dick (Sometimes) Have a Hyphen?

The hunt for the true story behind Melville’s hyphen is as mysterious as the famous white whale

A dog mascot named Whisky in the arms of his captain Wolfgang Erhart on board a German ship in the harbor of New York in 1962

Cool Finds

The British Navy Has a Long History of Adopting Animal Mascots

Ships’ pets included dogs, cats and some other animals that were more unusual

Cool Finds

Is Stonehenge a Hand-Me-Down Monument?

New research suggests the monument was first built in Wales then dragged 180 miles to its current location

An illustration of a Spanish galleon at the time when European travelers searched for treasure across the seas.

Cool Finds

Legendary Shipwreck May Have Been Found off the Colombia Coast

The sunken treasure on the Spanish galleon San Jose could be worth up to $17 billion

A diver inspects the plane's forward turret.

Cool Finds

View a Rare Seaplane Lost Just Before the Pearl Harbor Attack

The plane was a casualty of the first phase of the raid that took place on December 7, 1941

How many curls can you count?

Cool Finds

A Buddha in Japan Is Missing Half of Its Curls

What happened to the Buddha of Nara’s famous ‘do?

This 19th-century cartoon depicts a corpse brought back to life through the power of "galvanism."

Cool Finds

How Twitching Frog Legs Helped Inspire ‘Frankenstein’

Galvanism sought to reanimate the dead—and in doing so provided the impetus for one of literature’s most famously frightful books

A close-up of what might be one of the oldest depictions of a human dwelling.

New Research

Does This Carving Depict a Paleolithic Campsite?

A chunk of stone may be marked with one of the oldest drawings of a human campsite

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Inca Road

Visit Machu Picchu With Google Street View

Armed with a backpack and 15 high-res cameras, Google just tackled one of the world’s wonders

Trending Today

Americans Used to Really Hate Tipping

Are gratuity’s days numbered?

New Research

Europeans Only Started Digesting Dairy 4,000 Years Ago

They can enjoy that cheese thanks to ancient nomadic herders

A booking photo from Rosa Parks' arrest on December 1, 1955.

Trending Today

Sixty Years Later, Cities Celebrate Rosa Parks’ Legacy

Statues, streets and anti-bias education commemorate the civil rights activist’s historic protest

Cool Finds

What Was the First Thing Sold on the Internet?

The answer depends on how the question is approached

Centurions drink from a fountain near Rome's Coliseum during a heat wave in summer 2014. A recent announcement that centurion reenactors will be banned from the Coliseum during 2016 has led to protests and public outcry.

Trending Today

Rome Just Banned Centurions

Officials stir up controversy by kicking impersonators out of the Colosseum

"History will be kind to me," wrote Winston Churchill, "for I intend to write it myself."

Trending Today

UNESCO Honors Winston Churchill’s Writings With the Equivalent of World Heritage Status

Churchill’s papers join the ranks of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Anne Frank’s diary and the Magna Carta

Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan at the Geneva Summit.

Cool Finds

Reagan and Gorbachev Agreed to Pause the Cold War in Case of an Alien Invasion

The 40th President of the United States was a big science-fiction fan

Cool Finds

Why a Yam Is Not a Sweet Potato

Despite grocery store labels, these tubers aren’t at all the same

Trending Today

A Brief History of Cranberries

Pucker up: Thanksgiving (and plenty of cranberry sauce) is almost here

An illustration of Enrico Fermi and other scientists observing the first artificial nuclear reactor.

Cool Finds

The World’s First Nuclear Reactor Was Built in a Squash Court

It sat right next to University of Chicago’s football field

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