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“All evidence suggests that this was the first cloud guitar ever built for Prince,” says John Troutman, curator of American music at the National Museum of American History.

Hitting the High Notes: A Smithsonian Year of Music

Here’s the Guitar That Prince Revolutionized Music With in ‘Purple Rain’

The artist gave the “cloud” guitar to the Smithsonian in 1993, but only now do we know it’s the same instrument used in the iconic movie

This school year, three new Smithsonian lesson plans on the Inka Empire, Native American treaties and the history of 19th-century Cherokee removal became available to K-12 educators.

Inside a New Effort to Change What Schools Teach About Native American History

A new curriculum from the American Indian Museum brings greater depth and understanding to the long-misinterpreted history of indigenous culture

The late journalist Cokie Roberts recently visited the Smithsonian to discuss some of the presidents' wives in a new podcast "Portraits." If only, she remarked the First Ladies had been painted when they were young and vivacious, before they had gray hair.

Why Cokie Roberts Admired Dolley Madison

The legendary newswoman, who died at 75, appeared on a Smithsonian podcast earlier this summer to speak about a favorite topic, the first ladies

The Smithsonian has launched the first national-scale, scholarly research and collecting project to gather and preserve the artifacts, documents and voices associated with the beer industry’s craft revolution (above: label, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company).

Food, Glorious Food

Here’s What’s Brewing in the New Smithsonian Beer Collections

After two years of documenting the nation’s craft brewing industry, curator Theresa McCulla makes ready for a public debut

At right is a left front foot followed by the hind foot of the mysterious Chirotherium, or "hand beast." The tracks were first found in the German town of Hildburghausen.

The Long, Strange Tale of the Hand Beast Footprints

A Triassic creature left curious tracks in the sandstone; it took decades to unravel the mystery

The National Zoo's female panda Mei Xiang (above in 2019) is exhibiting signs of a possible pregnancy. These same behaviors could also mean she is experiencing a pseudopregnancy.

Pandamonium

14 Fun Facts About Giant Pandas

Mother Mei Xiang’s annual ambiguous maternal behaviors always deliver heightened anticipation at the National Zoo

Electrophorus voltai, a newly discovered species of electric eel, pictured swimming in the Xingu River, a southern tributary of the Amazon.

Smithsonian Researchers Triple the Number of Electric Eel Species, Including One With Record-Setting Shock Ability

It’s literally shocking news

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How Scientists Are Learning to Tell a Bird’s Age by Its Song

Take a journey into this ornithologist’s world tracking a pair of antshrikes in Panama’s Soberania National Park

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Riveting Footage Captures the Destruction of Last Year’s Volcanic Eruptions in Hawai‘i and Guatemala

A new documentary from Smithsonian Channel shows the explosive activity at the Kilauea and Fuego volcanoes

By day the members of the Megatherium Club, united by youth, ambition, intelligence and a deep and abiding love of the natural world, hunched over jars of marine worms in alcohol or endless trays of fossils…At night they were ready to cut loose.

The Hard-Drinking Early Smithsonian Naturalists of the Megatherium Club

William Stimpson created a fraternity of young scientists and named it for an extinct North American sloth

Using heavy picks, Smithsonian researchers in 1923 worked on excavations in Dinosaur National Monument on the border of Colorado and Utah.

How to Discover Dinosaurs

Smithsonian paleontologist Hans Sues reveals some of his tips for finding and excavating a Mesozoic monster

Iwo Jima by David Levinthal, from the series "History," 2013

What David Levinthal’s Photos of Toys Reveal About American Myth and Memory

A new show at the Smithsonian American Art Museum reflects on iconic events including JFK’s assassination, flag raising at Iwo Jima and Custer’s last stand

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This Smithsonian Scientist Is on a Mission to Make Leeches Less Scary

Curator Anna Phillips is on a quest to make leeches less repulsive to the public

Wyss Institute engineers selected works from the collections to illustrate a "new approach to Design Science." The clusters of polyhedrons in the 1954 textile Time Capsule reflects the 1950s sentiment for a brighter future built on scientific progress.

How Biology Inspires Future Technology

Bioengineers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute showcase their ingenious medical, industrial and environmental designs at the Cooper Hewitt

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Breakfast at the Zoo and 25 Other Things to Do at the Smithsonian in September

Breakfast at the Zoo and 25 Other Things to Do at the Smithsonian in September

A vintage illustration of a wide-eyed housewife with a waffle in a waffle iron, 1946.

A Brief History of the Waffle Iron

Cornelius Swartwout’s invention, patented more than 150 years ago, helped feed America’s passion for waffles

The sculptor Edmonia Lewis (above: by Henry Rocher, c. 1870), “really broke through every obstacle," says the Smithsonian's Karen Lemmey.

Women Who Shaped History

Sculptor Edmonia Lewis Shattered Gender and Race Expectations in 19th-Century America

As the orphaned child of a black father and a Native-American mother, Lewis rewrote the 19th-century definition of sculptor

Samples of trinitite from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

A Chunk of Trinitite Reminds Us of the Sheer, Devastating Power of the Atomic Bomb

Within the Smithsonian’s collections exists a telltale trace of the weapon that would change the world forever

The jumping that you see in cute goat videos online is a natural behavior.

Ask Smithsonian

Do Goats Really Love to Jump? And More Questions From Our Readers

You’ve got questions, we’ve got experts

In a fit of pique, according to one of Aesop's fables, the god Hermes made the animal carry its house forever on its back.

How the Turtle Got Its Shell, With Apologies to Aesop

Smithsonian paleontologist Hans Sues unpacks the complicated evolution of how this creature grew a home upon its back

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