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History / U.S. History

New York City’s Holiday Vintage Subway Trains Are Back

Go back in time, underground

The electoral map in 2016, that is, assuming there are no faithless electors

The Electoral College Has Been Divisive Since Day One

It has always had the potential for chaos—one that hasn’t been tapped…yet

President Coolidge conducts the first official transatlantic phone call with the king of Spain in 1927

History of Now

From the Telegram to Twitter, How Presidents Make Contact With Foreign Leaders

Does faster communication cause more problems than it solves?

The Sikiorsky JRS-1 "was right in the middle of it,” Robinson says. “She went out along with other airplanes from the (Navy) Utility Squadron One searching for the Japanese fleet.”

At Pearl Harbor, This Aircraft Risked It All to Find the Japanese Fleet

The Sikorsky JRS-1 flew right through the middle of it on December 7, 1941

After the 2016 election, several hundred students at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, walked out of the classrooms in protest.

Finding Lessons for Today’s Protests in the History of Political Activism

A whirlwind of action, both organized and organic, supported by legal defense teams brought historic change

Noble is interviewed by students participating in StoryQuest, an oral history project based at the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experence at Washington College.

A New Oral History Project Seeks the Stories of World War II Before It’s Too Late

Every member of the greatest generation has a tale to tell, no matter what they did during the war

The proliferation of fake news sites this election year has led to many readers believing complete falsehoods.

The Remedy for the Spread of Fake News? History Teachers

Historical literacy, and the healthy skepticism that comes with it, provides the framework for being able to discern truth from fiction

A small boat rescues a seaman from the 31,800 ton USS West Virginia burning in the foreground. Smoke rolling out amidships shows where the most extensive damage occurred.

The Children of Pearl Harbor

Military personnel weren’t the only people attacked on December 7, 1941

Ex-President William Howard Taft (1857-1930) sworn in as chief justice of the United States in 1921

Chief Justice, Not President, Was William Howard Taft’s Dream Job

The 27th president arguably left a more lasting mark on the nation as leader of the Supreme Court

Left to right: Newton Poolaw (Kiowa), Jerry Poolaw (Kiowa), Elmer Thomas Buddy Saunkeah (Kiowa). Mountain View, Oklahoma, ca. 1928

A Rare Insider’s View of Native American Life in Mid-20th-Century Oklahoma

Horace Poolaw’s photography is unearthed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian

Ask Smithsonian 2017

Where Did Harriet Tubman Escape to and More Questions From Our Readers

You asked, we answered

Martha, a farmworker in California, says a group of white locals often harass her, yelling that immigrants take U.S. jobs. “Why don’t they work in the fields?” she asked.

A Photographic Chronicle of America’s Working Poor

Smithsonian journeyed from Maine to California to update a landmark study of American life

The attack on Pearl Harbor was the worst day in the U.S. Navy’s history and the shock of a lifetime for just about any American who had achieved the age of memory.

How (Almost) Everyone Failed to Prepare for Pearl Harbor

The high-stakes gamble and false assumptions that detonated Pearl Harbor 80 years ago

Caedmon’s lofty slogan was “A third dimension for the printed page.”

The Christmas Tale Spoken Record That Launched the Audiobook

Narrated by Dylan Thomas, the album would go on to sell 400,000 copies

A brittle letter addressed to Orrin W. Shephard of Croton, Newagyo Co., Michigan from his son Nelson.

Mystery Solved: A Michigan Woman Says She Mailed Civil War Letters to the Post Office

Smithsonian curator Nancy Pope learns how and why these letters showed up in the mail 153 years later

Indians Poisoned

A Smithsonian Scholar Revisits the Neglected History of the Chesapeake Bay’s Native Tribes

Revisiting Indian Nations of the Chesapeake

Portrait of Edward Winslow

The Plymouth Hero You Should Really Be Thankful for This Thanksgiving

Without Edward Winslow, we probably wouldn’t even be celebrating the holiday

Activists picketing at a demonstration for housing equality while uniformed American Nazi Party members counterprotest in the background with signs displaying anti-integration slogans and racist epithets.

This Photo Book Is a Reminder That the Civil Rights Movement Extended Far Beyond the Deep South

Public historian Mark Speltz’s new book is full of images that aren’t typically part of the 1960s narrative

"I am well acquainted with Gen.l W. who is a man of very few words but when he speaks it is on purpose [and] what I have often admired in him is he [has] always avoided saying anything of the actions in which he has engaged in the last war. [H]e is uncommonly modest, very industrious - prudent." Charles Willson Peale to Edmond Jennings, August 1775

The Strange Case of George Washington’s Disappearing Sash

How an early (and controversial) symbol of the American republic was lost to the annals of history

A statue of the former slave Clara Brown, who was born into slavery in 1800. She married and had four children, but the family was broken up and sold at auction.

Breaking Ground

In “Defending Freedom,” the Vanguards Who Refused to Be Suppressed Are Reunited

At the African American History Museum, this exhibition graphically conveys the trials and triumphs in the battle for Civil Rights

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