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History / U.S. History

Woodrow Wilson and his second wife, Edith, in 1916

Women Who Shaped History

How Edith Wilson Kept Herself—and Her Husband—in the White House

A new book about the first lady reveals how she and the ailing President Woodrow Wilson silenced their critics

A 1903 photograph of Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Brief but Shining Life of Paul Laurence Dunbar, a Poet Who Gave Dignity to the Black Experience

A prolific writer, he inspired such luminaries as Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes

Mina’s goal was to keep the home—and women—central in modern society. Building on the home economists who came before her, she sought to define women’s work as work rather than a vague, idealized calling.

Women Who Shaped History

Mina Miller Edison Was Much More Than the Wife of the ‘Wizard of Menlo Park’

The second wife of Thomas Edison, she viewed domestic labor as a science, calling herself a “home executive”

A brown-green vessel bearing the inscription, "A noble Jar for pork or beef / then carry it a round to the indian chief" made by the enslaved craftsman David "Dave" Drake, is now on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

For the Enslaved Potter David Drake, His Literary Practice Was His Resistance

This 19th-century vessel, made to store meat, carries a powerful backstory of Drake’s defiance of the laws of enslavement

The Nenana Ice Classic tripod is on display alongside the Tanana River and the Alaska Railroad tracks, next to the community "watchtower" building. The tripod will be raised on the ice of the Tanana River on March 5, 2023.

Discover Alaska

The River That’s Kept Alaska Guessing for More Than a Century

The Nenana Ice Classic, started in 1917, is a high-stakes guessing game over the date, hour and minute of the ice breakup on the Tanana River

President John F. Kennedy meets with William Fitzjohn, Sierra Leone's charge d’affairs in Washington, in the Oval Office on April 27, 1961.

Untold Stories of American History

The African Diplomats Who Protested Segregation in the U.S.

Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy publicly apologized after restaurants refused to serve Black representatives of newly independent nations

Ihor Poshyvailo, director of the Maidan Museum in Kyiv and co-founder of Ukraine’s Heritage Emergency Response Initiative, along with his crew, salvages the remains of the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary built in 1862 and shelled by the Russians in March 2022.

How Ukrainians Are Defending Their Cultural Heritage From Russian Destruction

The Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative and its partners are aiding in the fight to protect the country’s history and to document attempts to erase it

Stories of the enslaved people who helped kick-start paleontology and the Native American guides who led naturalists to fossils around the continent have long been suppressed.

The First Fossil Finders in North America Were Enslaved and Indigenous People

Decades before paleontology’s formal establishment, Black and Native Americans discovered—and correctly identified—millennia-old fossils

Big Chief Monk Boudreaux (center) leads his Mardi Gras Indian tribe, the Golden Eagles, on Super Sunday.

What You Should Know About the Mardi Gras Indians

For more than a century, New Orleans’ Black residents have donned Native-inspired attire to celebrate Carnival

John H. Smith (left), mayor of Prichard, Alabama, unsuccessfully campaigned for the creation of an Africatown national park.

Untold Stories of American History

The Forgotten 1980s Battle to Preserve Africatown

A new book tells the definitive history of an Alabama community founded by survivors of the slave trade

Aerial view of Apple's California headquarters

How California Took Over the World

A sweeping book offers a provocative new history arguing that today’s inequality can be traced back to the state’s founding

“Abraham Lincoln” (1865) by W.F.K. Travers in the "America's Presidents" gallery at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, on loan from the Hartley Dodge Foundation.

Life-Size 1865 Portrait of Abraham Lincoln Stands Tall at the National Portrait Gallery

The W.F.K. Travers painting hid in plain sight at a New Jersey town hall for 80 years before it was restored and brought back to Washington

A kindergartner frolics on a jungle gym during a festival in Louisville, Kentucky, in September 2017.

The Surprisingly Scientific Roots of Monkey Bars

A century ago, a Princeton mathematician created what would become a mainstay of the American playground

Steps lead to one of the pools that Louise du Pont Crowninshield had built among the remains of the former powder mill.

An Abandoned, Industrial Ruin Bursts With New Life in Delaware

Thanks to a few horticulturalists with an eye for history, a garden lost to time peeks out from the creeping vines

A boat makes a morning trip through the Erie Canal in Rochester, New York, October 2021.

A Brief History of the Erie Canal

The waterway opened up the heartland to trade, transforming small hamlets into industrial centers

The cabbage soup diet of the 1950s allowed the indulgence in as much cabbage soup as one could consume.

The Seesawing History of Fad Diets

Since dieting began in the 1830s, the ever-changing nutritional advice has skimped on science

Neal V. Loving in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1954

In 1946, a Black Pilot Returned to the Cockpit After a Double Amputation

Neal V. Loving, whose memoir will soon be released by Smithsonian Books, built his own planes, ran a flight school and conducted research for the Air Force

At the Paris World's Fair a powerful display of hand-drawn diagrams (above: Income and expenditure of 150 Negro families in Atlanta, Ga.,U.S. designed by W.E.B. Du Bois and his students) called attention to the unrecognized contributions of Black Americans. The fragile posters are being rotatated in and out of an exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum through May 2023.

How W.E.B. Du Bois Disrupted America’s Dominance at the World’s Fair

With bar graphs and pie charts, the sociologist and his Atlanta students demonstrated Black excellence in the face of widespread discrimination

Miriam Wosk's illustration of a blue-skinned, eight-armed multitasking woman adorned the first cover of Ms. magazine. "Making her blue was a way of making her universal," says Gloria Steinem in this month's "Portraits" podcast.

Explore the Founding of ‘Ms.’ Magazine and the Making of a Space Telescope Photograph in This Month’s Featured Podcasts

“AirSpace” speaks to astronomer Shauna Edson and “Portraits” drops in on activist and author Gloria Steinhem

Fall/Winter Sears catalog from 1957

Before Folding 30 Years Ago, the Sears Catalog Sold Some Surprising Products

The retail giant’s mail-order business reigned supreme for more than a century, offering everything from quack cures to ready-to-build homes

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