American History

Take an Interactive Tour of the National Museum of African American History and Culture

What to expect when you visit the Smithsonian’s newest museum

People sit on a roof waiting to be rescued after Hurricane Katrina

Eleven Years After Katrina, What Lessons Can We Learn Before the Next Disaster Strikes?

Author and playwright John Biguenet offers his thoughts on the narrative of destruction

One of 5,200 wine labels from Maynard Amerine's collection

Help Crowdsource the History of Wine

The University of California, Davis, is looking for online volunteers to help catalog and describe 5,200 wine labels

From Slavery to Mass Incarceration will be a museum dedicated to the history of racial injustice in America, and will be located just steps from a site where slaves were auctioned off.

Inside the Upcoming Memorial and Museum Dedicated to Lynching Victims

Spanning slavery to segregation to mass incarceration

One of Johnny Cash's last cars, whose design was inspired by the song "One Piece at a Time."

Explore Johnny Cash’s Tennessee Ranch-Turned Museum

Complete with a car built “one piece at a time”

Vanderbilt University's newly renamed "Memorial Hall."

Five Places Where Confederate Monuments Have Recently Disappeared (or Soon Will)

Vanderbilt University's decision to rename a building to "Memorial Hall" is just one of many ongoing efforts

The sloop Washington, which sank in Lake Ontario in 1803

Explorers Find Second Oldest Shipwreck in the Great Lakes

The merchant sloop <i>Washington</i> went down in a storm in 1803 on Lake Ontario

"Pick, Pan, Shovel," Ed Ruscha, 1980

The History of the American West Gets a Much-Needed Rewrite

Artists, historians and filmmakers alike have been guilty of creating a mythologized version of the U.S. expansion to the west

From unsavory beginnings to a refreshing treat, pink lemonade has remained a summer staple.

The Unusual Origins of Pink Lemonade

It’s a pretty scary story. It does involve clowns, after all

Tourists in Hawaii Accidentally Discovered Ancient Petroglyphs

A stroke of luck on the beach

An Insect Could Make Ash Baseball Bats a Thing of the Past

The invasive emerald ash borer is threatening the forests where Rawlings and Louisville Sluggers come from, putting the bats in jeopardy

For Sale: 400 Awesome Vintage Boomboxes

A New Zealand aficionado is auctioning off his collection of iconic 1980s music machines

Convicted bank robber, Patty Hearst arrest photo

How the Abduction of Patty Hearst Made Her an Icon of the 1970s Counterculture

A new book places a much-needed modern-day lens on the kidnapping that captivated the nation

How the American Civil War Built Egypt’s Vaunted Cotton Industry and Changed the Country Forever

The battle between the U.S. and the Confederacy affected global trade in astonishing ways

The pony swim in 2008

Watch the Chincoteague Ponies Complete Their 91st Annual Swim

For nine decades, the local fire department has herded the horses from Assateague to Chincoteague Island to auction off the foals

Lisa Kathleen Graddy and Jon Grinspan, curators with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History

How Do Smithsonian Curators Decide What to Collect at the Political Conventions?

For Smithsonian’s Lisa Kathleen Graddy and Jon Grinspan, it’s trying to guess what people of the future will want to know about 2016

Walmart Once Pulled a Shirt That Said “Someday a Woman Will Be President” From Its Shelves

While Hillary Clinton was living in the White House, no less

Sarah Winnemucca, the first Indian woman to write a book highlighting the plight of the Indian people.

Sarah Winnemucca Devoted Her Life to Protecting Native Americans in the Face of an Expanding United States

The 19th-century visionary often found herself stuck between two cultures

Pictographs at Newspaper Rock, Utah

Why Ancestral Puebloans Honored People With Extra Digits

New research shows having extra toes or fingers was a revered trait among people living in the Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

Earliest known photograph of the White House. The image was taken in 1846 by John Plumbe during the administration of James K. Polk.

The White House Was, in Fact, Built by Enslaved Labor

Along with the Capitol and other iconic buildings in Washington, D.C.

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