Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

American History

None

Weekend Events: Celebrate the Life of Martin Luther King, Jr., Storytelling and More

None

Have You Hugged Your Computer Today?

None

Indian Ledger Drawings at the American History Museum

Britain's leaders made a miscalculation when they assumed that resistance from the colonies, as the Earl of Dartmouth predicted, could not be "very formidable."

Myths of the American Revolution

A noted historian debunks the conventional wisdom about America’s War of Independence

"Here is business enough for you," Gage told the first doctor to treat him after a premature detonation on a railroad-building site turned a tamping iron into a missile.

Phineas Gage: Neuroscience’s Most Famous Patient

An accident with a tamping iron made Phineas Gage history’s most famous brain-injury survivor

United States president James Knox Polk

“Best of the Decade” with Air and Space Curator Tom Crouch

None

Events for the Week of December 14-18: Harry Truman, A Doll’s House, The Muppets and More!

None

“Best of the Decade” with the American History Museum’s Harry Rubenstein

None

Events for the Week of 12/7-11: American Indian Dancing, Inspirational Toys, ZooLights and More!

None

Deck the Dolls With Lots of Jolly

None

Events: A National Zoo Electric Light Show, Holidays on Display, Celebrations of Winter Holidays

None

“Holidays on Display” at American History Museum

None

Celebrating 40 Years of Life On Sesame Street

None

Events for the Week of 11/9-13: Africa Meets Mexico, Home School Open House, Confederate Currency and More!

None

The Coolest Straw I Ever Saw at American History

None

Events for the Week of 11/2-6: Dorothea Lange, John Singer Sargent, Zoo Photography Club and More!

"My memories of Worthington are ... colored by what went on with my father," says Tim O'Brien.

From Brooklyn to Worthington, Minnesota

Novelist Tim O’Brien revisits his past to come to terms with his rural hometown

Starting in 1864, Arlington National Cemetery was transformed into a military cemetery.

How Arlington National Cemetery Came to Be

The fight over Robert E. Lee’s beloved home—seized by the U.S. government during the Civil War—went on for decades

Phineas Staunton paid homage to his subject, Henry Clay, in an 11-by7-foot canvas.

The Rescue of Henry Clay

A long-lost painting of the Senate’s Great Compromiser finds a fitting new home in the halls of the U.S. Capitol

None

Weekend Events: Judy Garland, Occult Literature and Day of the Dead

Page 192 of 205