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American History

In 1997, the world gasped as Gianni Versace was shot to death on the doorstep of his Miami mansion.

The True Story of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace”

Did the designer meet his killer seven years earlier?

Google's latest app seems to think National Portrait Gallery director Kim Sajet has a lot in common with former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Future of Art

Here’s My Problem With the Google Arts & Culture Face-Matching App

Kim Sajet, the director of the National Portrait Gallery, offers ideas to make it better

Trending Today

Massive Data Project Will Help People Identify Enslaved Ancestors

Michigan State’s ‘Enslaved: The People of the Historic Slave Trade’ will combine available historical data on slavery into one searchable hub

In 1968, at Resurrection City, a multicultural, multi-racial people shaped a campaign of hurt and hope out of a tumultuous year, including the war in Vietnam, and the assassinations of King and Robert F. Kennedy.

Deeply Grieving MLK’s Death, Activists Shaped a Campaign of Hurt and Hope

At Resurrection City, an epic 1968 demonstration on the National Mall in Washington D.C., protesters defined the next 50 years of activism

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. chats with African-Americans during a door-to-door campaign in 1964.

This Theologian Helped MLK See the Value of Nonviolence

Minister, theologian and mystic Howard Thurman had a profound influence on Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

After the Revolution, Americans sought a national identity. American Cookery, the first cookbook written and published in the country, proposed one approach to American cuisine.

What America’s First Cookbook Says About Our Country and Its Cuisine

An 18th-century kitchen guide taught Americans how to eat simply but sumptuously

Dizzy Gillespie in Hamburg, 1973

Dizzy Gillespie and His Bent Trumpet

Here’s how the Smithsonian acquired the instrument of one of the world’s most influential and unconventional American jazz musicians

1968: The Year That Shattered America

Rage Against the Machine

A short story reimagines the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the chaos that shocked the world

A Timeline of 1968: The Year That Shattered America

The nation is still reckoning with the changes that came in that fateful year

This cartoon from Harper's Weekly depicts how opiates were used in the 19th century to help babies cope with teething.

Inside the Story of America’s 19th-Century Opiate Addiction

Doctors then, as now, overprescribed the painkiller to patients in need, and then, as now, government policy had a distinct bias

National Guard troops lined Beale Street during a protest on March 29 , 1968. “I was in every march, all of ’em, with that sign: I AM A MAN,” recalls former sanitation worker Ozell Ueal.

Traveling Along the U.S. Civil Rights Trail

The Strike That Brought MLK to Memphis

In his final days, Martin Luther King Jr. stood by striking sanitation workers. We returned to the city to see what has changed—and what hasn’t

Tickets to the Johnson impeachment trial were color-coded to indicate dates for the proceedings, which lasted more than two months.

The Fight Over Andrew Johnson’s Impeachment Was a Fight for the Future of the United States

The biggest show in Washington 150 years ago was the trial against the President of the United States

“Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee” by Rembrandt, one of 13 works stolen during the 1990 theft.

Trending Today

Speak Now: Reward for Biggest Art Heist in History Gets Cut in Half on New Year’s

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum hoped the $10 million reward would shake loose new clues in the 27-year-old crime

Emerald Bay and Mount Tallac, Lake Tahoe, 1935.

Cool Finds

Cache of Newly Digitized Travel Photographs Will Transport You to 1900s California

Travelers William and Grace McCarthy really got around, and in nearly 3,000 photos, they captured a unique view of San Francisco, Tahoe and Yosemite

A YMCA gym in 1910.

The YMCA First Opened Gyms to Train Stronger Christians

Physical fitness was a secondary goal for the movement

A 2013 Romanian stamp features Cochran and her dishwasher.

This Time-Saving Patent Paved the Way for the Modern Dishwasher

Josephine Cochran just wanted to stop having broken dishes

Women dynamite workers at one of Alfred Nobel's factories in the 1880s.

The True Story of Mrs. Alford’s Nitroglycerin Factory

Mary Alford remains the only woman known to own a dynamite and nitroglycerin factory

Often known as the redbird or common cardinal, the northern cardinal is a North American bird in the genus Cardinalis.

Trending Today

Five Things to Know About the Recently Changed Migratory Bird Act

A new rule prevents industry from being prosecuted for killing birds under the 100-year-old conservation law

Before the 1840s, women had no choice but to deliver children without anesthetic.

It Didn’t Take Very Long For Anesthesia to Change Childbirth

The unprecedented idea of a painless delivery changed women’s lives

Carry A. Nation with her bible and her hatchet not long before she died in 1911.

Three Things to Know About Radical Prohibitionist Carry A. Nation

Nation was convinced she was on a mission from God

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