Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Cool Finds

Cool Finds

Minnesota Is Expanding Its Bike Share to Include Canoes

Because bikes and boats are a perfect pair

A group of escaped former slaves gathered at the plantation of Confederate General Thomas Drayton. After Federal troops occupied the plantation they began to harvest and gin cotton for their own profit

Cool Finds

A Free Man’s Letter to A Former Slaveowner in 1865

When asked to return to the farm where he was held in bondage, Jourdon Anderson wrote this thoughtful reply

Cool Finds

X-Rays Unveil Hidden Paintings Beneath an Avant-Garde Classic

The brightly-colored cubist work below “Black Square” adds new dimensions to a masterpiece

Cool Finds

Watch ‘Swan Lake’ Transform Into a Spectacular Light Show

The classic ballet has never looked so stunning

Cool Finds

How to Visit the British Museum Without Going to London

A new partnership with Google allows art aficionados to take virtual strolls through the museum’s treasures

Cool Finds

These French Vending Machines Sell Short Stories

Super-short fiction that’s as good as any snack

The Apollo 17 Saturn V rocket, the last human flight to the moon, on its launch pad at dusk on November 21, 1972

Cool Finds

Help Save the Booster that Sent Apollo Spacecrafts to the Moon

A Kickstarter campaign hopest to save the only remaining booster rocket from the Apollo launches

The Salad Garden at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, where art is salad and salad is a chance for performance art.

Cool Finds

An L.A. Museum Is Turning Salad Into Performance Art

Because there’s more to salad than that satisfying, leafy crunch

A painted wooden coffin beside a looted tomb in the Abu Sir al Malaq necropolis in Bani Suef, Egypt.

Cool Finds

This Ingenious Archaeologist Uses Satellites to Hunt Down Tomb Raiders

Can satellite imagery help protect humanity’s priceless artifacts?

Cool Finds

A Lost Story by Edith Wharton Has Been Discovered in Yale’s Library

“The Field of Honor” is about a failed marriage during World War I

Cool Finds

During the Cold War, the Military Had Plans to Wage War in Space

The U.S. Army’s Future Weapons Office proposed theoretical ways to defend non-existant lunar bases

Cool Finds

Now Available: The Ultimate Old-Timey Playlist

Listen to digitized recordings of wax cylinders, an obsolete technology that revives turn-of-the-century culture

Can you hear me now? Good.

Cool Finds

This Ear Was Made With Vincent Van Gogh’s DNA

What secrets have been whispered into this creepy, living copy of the most famous ear in art history?

A photo of the Hydrus before the ship sank in November, 1913

Cool Finds

Divers Discover 102-Year-Old Shipwreck in Lake Huron

The Hydrus and her crew were lost during the Great Storm of 1913

Cool Finds

The Mystery of a Titanic Telegram

Did the Titanic’s owners know about its collision with an iceberg?

A hellish landscape drawing newly attributed to Hieronymus Bosch

Cool Finds

New Hieronymus Bosch Drawing Found in Private Art Collection

The hellish landscape is “an exceptionally important addition” to Bosch’s grim work

2,600 undelivered letters, 600 of them unopened, were found inside this postmaster's trunk.

Cool Finds

This Trunk Stuffed With 17th-Century Letters Is a Historian’s Dream

Recipients never read these letters, but their loss is history’s gain

Hedy Lamarr, mother of modern wifi.

Cool Finds

Happy Birthday Hedy Lamarr, Hollywood Star Turned Scientist

The beauty had brains—after all, she invented the tech behind Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS

Cool Finds

How the U.S. Census Defines Race

The history of America’s racial identity, as told by 225 years of population data

Praise hands, this robot is happy face!

Cool Finds

This Keyboard Lets You Type in Emoji

[heart-shaped eyes] + [clapping hands] + [money bag]

Page 139 of 281