Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Cool Finds

A view of the opening to Danger Cave in 1976, when it was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places

Cool Finds

Utah’s Danger Cave Will Soon Open For a Rare Tour

The cave houses evidence of human habitation from over 11,000 years ago

Cool Finds

Adding Faint Scents to Healthy Food Could Make it Taste Better

Scents of salty food may be all it takes to make low-salt items delicious

Cool Finds

How Contact Lenses Were Made in 1948

Would you put this on your eye?

Cool Finds

This Norwegian Modern Art Museum Is Also a Bridge

An ingeniously twisted design blends art with infrastructure

Giant guitarfish (Rhynchobatus djiddensis)

Cool Finds

Instead of Eyelids, This Fish Retracts Its Eyeballs

The giant guitarfish can pull its eyes nearly 1.6 inches inside its head

Cool Finds

Arctic Explorers Uncover (and Eat) 60-Year-Old Food Stash

Tins of jam and crackers hidden in Greenland’s Arctic desert made for a delicious surprise

Cool Finds

There’s an Elephant Buried Underneath the Vatican

The forgotten remains of a beloved, 16th-century papal pet

Was this article written by a data-driven word processing machine...or a robot?

Cool Finds

The Robo-Journalists Are Coming

But did a machine write this story?

Cool Finds

This Giant Van Gogh Painting Is Made of Pumpkins, Watermelons and Squash

How crop artist Stan Herd made an acre-wide ode to “Olive Trees”

Cool Finds

Air Force One is Getting a Makeover

The best presidential perk is about to get even better

The IceCube Lab with a picture of neutrino data superimposed

Cool Finds

The Search For Elusive Neutrinos in Antarctica Generates Massive Amounts of Data

The IceCube observatory at the South Pole collects roughly 36 terabytes of data a year in the search for ‘special’ neutrinos

Screenshot from Histography 

Cool Finds

This Is What 14,000,000,000 Years of History Looks Like

A designer’s ingenious timeline covers the Big Bang to the Internet

Edith Wharton had presumably outgrown her rattle by the time this photo was taken in 1877.

Cool Finds

For Sale: Edith Wharton’s $16,500 Baby Rattle

Fanciest. Teething device. Ever.

Cool Finds

Lego Superfans Built This Epic Model of Hadrian’s Wall

The edge of the Roman Empire, recreated with tiny toy blocks

Cebreros station

Cool Finds

Falcons Protect This Deep Space Antenna

Nesting birds and their droppings can keep space scientists’ telescopes from getting a clear signal

Cameras captured snowy craters scattered across the moon's north side.

Cool Finds

Stunning New Views of Enceladus, Saturn’s 6th-Largest Moon

A new flyby has revealed a spidery network of cracks crisscrossing its northern pole

A honey bee’s eye dusted with pollen from a dandelion pollen magnified 120 times won 1st prize in the 2015 Nikon Small World competition.

Cool Finds

See at a Bee’s Eye Level With 9 Award-Winning Microscopic Photos

The winners of Nikon’s annual photomicrography competition have an eye for detail

Cool Finds

This Halloween, Who Wants to Spend a Night in the Paris Catacombs?

Airbnb is looking for two brave souls to sleep with the dead

Page 145 of 284