Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Cool Finds

A treasure trove of tiny gold spirals from Boeslunde, Denmark

Cool Finds

Archeologists Have Found 2,000 Ancient Golden Spirals and They Have No Idea What They Are

The meaning or purpose behind the spirals is unclear, but they probably were part of a ritual

Workmen constructing the Statue of Liberty in Bartholdi's Parisian warehouse workshop in the winter of 1882.

Cool Finds

The Statue of Liberty Arrived in New York in 350 Pieces

Luckily, she also came with an instruction manual

Inside of the labyrinth, along one of the bamboo corridors.

Get Lost in the World’s Largest Maze

Ponder existence while wandering through the bamboo stalks of Italy’s Masone Labyrinth

Cool Finds

Explore This Map of 13 Centuries’ Worth of English Metaphors

How long ago did English speakers start linking chickens with fearfulness?

Michael Fraley, a Vice President with Yulex Corporation, cuts a guayule plant that can be used to make natural rubber, in 2008

Cool Finds

Could This Shrub Overthrow the Mighty Rubber Tree?

Researchers are working to make a shrub found in southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico a viable natural rubber alternative

New Horizons snapped this image of Pluto on July 12, 2015.

Cool Finds

How Pluto Got Its Name

New Horizons carries an instrument named for Venetia Burney, the 11-year-old girl who named Pluto

Cool Finds

Conservationists Want You to Stop Building Rock Piles

Cairns have a long history and purpose, one that newer stacks sometimes subvert

A bontebok

Cool Finds

Ever Heard of the Bontebok? It’s an African Animal Humans Nearly Destroyed, Then Saved

Part of this conservation success story relies on the bontebok’s inability to jump

Crystalized acetaminophen, the drug in Tylenol

Cool Finds

When This Photographer Got Sick, He Started Taking Beautiful Photos of Painkillers and Tears

The extreme closeups were one way for the photographer to understand what he was taking

Does she look like she would enjoy being jabbed with a needle? Conservationists have used assassin bugs to test the blood female Iberian lynx, like the mother picture above with her cubs, for pregnancy.

Cool Finds

How Do You Give an Iberian Lynx a Pregnancy Test? Use an Assassin Bug

Researchers used the insects to keep tabs on population growth in the threatened species

Visitors at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., can take a trip to the seaside inside.

Urban Explorations

Washington D.C. Just Got a 10,000 Square Foot Ball Pit

A giant ball pit exhibit allows National Building Museum visitors to experience an indoor ocean

Cool Finds

Here’s What the Sun Looks Like Through an X-Ray Telescope

All of the wonder of Earth’s closest star, none of the retinal damage

Cool Finds

This is What Happened When an Australian City Gave Trees Email Addresses

Trees get fan mail and even write back to Melburnian residents

Swiss researchers want to build a spacecraft to eat their tiny satellites after they stop working.

Cool Finds

This Pac-Man Spacecraft Will Devour a Satellite

Swiss researchers are designing a tiny satellite to eat their defunct cube satellite and clean up space junk

Cool Finds

Behold the World’s Tallest Sandcastle, 41 Feet Tall

The battle for tallest sand structure rages on

Cool Finds

Look Up: Clouds Could be the Next Movie Screens

An abandoned military strategy leads to the first “cloud movie”

Cool Finds

Researchers Are Using Facial Recognition Software To Save Lions

Software algorithms offer a non-invasive way to track the big cats

Page 153 of 282