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History

In October 2020, authorities in Mexico City set up metal fences (pictured here) to protect a statue of Christopher Columbus from protesters. Officials later removed the sculpture, ostensibly for restoration.

Statue of Pre-Hispanic Woman Will Replace Columbus Sculpture in Mexico City

The towering likeness is an oversized replica of a 15th- or 16th-century limestone artwork discovered earlier this year

The cache of newly returned items includes 15 handwritten papers and a small collection of looted antiquities.

Colonial-Era Papers Stolen From Mexico’s National Archive Return Home

The documents, many of which are directly linked to conquistador Hernán Cortés, were smuggled out of the country and auctioned in the U.S.

Riders outside the Patee House Museum in St. Joseph, Missouri, the route's eastern terminus. Every year the National Pony Express Association conducts an annual re-ride of the famous delivery route.

Six Stops on the Pony Express That You Can Still Visit

Established 160 years ago, the short-lived route was once the quickest way to deliver mail across the United States

The dig site at Castel di Guido in Italy featured numerous skeletons of straight-tusked elephants, from which many of the bone tools were produced.

New Research

Hand-Carved, 400,000-Year-Old Bone Tool Used for Smoothing Leather Found in Italy

Found near Rome, the utensil is 100,000 years older than previous finds of this kind

Flight 93 fuselage and call button, now housed in the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History

September 11

These Free Online Resources Tell the Story of 9/11 and Its Aftermath

Browse 12 archives, databases and portals that help users deepen their understanding of the attacks

Through the Freedmen's Bureau, formerly enslaved people were able to obtain formal legal recognition of their marriages.

Innovation for Good: Game Changers

Newly Digitized Freedmen’s Bureau Records Help Black Americans Trace Their Ancestry

Genealogists, historians and researchers can now peruse more than 3.5 million documents from the Reconstruction-era agency

Veteran Martin Adler poses with Bruno (left), Mafalda (right) and Giuliana (center) Naldi. Thanks to social media and a dogged journalist, the 97-year-old reconnected with the three siblings after 77 years.

World War II Veteran Reunites With Italian Children He Almost Shot in 1944

Martin Adler encountered the three siblings, who were hiding in a wicker basket, while he was searching for Nazi soldiers

Anne Frank pictured at school in Amsterdam in 1940

New Education Center Dedicated to Anne Frank Debuts in South Carolina

The space is the Amsterdam-based Anne Frank House’s only official outpost in North America

Martin Luther King Jr. speaks to members of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), including Rosa Parks (front row, center). Parks' arrest in December 1955 sparked the group's formation.

History of Now

Church Where MLK Launched His Civil Rights Career to Become a Museum

The young pastor assumed a leadership role in the Montgomery bus boycott during a 1955 meeting at Mt. Zion AME Zion Church

In 1921, Ruth Middleton embroidered this cotton sack with a powerful family story.

History of Now

A Simple Cotton Sack Tells an Intergenerational Story of Separation Under Slavery

Historian Tiya Miles’ new book traces the lives of three Black women through an embroidered family heirloom known as “Ashley’s sack”

Anonymous, Enslaved Men Digging Trenches, c. 1850

Confronting the Netherlands’ Role in the Brutal History of Slavery

A Rijksmuseum exhibition explores the legacy of colonialism and misleading nature of the term “Dutch Golden Age”

Prior to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, the thriving neighborhood of Greenwood, Oklahoma (seen here in 1920), was nicknamed "Black Wall Street."

Remembering Tulsa

How the Public Helped Historians Better Understand What Happened at Tulsa

A century after the massacre of a prosperous Black community, Smithsonian volunteers transcribed nearly 500 pages of vital records in less than 24 hours

A silver shilling recently found at the former site of St. Mary's Fort, one of the first colonial settlements in British North America

Cool Finds

Rare 17th-Century Coin Featuring Charles I’s Likeness Found in Maryland

Archaeologists found a telltale silver shilling at the likely site of St. Mary’s Fort, a 1634 structure built by early English colonists

Lincoln outlived her husband and three of her four children.

Why Historians Should Reevaluate Mary Todd Lincoln’s Oft-Misunderstood Grief

A new exhibition at President Lincoln’s Cottage connects the first lady’s experiences to those of modern bereaved parents

A children's seesaw stands among former apartment buildings in Pripyat, Ukraine. Pripyat, built in the 1970s to house the workers and families of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, now stands abandoned inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

Thirty-Five Years Later, a First Responder at the Chernobyl Disaster Looks Back

In her new book, Alla Shapiro shares her experience of one of the worst nuclear disasters in history

Harriet Tubman likely lived in the Maryland cabin between 1839 and 1844, when she was about 17 to 22 years old.

Cool Finds

Site of Harriet Tubman’s Lost Maryland Home Found After Decades-Long Search

The Underground Railroad conductor’s father, Ben Ross, received the land where the cabin once stood in the early 1840s

Bronze Age wedge tombs like the one pictured here are found throughout southwest Ireland. But the newly discovered burial “seems to be different,” archaeologist Mícheál Ó Coileáin tells the Irish Times. “Wedge tombs are usually visible above ground, [but] this one is completely concealed.”

Cool Finds

Irish Farmer Stumbles Onto ‘Untouched’ Ancient Tomb

Archaeologists think the well-preserved burial dates to the Bronze Age—or perhaps even earlier

Researchers are still investigating who created the tunnel and why.

Cool Finds

Contractors Discover Forgotten Medieval Tunnel Beneath Welsh Garden

The passageway runs along a brook near Tintern Abbey, a 12th-century monastery on the border between Wales and England

Rioters enter the U.S. Capitol's rotunda as chemical irritants fill the corridor on January 6, 2021.

History of Now

Curators Seek $25,000 to Repair Artworks Damaged in U.S. Capitol Attack

Rioters vandalized six sculptures and two paintings, in addition to smashing windows, breaking furniture and spraying graffiti

A front view of 726 W. Garfield Blvd., the Englewood mansion where Catherine "Cate" O'Leary lived for part of her later life

Mansion of Woman Falsely Blamed for 1871 Great Chicago Fire Is Up for Sale

Mrs. O’Leary’s son built the house for her after the disaster. Now, the property is on the market—and it comes with a fire hydrant

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