Articles tagged as History | Smithsonian Magazine

These galaxies are smiling at you thanks to general relativity.

Seven Simple Ways We Know Einstein Was Right (For Now)

For the past 100 years, these experiments have offered continued evidence that general relativity is our best description of gravity

November 4, 2015

A constellation rises as the Leonid and Taurid Meteor Showers return

November 3, 2015

Cool Finds

NASA is Helping Study These Massive Earthworks from Space

Could satellite photographs decipher the meaning behind Kazakhstan’s mysterious geometric designs?

November 2, 2015

A new project uses thermal imaging to look for hidden chambers

October 29, 2015

Cool Finds

How Tourism Shaped Photography in 19th Century Japan

Westerners were obsessed with geisha, samurai and cherry blossoms

October 28, 2015

The 1,800-year-old Arch of Triumph was destroyed on Sunday

October 6, 2015

A relative unknown, Werner Forssmann won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for inventing the cardiac catheter. Some of his equally qualified peers have not been as fortunate.

How Not to Win a Nobel Prize

A search through the Nobel archives shows how the history of the famous prize is filled with near misses and flukes

October 5, 2015

Turkey’s ‘Fairy Chimneys’ Were Millions of Years in the Making

Nature built them, but humans made them their own

September 21, 2015

Cool Finds

These Century-Old Stone “Tsunami Stones” Dot Japan’s Coastline

“Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point.”

August 31, 2015

The famous terracotta army guards the tomb of Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang. Dozens of other graves and ruins around China are not so well secured.

Move over, Lara Croft: raiding tombs is an increasingly viable career in China

August 11, 2015

Cool Finds

Teenage Girls Have Led Language Innovation for Centuries

They’ve been on the cutting edge of the English language since at least the 1500s

August 10, 2015

A stone etching on the grave of crewmember Lt. John Irving depicts the dire conditions that the Franklin expedition faced when they reached the Canadian Arctic.

New Research

Franklin’s Doomed Arctic Expedition Ended in Gruesome Cannibalism

New bone analysis suggests crew resorted to eating flesh, then marrow

July 27, 2015

A section of the digitally unwrapped Ein Gedi scroll, bearing text from Leviticus.

1,500-Year-Old Text Has Been Digitally Resurrected From a Hebrew Scroll

Special software helped reveal the words on a burned scroll found inside a holy ark near the Dead Sea

July 24, 2015

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

July 14, 2015

Anthropocene

How Geography Shaped Societies, From Neanderthals to iPhones

This weeks’ episode of Generation Anthropocene discusses efforts to quantify social development and the cultural retention of the Navajo

July 7, 2015

A mermaid as depicted in Sea Fables Explained by Henry Lee, published in 1883.

Cool Finds

The Murky Tale of John Smith and the Mermaid

Alexander Dumas probably just made it up

June 25, 2015

A screen shot from a video about how Indo-European languages spread around the globe.

Cool Finds

Half of All Languages Come From This One Root Tongue. Here’s How it Conquered the Earth.

Today, three billion people speak Indo-European langauges

June 16, 2015

A sumptuously appointed room within the Borgia family's castle in Tuscany, now available for everyday people to rent.

Urban Explorations

Want to Sleep Like a King, Queen or Borgia For a Night? Stay in these Historic Airbnbs

Whether it’s the former home of a national icon or an extravagant estate in Europe, the sharing economy offers the chance to go back in time for a night

May 29, 2015

The Egtved girl was a high-born female from the Bronze Age. In her grave in Denmark, she wears a wool dress. Wool textiles and a bronze belt plate that resembles the sun surround her remains.

Cool Finds

What Was Life Like for a Girl in the Bronze Age?

Analysis of a 3,400-year-old burial traces the life story of a Bronze Age female

May 27, 2015

The original Pac-Man was kind of a feminist.

Pac-Man Turns 35 This Month

The now-iconic game was originally released by Namco in 1980

May 27, 2015