Articles tagged as Sports | Smithsonian Magazine

The winning spellers made history with eight co-champions, the most number in the spelling event history.

The National Spelling Bee Ended in an Unprecedented Eight-Way Tie

“We’re basically throwing the dictionary at you,” pronouncer Jacques Bailly told the spellers. “[A]nd so far you are showing the dictionary who is boss”

May 31, 2019

The mountain guide topped out on the world’s tallest peak twice in just the last week

May 22, 2019

Sculptor Hannah Stewart has created a life-size bronze statue of Lily Parr

Lily Parr, a Pioneering English Footballer, Scores Bronze Monument

Parr rose to fame in the years after WWI, a time when women’s soccer blossomed in the U.K.

May 14, 2019

Kate Smith singing 'God Bless America' before a Philadelphia Flyers home game at the Spectrum in Philadelphia circa 1970s.

Philadelphia Flyers Remove Statue of Singer Kate Smith Amid Allegations of Racism

The team will also no longer play Smith’s famed rendition of ‘God Bless America’

April 24, 2019

The Patents Behind Basketball

This March Madness consider how the sport has evolved in its 128-year history, through innovations in ball design, hoops and training devices

March 29, 2019

Armando, the long distance pigeon racing champ, was recently bought by a Chinese buyer and put out to stud

March 22, 2019

Despite statistical methods that help sports fans improve their brackets, the probability of a perfect bracket remains something of a mystery in mathematics.

The Mathematical Madness Behind a Perfect N.C.A.A. Basketball Bracket

Picking a perfect bracket is so unlikely that it will almost certainly never occur, even if March Madness continues for billions of years

March 21, 2019

Lee Spencer smashed the previous record by 36 days, rowing his boat solo and unsupported from Portugal to French Guiana in just 60 days

March 13, 2019

Frank Robinson taking a swing during a circa late 1960s Major League Baseball game at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, Maryland.

Robinson was one of the great all-time home run hitters and made history when he became the manager of the Cleveland Indians

February 8, 2019

The National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum was co-founded by two friends who have been collecting the figures for the past 16 years

Milwaukee Museum Features More Than 6,500 Collectible Bobbleheads (and Counting)

The duo behind project find the art in the unblinking figurine, displaying bobbleheads from all walks of life, including sports, pop culture and politics

February 7, 2019

The Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10 in what came to be known as Super Bowl I.

Pop History

What the Earliest Super Bowl Commercials Tell Us About the Super Bowl

The inaugural title game in 1967 would not have been getting kudos from the media for representing women

January 31, 2019

A harbor seal checks out one of the team's divers.

A High Schooler Discovered Thousands of Golf Balls Polluting California’s Coastal Waters

She is now the co-author of a study that seeks to quantify this underreported problem

January 23, 2019

A rendering of the lobby of the Statue of Liberty Museum, featuring the statue's original torch

From Lady Liberty to Hollywood to the Middle East, These Are the Most Exciting Museums Opening in 2019

Visit new institutions devoted to mascots, spies, archaeological sites, American icons and much more this year

January 17, 2019

The Vatican’s New Track Team Includes Priests, Nuns and a Scholar

The team dreams of competing in the Olympics, though that might be a ‘long shot,’ says its president

January 14, 2019

It took Colin O’Brady 53 days to drag a sled 921 miles from the Ronne to the Ross Ice Shelf

December 27, 2018

The two nations filed a historic joint application to place traditional Korean wrestling on the world cultural heritage listing

November 27, 2018

Ingenious Minds

A Smithsonian Sports Curator Explains How Athletes Turn Social and Political Issues into National Conversations

Atlantic staff writer Frank Foer interviews Damion Thomas about athletes moving from a position of apathy to engagement

November 13, 2018

Katmai National Park and Preserve has a ton of chubby cubbies. But which bear's bulk will bury the competition in the 2018 Fat Bear Week?

Your vote will determine which fish-chomping ursine competitor in Katmai National Park and Preserve is the chubbiest cubby of them all

Updated: October 10, 2018 | Originally Published: October 3, 2018

Deep, lush colors in the Turkey Red Cabinet set of 1911 (above, Safe at Third) led many to tack these on their walls as works of art.

Would Baseball have Become America’s National Pastime Without Baseball Cards?

Tobacco companies spurred the mania, but artistry won the hearts of collectors

September 28, 2018

Billie Jean King is the fifth recipient of the Smithsonian “Great Americans” medal.

Smithsonian Names Billie Jean King One of Its ‘Great Americans”’

The tennis icon chatted about her life and legacy in a wide-ranging conversation at the National Museum of American History

September 26, 2018