Smithsonian Magazine

Smithsonian Curator Explains How Athletes Turn Social & Political Issues into National Conversations

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

A Rare Surviving Letter From Martha Washington Sheds Light on Her Young Daughter’s Struggle With Epilepsy

Recently obtained by the Library of Congress, the 1760 letter offers positive news about the health of four-year-old Martha Parke Custis, known as Patsy, the stepdaughter of George Washington ...
Smithsonian Magazine

How Do Pandas Have Sex While in Human Care? As the National Zoo’s Director Details in Her New Book, It Takes a Village of Dedicated Keepers

Brandie Smith, who leads the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, has seen more of pandas' private ...
Smithsonian Magazine

The Handwritten Final Draft of Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech Was Considered Lost. It Turned Out to Be Sitting in a Desk Drawer for Decades

Across seven yellow notepad pages, King is seen wrestling with word choice and revising his remarks the night before the ...
Smithsonian Magazine

Dismantled to Survive the Nazi Blitz, Coventry Cathedral’s Stained Glass Is ‘a Medieval Jigsaw Puzzle.’ Its 12,000 Fragments Are Now Digitized for Public View

First shattered during the Reformation, the 15th-century stained glass is rife with religious imagery, comical animal scenes ...
Smithsonian Magazine

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Has Accumulated So Many Microplastics They Might Be Changing the Color of the Ocean

Satellite data suggests water in and around the huge area filled with human-made debris has become more blue-green over the ...
Smithsonian Magazine

The Maya Loved Using Mercury-Rich Red Paint to Decorate Pottery, Temple Walls and Even Burials. They May Have Accidentally Poisoned Their Own Water and Food …

Testing of ancient sediment from two lakes in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula has revealed "crazy" high concentrations of mercury, ...
Smithsonian Magazine

While Cleaning Out Her Aunt’s Manhattan Apartment, a Woman Found a Long-Lost Georgia O’Keeffe Painting Buried Beneath Fur Coats in the Closet

Painted in 1930, "Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I" sat in the closet for 40 years, with only a single photograph, by O'Keeffe’s ...
Smithsonian Magazine

This Adorable, Orphaned Baby Walrus Was Rescued by Two Researchers in Alaska. Now, He’s Found a New Home in Florida

The scientists were conducting fieldwork on a remote beach in northwestern Alaska when they spotted the roughly 5-month-old ...
Smithsonian Magazine

Celebrate the Nation’s Veterans With These 20 Stirring Photographs of American Military Heroes

Communities nationwide honor retired service members in these images from the Smithsonian Magazine photo contest ...
Smithsonian Magazine

This African Prophet Was Burned at the Stake 320 Years Ago. Today, Kimpa Vita Is Celebrated as the ‘Kongolese Joan of Arc’

Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita believed herself to be possessed by the spirit of St. Anthony. The movement she led in the early ...
Smithsonian Magazine

Newly Digitized Oral History Transcripts Reveal 89 Women Who Shaped American Art, Some Identified by Their Own Names for the First Time

The Smithsonian Archives of American Art digitized 89 oral history transcripts of women artists, historians, patrons, and ...