Smithsonian Stories

Many rural letter carriers left holiday postcards for their patrons.

The invention of the airplane by Wilbur and Orville Wright is one of the great stories in American history. 

Apollo 17 was the last Apollo mission to land men on the moon.

Scientists train pathologists to sample, recognize, and detect wildlife diseases in hopes of preventing emerging pandemic disease.

On Dec. 2, 1927, Henry Ford debuted the successor to his Ford Model T.

According to popular tradition, Plymouth Rock is the landing site of William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims in 1620.

April 1941, this fossil dung was collected in the Grand Canyon. It is estimated to be 100,000 years old. 

These talking knots, were recording devices used by the Inka Empire.

Thomas Edison used this carbon-filament bulb in the first public demonstration of his most famous invention.

A new DNA study suggests that coral reef biodiversity is seriously underestimated.

Wilbur Wright flies around the Statue of Liberty in an early Wright Type A Flyer Sept. 29, 1909.

This custom 1972 Harley-Davidson XR-750 was used in 1975 to jump 14 Greyhound buses.

In the late 1890s, networks of pneumatic tube systems were installed under city streets to move the mail.

Roberto Clemente was a legend in life and death—a baseball star and a symbol of Latin American pride.

In the 1930s, U.S. postal officials tried different ways of moving the mail including “skyhooking.”

This 1893-94 Duryea is one of the earliest American-made automobiles.

Relative to body size, it has the largest teeth of any marine species.

Star Trek: The Original Series debuted on NBC on September 8, 1966.

Beginning in the 1950s, TV transformed the lunch box from an ordinary food conveyor into a storyteller.

Ray Bolger wore this straw-stuffed patchwork costume in the “The Wizard of Oz.”

In the late 1860s, the forerunner to the bicycle was the velocipede.

In 1887, these animals were acquired by the Department of Living Animals, which became the National Zoo in 1890.

This wooden yo-yo was made by the Duncan Toys Company in the 1930s.

The traveling postal dog was a regular feature in newspapers across the country as Owney visited town after town.