Smithsonian Stories

When gently opened, her favorite hymns are indicated by the book's use.

Convenient, lightweight and easy to grasp, the knocker saved wear and tear on hands and sounded a loud crack to announce the carrier’s arrival.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks at Rankin Chapel at Howard University in Washington, D.C., in December 1956.

This unusual preservation occurred because water seeped into the casket and brought alkaline soil with it, turning the fats in his body to soap.

This finely crafted and elaborately beaded inner parka, was made from caribou skin for the mother of a newborn baby.

Rudolph first appeared in 1939 when Montgomery Ward asked one of its copywriters to create a Christmas story the store could give away to shoppers. 

Astronauts Walter "Wally" Schirra and Tom Stafford played "Jingle Bells" with these bells in 1965.

National Air and Space Museum Geologist Ted Maxwell and colleagues recently spotted evidence of the lake while studying radar data of Egypt.

Picasso recommends Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger and Juan Gris, among others for the 1913 Armory Show.

The Alabama native worked as a seamstress at the Montgomery Fair department store.

In 1901, paleontologist Eugene Pfizenmayer excavated the remains of a well-preserved mammoth in northeastern Siberia.

The legendary thoroughbred Lexington’s remains return to the town of his birthplace.

Jeweler Harry Winston sent the fabled gem by registered first-class mail.

Just how do parasites influence activities of their host’s nervous system?

A new species of giant rat discovered on a film-making expedition to a remote rainforest in New Guinea.

Smithsonian geologist investigates the mysterious red phosphorescent glow the stone emits when exposed to ultraviolet light.