Smithsonian Magazine

Arizona’s Otherworldly ‘Wonderland of Rocks’ Is Now America’s Newest National Park

Chiricahua National Monument in southeastern Arizona is now Chiricahua National Park, the 64th national park in the United ...
Smithsonian Magazine

Ivan the Terrible Wanted to Marry Elizabeth I. How Did England’s ‘Virgin Queen’ Reject the Russian Czar Without Souring Trade Relations?

A new book details the Russian ruler's failed courtship of the Tudor queen, who famously remained unmarried during her nearly ...
Smithsonian Magazine

Immerse Yourself in the Cosmos at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Only Planetarium, Recently Restored to Its Former Glory in Florida

Completed in 1958, the domed building is located on the campus of Florida Southern College, home to 13 Wright-designed ...
Smithsonian Magazine

These Big, Fierce Birds Found Love in Australia—and Laid the First Southern Cassowary Eggs at the Adelaide Zoo in 34 Years

Zoo staffers don’t know whether the bright green eggs are viable and will ultimately hatch into chicks. However, the eggs ...
Smithsonian Magazine

For the First Time, Scientists Trapped an Elusive Antimatter Particle—and Contained It for Months. It Could Allow Them to Test an Enduring Physics Theory

The standard model of particle physics works really well, but it can't explain why the universe exists. Something is missing, ...
Smithsonian Magazine

The Canadian Artist Jean Paul Riopelle Was ‘Completely Absorbed by the Act of Painting.’ His Abstract Works Finally Have Their Own Home in a Quebec Museum

Home to the world’s largest public collection of his artworks, a new pavilion at Quebec's Musée National des Beaux-Arts ...
Smithsonian Magazine

More Than 1,000 Birds Were Killed or Injured in Window Collisions Around Chicago Over the Weekend

On the evening of October 16, more than five million birds are estimated to have flown through Cook County, which includes ...
Smithsonian Magazine

‘Wildwood’ Is the Longest Stop-Motion Animated Film Ever. Each Frame of the Movie Is a Marvel of Handcrafted World Building

Deborah Cook, costumer designer at stop-motion animation studio Laika, discusses creating tiny costumes for puppets in a ...
Smithsonian Magazine

In a Hoard of 5,500 Viking Age Coins, Archaeologists in Norway Found One So Rare That They Already Consider It a ‘National Treasure’

Fewer than 20 coins minted under Norwegian King Olaf II Haraldsson have ever been found. "We can almost imagine Olaf himself ...
Smithsonian Magazine

Researchers Claimed a Blurry Object on Apple Maps Was ‘Very Likely’ Amelia Earhart’s Missing Plane. It Turned Out to Be a ‘Collection of Large Trees’

A 17-person crew traveled to a remote atoll in the South Pacific to investigate the so-called Taraia Object. After surveying the site, the team announced that the anomaly was not a fragment of the lon ...
Smithsonian Magazine

Where Exactly Were the First Humans to Be Captured in a Photograph Standing? Three Obsessed Filmmakers Solved the Nearly 200-Year-Old Mystery

The sleuths spent two years digging into archives and building 3D models of 19th-century Paris. The location is now ...
Smithsonian Magazine

This Mysterious Medieval Manuscript Has Stumped Scholars for Well Over a Century. Could Its Pages Have Been Bound Out of Order This Whole Time?

A new study claims that the pages of the Voynich Manuscript, thought to be written by several different scribes in ...