The Best of Smithsonian Magazine

The last season of "The Crown" will examine the aftermath of the beloved royal's death in a car accident in 1997

Attempts to restrict what kids in school can read are on the rise. But American book-banning started with the Puritans, 140 years before the United States

Another 1,000 were killed in window collisions across the downtown area, amid calls for more bird-friendly architecture and reduced light pollution

Sometimes painted with a single eyelash, Willard Wigan's tiny sculptures fit in the eye of a needle

The news comes amid speculation about the anonymous graffiti artist's whereabouts

Players of all ages will have to make room in their closets for these selections

Thousands of years before Monopoly, people were playing games like Senet, Patolli and Chaturanga

These evidence-based strategies can help you achieve healthy work-life balance

A beloved Robert Frost poem is among the many creations that are (finally) losing their protections in 2019

Number three: Fireworks are just chemical reactions

The "father of the atomic bomb" has long been misunderstood. Will the new film finally get J. Robert Oppenheimer right?

In 1910, a failed House bill sought to increase the availability of low-cost meat by importing hippopotamuses that would be killed to make "lake cow bacon"

A brief history of road ecology, the scientific discipline that is helping us understand our impact on the environment and how to diminish it

Though we often think of the “terrible lizards” as behemoths, many later reptiles and mammals also grew to massive sizes

During WWII, Ukrainian nationalists saw the Nazis as liberators from Soviet oppression. Now, Russia is using that chapter to paint Ukraine as a Nazi nation

A year before he developed a working bulb, the "Wizard of Menlo Park" created the illusion that his prototype burned for more than a few minutes at a time

«Edison understood that success in the Gilded Age was a matter of hard work and carefully managing public expectations.»

Using new medical imaging techniques, researchers are working to identify early signs of developmental disorders and mental illness

A new biography explores the life of Vivekananda, a Hindu ascetic who promoted a more inclusive vision of religion

Back in the 19th century, coal was the nation's newfangled fuel source—and it faced the same resistance as wind and solar today

To mark the premiere of Amazon's "Paper Girls," we delved into the surprisingly murky history of bicycle-riding newspaper carriers

Cooper Hewitt’s new show taps into the collective consciousness of activists, app developers, artists and architects to envision a way forward

In the early 1900s, newfound empathy for avian creatures helped wildlife observation displace dispassionate killing

Now on view in New York City, the traveling exhibition presents failure as a critical learning opportunity