Description: Among the many photos in the Archives' collections are images from the Panamanian island, Coiba, where former Smithsonian Secretary Alexander Wetmore, conducted ornithological research. We've featured some of these images on the blog before, and I always wondered about their captions, which mentioned that Coiba was a penal colony.
Description: I couldn’t resist this collection of beautiful butterfly and creepy crawly engravings from BibliOdyssey this week. The Smithsonian has created a new Facebook page in honor of the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War, which we’ll regularly be contributing to. Hop on over and like the page! Apparently, it was not only illegal, but criminal for women to vote! Photos uncovered by
Description: It turns out that a series of mysterious tunnels discovered in the early 1900s underneath Washington, DC’s Dupont Circle, were the makings of former Smithsonian employee and entomologist, Harrison G. Dyar (whose papers happen to be in our collections). Read more about this fascinating story and character at "the location" blog [via The e-Torch]. The Internet Archive explains