Description: 100 years ago in August of 1914, the Panama Canal opened to commercial shipping. Smithsonian scientists knew the canal would create major environmental changes and have spent the last 100 years documenting them.
Description: Each week, the Archives features a woman who has been a groundbreaker at the Smithsonian, past or present, in a series titled Wonderful Women Wednesday.
Description: Link Love: a weekly post with links to interesting videos and stories about archival issues, technology and culture, and Washington D.C. and American history.
Description: In 1956, Helena M. Weiss received a letter asking for information about “how to capture them, also how to raise them… what to put them in, also what to feed them.” Interestingly, the letter-writer neglected to specify what he or she meant by “them,” leaving Weiss only to guess what exactly the inquiry was referring to. From 1948 to 1956, Weiss was Chief of the Office of