Description: [edan-image:id=siris_arc_383399,size=180,right]Vicarious research is one of the great joys of the reference desk at the Smithsonian Institution Archives. From our front-row (well, only-row) seat outside the reading room, we catch tantalizing glimpses of our patrons’ manifold research topics.The reference team fields around 6,000 queries per year. Ask us what people have been
Description: In the 1950s US National Museum staff revitalized exhibits across the Smithsonian, completely transforming the Arts & Industries Building.
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="442" caption="View of Canyon, 1873, by Timothy H. O'Sullivan, Black and white photoprint on cardboard mount, National Anthropological Archives, SPC Sw Gen NM 113605 01861700, Local Number: NAA INV 01861700."][/caption] I paid another visit to the Timothy O’Sullivan exhibition now on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and a
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="350" caption="Posing with a yearbook picture of myself, by Billy Mabray, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0."][/caption] I’m a fan of yearbooks. I was an editor of mine in college, a somewhat unusual, multi-volume, and boxed object that included two books, a booklet, a brochure, and (it being the late sixties) a balloon. Back then, we
Description: What was the Saint Augustine Monster? According to Wikipedia, it was a globster—“an unidentified organic mass that washes up on the shoreline of an ocean or other body of water.” This great-grandaddy of globsters kept cryptozoologists speculating and scientists testing for a century—and a piece of it lives at the Smithsonian. The St. Augustine monster was discovered by two
Description: African American communities have celebrated Juneteenth for more than 150 years. When did the Smithsonian begin hosting programs to commemorate the nation’s second independence day?
Description: In November 1938, Science News Letter published a story on Enrico Fermi winning the Nobel Prize in Physics, running a headshot of the professor. It's the kind of photo found in a passport—Fermi is looking forward with not much of a smile. The next question a historian would ask is did Science Service, the publisher, hire one of its photographers to take the photo, or acquire
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="271" caption="Untitled, by unidentified photographer, date unknown, Anacostia Community Museum."][/caption]Wedding season is upon us, and so it is no wonder that this beauty, with her frothy veil and layers of lace has been very popular on the Smithsonian Flickr Commons.