Description: Operation Moonwatch created an international network of dedicated and enthusiastic volunteer sky-watchers of both genders and from every walk-of-life. These citizen-scientists joined professional astronomers to track and report on satellites travelling through the night sky. Food and location played a role in keeping volunteers engaged with Operation Moonwatch.
Description: [caption id="attachment_564" align="aligncenter" width="350" caption="Taft Voting, by Bain News Service, publisher, 1912, Library of Congress, LC-B2- 2442-16"][/caption] It’s against the law to photograph certain things, at certain times, in certain places. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently reported that a photograph of an election ballot in a mayoral race—showing the name
Description: Snapshots of cute baby animals, taken during the National Geographic Society-Smithsonian Institution Expedition to the Dutch East Indies in 1937.
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: First hand account of Mary Henry, daughter of Joseph Henry, about what Washington DC was like during the holidays in the time of the Civil War.
Description: A brief narrative on Jean Louis Berlandier, a French naturalist, and one of the first scientists to observe, collect , and document the natural history specimens of southeastern Texas and northeastern Mexico.
Description: John Waters’s 1998 movie Pecker is the coming-of-age story about a young man who can’t stop himself from taking pictures. “Man, everything always looks good through here!” Pecker exclaims, squinting through his viewfinder and throughout most of the film, it does. Photography is all about looking, and when it was time to invite someone to address the subject of voyeurism for