Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="373" caption=" Watson M. Perrygo working with drying bird skins in Soná, Veraguas, Panama, Perrygo, a taxidermist for the United States National Museum, was in Panama on an ornithological field trip with Smithsonian Secretary Alexander Wetmore, May 31, 1953, by Alexander Wetmore, Photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives,
Description: Digital strategist Effie Kapsalis was dedicated to building bridges between Smithsonian collections and audiences. In a Smithsonian career spanning nearly twenty years, Effie mobilized her colleagues to share more diverse stories, break down barriers to access, and fight for gender and racial equity in the cultural heritage sphere. Sadly, we lost Effie on December 11, 2022.
Description: On the evening of October 1, 1847, while using a small telescope on the roof of the family home, Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) spotted a comet where one had not been before. Word of this achievement spread quickly through the scientific community. The American Journal of Science declared her “the first American entitled to the honor of the original discovery of a comet.” Some
Description: Reminiscences of Frank A. Taylor, founding director of the National Museum of American History which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
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: 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: Get your metadata nerd on with new fashion by Andrea Wallace from the Rijksmuseum's 2017 Rijksstudio competition! The largest transgender archive from the University of Victoria is now on the Internet Archive. [via Archive It]The Center for the Future of Museums has released their 2017 TrendsWatch report highlighting empathy, criminal justice reform, refugees & migration,