Description: Barbeque. Doughboy. Free trade. Pumple-nose. Smugglers. Cortan. Crockadore. Chopsticks. William Dampier, the 17th century explorer turned privateer/pirate, is credited with introducing these words, and more than 1,000 others, into the English vernacular. He was the first explorer to circumnavigate the globe three times, and created the first detailed record of Australian Flora
Description: For those of us too young to have understood the impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and to those who watched breathlessly as the it came down, this should interest you: an augmented reality app that projects a 3-D rendering of the Berlin Wall at its former site with the help of a smartphone. It was as big as a . . . The US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity
Description: An intimate look at the painting conservation studio at the National Gallery of Art. [via NPR]A newly discovered species of wasp was named in honor of David Bowie. [via Mashable]The Smithsonian is just one of the organizations banning drinking straws due to the environmental harm they cause. [via Washington Post]Can real coral reefs be saved by artificial ones? [via Fusion
Description: Long ago and far away, before gray hairs and creaky knees, before history became my passion, I was an undergraduate physics major. Physics seemed fascinating and beautiful, if difficult. Later, after career paths led into history and science policy, I learned that physics, however elegant, did not reside in a cultural vacuum. Its people and discoveries coexisted with
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="384" caption="Construction of the Pension Building, Designed by Montgomery Meigs, c. 1883, by Unknown photographer, Albumen print, National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center, Image ID: AFS 182."][/caption] One of the first collections that I encountered during my travels through the photography collections of the
Description: In the spring of 1846, after years of debate, the legislative logjam over what the Smithsonian would be was finally broken with compromise legislation by New York Congressman, William Jervis Hough.
Description: Note: I'll be on vacation for the next two weeks, so look for Link Love to start again on July 22nd! We’ve been blogging about the Civil War and the Smithsonian for the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War, and others across the Smithsonian have been doing the same. Over at NPR’s Picture show blog, photography curator Shannon Perich shares some incredible animated Civil War-era