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: While researching my last blog post on the "mad wolf" who escaped from the National Zoo, I came across an old black-and-white photograph in the Smithsonian Institution Archives that caught my eye. The image is grainy, but appears to show a man and a wolf, separated by a chain-link fence, holding each other's rapt attention while the man operates some sort of recorder. Unable
Description: Retail Associate, Helen Jagodzinske, National Museum of American History, was the oldest employee at the Smithsonian when she retired at age 94. Prior to that, she served at the Pentagon as clerk, and in the Women's Army Corp during WWII. #Groundbreaker
Description: A daily photo highlight from Smithsonian collections. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="428" caption="At the Chicago Worlds Columbian Exposition in 1893, visitors ride in a gondola in the ‘Court of Honor.’ The Smithsonian coordinated all of the U.S. Government exhibits and prepared a display on its activities and collections for the exposition, 1893, by Unknown