Description: You have probably heard of Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen. Even Comet, Cupid, Donder and Blitzen. And I know you have heard of Rudolph. But do you recall the Smithsonian’s National Zoo’s most famous reindeers of all? “Operation Reindeer” was the most publicized event of 1958. Fourteen reindeer and one caribou made their way, sans the open sleigh, to Washington, D.C., for
Description: This spring, the Archives welcomed Heather Weiss, a Project SEARCH intern, and as her time with us comes to an end, we wanted to highlight her accomplishments.
Description: When a television channel asks to film our collections, we want to show them at their best. Read how we accommodate media requests while keeping our collections safe.
Description: One of our recent projects, these photographic crayon enlargements, associated with founder of the National Zoo William Temple Hornaday, were made on sensitized paper that was then adhered to a linen “canvas” stretched around wooden frames. The paper had become brittle, and handling at some point in the past led to a number of punctures and tears through both the paper and the
Description: As a postdoctoral fellow at the National Museum of American History, I’ve spent months in the Smithsonian Institution Archives researching a book tentatively titled, Not Naturally a Grass Country: Environment, Plant Genetics, and the Quest for Agricultural Modernization in the Humid World. It’s largely a story about global attempts to replace one form of agriculture—the
Description: On this day in 1850, a young man was killed in the Castle, the first of four deaths to occur within its walls. William H. Page was working in the building, which was still under construction at the time, when he fell to his death.
Description: [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="219" caption="Unidentified Washington, DC Church, 1919, by Martin A. Gruber, Black-and-white photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Martin A. Gruber Photograph Collection, 1919-1924, RU007355."][/caption] Recently the Smithsonian Institution Archives posted some images from the Martin A. Gruber Photograph Collection,