The Best of Smithsonian Magazine

Sometimes painted with a single eyelash, Willard Wigan's tiny sculptures fit in the eye of a needle

A showcase of Black artists displays the restorative power of relaxation, and defines what it means to reclaim time

Players of all ages will have to make room in their closets for these selections

Thousands of years before Monopoly, people were playing games like Senet, Patolli and Chaturanga

These evidence-based strategies can help you achieve healthy work-life balance

Number three: Fireworks are just chemical reactions

A decades-long forgery scheme ensnared Canada’s most famous Indigenous artist, a rock musician turned sleuth and several top museums. Here's how investigators unraveled the incredible scam

In 1910, a failed House bill sought to increase the availability of low-cost meat by importing hippopotamuses that would be killed to make "lake cow bacon"

Migration patterns, cultural ties, geographic regions and class differences all shape speaking patterns

A brief history of road ecology, the scientific discipline that is helping us understand our impact on the environment and how to diminish it

Though we often think of the “terrible lizards” as behemoths, many later reptiles and mammals also grew to massive sizes

During WWII, Ukrainian nationalists saw the Nazis as liberators from Soviet oppression. Now, Russia is using that chapter to paint Ukraine as a Nazi nation

A year before he developed a working bulb, the "Wizard of Menlo Park" created the illusion that his prototype burned for more than a few minutes at a time

«Edison understood that success in the Gilded Age was a matter of hard work and carefully managing public expectations.»

Using new medical imaging techniques, researchers are working to identify early signs of developmental disorders and mental illness

Professors in California and Wyoming use the unique palettes to teach geology

Back in the 19th century, coal was the nation's newfangled fuel source—and it faced the same resistance as wind and solar today

To mark the premiere of Amazon's "Paper Girls," we delved into the surprisingly murky history of bicycle-riding newspaper carriers

Cooper Hewitt’s new show taps into the collective consciousness of activists, app developers, artists and architects to envision a way forward

In the early 1900s, newfound empathy for avian creatures helped wildlife observation displace dispassionate killing

Now on view in New York City, the traveling exhibition presents failure as a critical learning opportunity