Hobby Lobby acquired the cuneiform tablet for display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Editor’s Note, September 23, 2021: Two months after Hobby Lobby forfeited the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet to the United States government, the 3,500-year-old artifact is officially headed home to Iraq. As Colleen Long reports for […]

Editor’s Note, September 8, 2021: The Pentagon announced that it will seek the public’s help to rename military bases currently named for Confederate soldiers. The Department of Defense created a commission earlier this year to look into renaming the bases. On Monday, it launched a website asking “interested citizens” for recommendations and suggestions. The Department […]

Editor’s Note, August 20, 2021: This story was updated to reflect updated fire reports from Greenpeace Russia. As of early spring, wildfires have been surging through the taiga forest in Siberia. The region hardest hit was the Republic of Sakha in northeastern Russia. Also known as Yakutia, the area had 250 fires burning across 2,210 […]

Editor’s Note, July 23, 2021: The baseball team formerly known as the Cleveland Indians is set to rebrand as the Cleveland Guardians, reports Mandy Bell forMLB.com. The move—announced on Twitter in a video featuring actor Tom Hanks and the band the Black Keys—follows years of debate over the Ohio franchise’s moniker and mascot. “Cleveland has […]

Editor’s note, July 8, 2021: Last week, the film documentary Summer of Soul , debuted in theaters and streaming on Hulu. To get some of the history behind the festival footage, enjoy this story published in 2007. Ethel Beaty-Barnes, then an 18-year-old fresh from her high-school graduation, still remembers what she wore to the Sly […]

Editor’s Note, June 7, 2021: On June 7, 2020, Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol, England, pulled down a statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston and dumped it into the nearby harbor. Last week, the defaced likeness went on view at the M Shed museum as part of a citywide effort to determine the […]

Editor’s Note, May 25, 2021: On Monday, the Stone Mountain Memorial Association board voted to implement a number of changes at the eponymous park, which is home to the world’s largest Confederate monument. As Tyler Estep reports for theAtlanta Journal-Constitution , approved resolutions include creating an on-site exhibit that seeks to “tell the truth” about […]

Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest is on view at Madison Square Park through November 14, 2021. (Maya Lin Studio) View of Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest installation (Andy Romer) View of Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest installation (Andy Romer) SmartNews Keeping you current Artist Maya Lin hopes to call attention to one of the dire effects of climate […]

Editor’s Note, May 13, 2o21: This story was updated with new information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Monday afternoon, the United States Food and Drug Administration expanded the emergency use authorization of Pfizer/BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine to include children between 12 and 15 years old. By Wednesday, an advisory panel of the […]

SMITHSONIANMAG.COM | July 20, 2020, 12:36 p.m. The Smithsonian Institution has announced that the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center will reopen May 5 following months of closure as a public health precaution due to COVID-19. Visitors must comply with health and safety precautions, including timed-entry passes, hand-sanitizing stations, mask requirements for ages two and up, and […]

Editor’s Note, April 30, 2021: In an unprecedented turn of events, Germany has pledged to repatriate the thousands of Benin Bronzes housed in its museum collections as early as next year, reports Kate Brown forArtnet News. The announcement arrives amid a renewed push to return the looted artifacts to their home country of Nigeria. “We […]

Editor’s note, April 28, 2021: In light of the recent death of Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, we are resurfacing this interview that ran commemorating the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing. Collins was 90 years old. On July 28, 1969, four days after Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, famed aviator Charles […]

Editor’s Note, April 14, 2021: In the wake of the death of convicted fraudster Bernard Madoff, Smithsonian looks back at the crook who gave Ponzi schemes their name John Kenneth Galbraith once observed that “the man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud.” Although […]

SmartNews Keeping you current “White Lies Matter” had pledged to deliver the stone chair intact if the United Daughters of the Confederacy displayed a specific banner White Lies Matter stole the Jefferson Davis Memorial Chair from Confederate Circle, a private section of Old Live Oak Cemetery in Selma, Alabama. (Photo by Carol M. Highsmith / […]

Editor’s Note, March 18, 2021: In light of a shooting in the Atlanta area that left eight people, including six Asian women, dead, PBS has made the documentary series “Asian Americans” freely available to stream online. Read more about the five-part series, which premiered last May, below. Viewers can now watch the landmark documentary series […]