Basket making by Botswana women has a long history and it continues to be a robust craft tradition. Over the past three decades it has become increasingly well known in the international craft market. [...more]
The donation includes an early version of the original solid-state Capri dimmer manufactured by Lutron in September 1964. Also part of the donation is a retail display featuring the fully functional dimmer and other Lutron dimmers and lighting-control systems that show developments at the company over the past 50 years. [...more]
The Caddo people of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma have maintained many of their traditional ways and actively work to preserve their unique tribal cultural today. One example is the pottery of Jeri Redcorn. [...more]
The Stephen L. Wood collection brings the collection of bark beetles held in the Natural History Museum’s Department of Entomology to an impressive 180,000 specimens, making it one of the most extensive collections in world. [...more]
White, who was a student at Columbian College from Accomack County, Va., died of pneumonia and complications from a mitral heart defect. When his coffin was unearthed, his identity was a deep mystery. [...more]
It’s not an exaggeration to say Hedrick was ecstatic when she peered into her inverted phase contrast microscope and found "Amphisolenia quadrispina" floating in her sample. “For 20 years I’ve been hoping to see something like this,” she says. [...more]
A meteorite that crashed through the roof of a Lorton, Va., doctors’ office on Monday, Jan. 18, 2010 was recently identified by scientists in the Division of Mineral Sciences at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Local newspapers reported that thousands of people from southern New Jersey to southwestern Virginia witnessed the meteorite streak [...] [...more]
As its name suggests, the omnimetre was designed to carry out numerous operations of arithmetic and trigonometry, says Peggy Kidwell, curator of mathematics at the Smithsonian. “It has scales for multiplication, division and common logarithms, as well as squares, cubes, and fifth powers of numbers.” In his own words, Sexton called his circular invention a “quite useful and inexpensive slide rule.” [...more]
Yellow lady’s slippers, watercolor by Kathleen Garness, from the National Museum of Natural History exhibit “Losing Paradise? Endangered Plants Here and Around the World,” opening Aug. 14. The exhibition, a collaborative effort between the American Society of Botanical Artists and the Natural History Museum, showcases botanical illustrations and features work from several renowned artists, including Alice Tangerini, one of the Smithsonian’s acclaimed scientific illustrators.
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