Chris Melissinos, guest curator of an exhibit about video games at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, explains what makes the genre an art form

Merry "Corky" White, author of Coffee Life in Japan, traces the history of coffee culture in the United States

During World War II, Japanese Americans who were sent to internment camps used scraps and found materials to create beautiful works of art.

http://j.mp/z7WXi2 Researchers and scientists work together to find a way to play recordings made by the studio of inventor Alexander Graham Bell

A mesmerizing 10,000-shot video captures the dramatic life cycles of several species (Owen Reiser)

Selected by Donna Ferrato for our special issue, this up-and-coming photographer discusses his work

Lonnie Bunch, the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, discusses the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial, one of America's greatest monuments.

This traveling exhibit reveals the mystery behind some of the women that helped shape this country's social and cultural landscape

Curator Larry Bird takes you inside the history of the Bradford dollhouse

"They have given mankind a completely new way of looking at the universe." – Stephen Hawking, congratulates Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Ronald Drever, the first scientists to detect gravitational waves. | Smithsonian magazine #IngenuityAwards The Smithsonian has been celebrating innovation in American culture for more than 150 years, and following in this tradition, Smithsonian magazine presents the American Ingenuity Awards, honoring revolutionary breakthroughs in the arts and sciences, education and social progress.

From charming streets to stunning scenery, consider Hawaii, Idaho, Massachusetts, or New York for your next summer adventure. --- For more videos from Smithsonian Magazine: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/ Digital Editorial Director: Brian Wolly Supervising Producer & Scriptwriter: Michelle Mehrtens Producer: Nicki Marko Producer: Sierra Theobald Editor: Michael Kneller

Biographer David Maraniss says that in order to truly understand Clemente's importance to the sport, you have to look beyond his spectacular numbers

For more than a year now, the world has been treated to breathtaking images of the outer reaches of our universe from the NASA instrument. But how does it even work? --- For more videos from Smithsonian Magazine: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/ Digital Editorial Director: Brian Wolly Supervising Producer & Scriptwriter: Michelle Mehrtens Video Editor: Sierra Theobald

Read more at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/Savoring-Puebla.html The streets of Puebla are filled with the sound of Mariachis who sing at most traditional Mexican ceremony.

The National Zoo gets a new state of the art Elephant Community Center complete with 8,943 square meters of romping room

Forensic anthropologist Doug Owsley discusses the skeletal specimens in a new exhibit at the Natural History Museum (Meredith Bragg). Read more at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/meet-the-scientist-who-reads-bones-40315000/

Follow us to the very first Thanksgiving celebration, where the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag came together for a historic feast.

David Lynch | Smithsonian Magazine’s 2016 American Ingenuity Award Winner for Education As a filmmaker, Lynch has a reputation for creating dark, surreal movies such as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart as well as the TV show “Twin Peaks.” In the education world, he's becoming known for something very different: promoting inner peace. Over the past decade, the David Lynch Foundation has sponsored Transcendental Meditation classes for half a million children in places as far-flung as the Bronx, Detroit, Los Angeles, Congo and the West Bank. The program, called Quiet Time, is now at the center of one of the largest-ever studies of meditation for children—a 6,800-pupil research project conducted by the Crime Lab at the University of Chicago and designed to learn if meditation can help kids in highly stressful environments fare better at home and in school. Read more about Lynch’s work: http://smithmag.co/9sHhtm | #IngenuityAwards And more about the American Ingenuity Awards: http://smithmag.co/77xPqy

Clues into the disappearance of the ancient Picts lie in the tiny Scottish village of Aberlemno: 1,700-year-old Pictish stones, marked with some very unusual carvings.

“Superman isn’t coming. It is a moment in our time when we must look to ourselves, and not take for granted or wait for something from the top to come down, but rather…pick up the torch, carry the torch, to find information and the truth…” – Erin Brockovich applauds Marc Edwards and LeeAnne Walters for their work exposing the Flint water crisis | Smithsonian Magazine American #IngenuityAwards Read more about Edwards and Walters’ work: http://smithmag.co/D4dIHy The Smithsonian has been celebrating innovation in American culture for more than 150 years, and following in this tradition, Smithsonian magazine presents the American Ingenuity Awards, honoring revolutionary breakthroughs in the arts and sciences, education and social progress. http://smithmag.co/R7hyRO

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Members of the Gullah community discuss the changes facing them today

A shipwreck discovered off New Zealand dates to a time before Cook's arrival

In a 11-4 vote, the City Council decided to remove the 65-foot-tall monument from its location in the heart of the city

A melting glacier caused a mountain in Greenland to collapse into a narrow fjord, setting off an oscillating wave that rattled seismic detectors around the world

"A Soldier's Journey," a 58-foot-long bronze artwork depicting vivid scenes from the war, was illuminated for the first time at a ceremony on September 13

Kleptoparasitism, in which a bird harasses another to steal its food, might introduce avian flu to the continent, currently the only one without the severe H5N1 strain

The vertical sign stretched across three stories of the Manhattan hotel, which once welcomed the likes of Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Andy Warhol and Janis Joplin

New research suggests the sarcophagus' occupant, previously known only as "the horseman," is Joachim du Bellay, a French Renaissance poet who died in 1560

A blockbuster exhibition in London examines the Dutch Post-Impressionist's creative output between 1888 and 1890, which was one of the most productive periods of his career

The energetic streams are together 23 million light-years in length—roughly as long as 140 Milky Way galaxies lined end to end

Scientists have created "a form of information immortality" meant to instruct future species on how to recreate humans. But who, or what, will find it?

A roughly 33-foot-long asteroid called 2024 PT5 will chart a horseshoe-like path around our planet

Female worker bees, which forage for the whole colony, struggle more to detect scents in the heat than males do, per the recent research

The so-called good-luck flag, which hung on an American veteran's wall for many years, returned home last month after nearly eight decades

The viewfinders are outfitted with special lenses that help people with red-green colorblindness distinguish between hues

On this day in 1690, "Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick" attracted colonial officials' ire by repeating a scandalous rumor and condemning a British alliance with the Mohawk

Researchers analyzed tiny fossils embedded in the limestone to determine the age and origins of the grave maker, which marked the final resting place of a prominent Jamestown colonist

An acoustic survey in 2018 and new analysis with A.I. suggest the sounds are vocalizations from the elusive Bryde’s whale

In 1858, the mountain was named for a Confederate general. Now, it will once again be known as "Kuwohi"

The mysterious missive was written by P.J. Féret, who conducted an archaeological dig at the same site in northern France in 1825

Most adult king penguins weigh between 31 and 37 pounds. At nine months old, a 51.8-pound Pesto is already looming over his parents

Unexplored iron-rich magma could help power current and future technologies

A new exhibition in New York City uses more than 200 texts and artifacts to contemplate Lincoln's rise to the nation's highest office

The "John Evenson" tugboat was helping another ship enter the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal in Wisconsin when it sank to the bottom of Lake Michigan in 1895

A SpaceX mission arrived at the International Space Station with two astronauts instead of four to leave room for NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore on the return trip in early 2025

The long-term loan is the latest agreement Yemen has made with a museum in order to protect its cultural heritage amid ongoing civil war

The Fish and Wildlife Service will consider granting federal protections to the Bethany Beach firefly, which is rapidly losing its coastal habitat to development and climate change

Researchers studying the ancient site of Fregellae reveal the consequences of challenging the Roman army

While expectations are high for some special sightings, experts warn that comets are notoriously fickle and unpredictable