Our mission is to empower people to create a just and compassionate future by exploring, preserving, and sharing the complexity of our past.

“I meekly followed [the nurse] through the long ward, unable to return the gaze of the occupants of the twenty-six beds, … and with a sinking heart watched her raise the head of a poor fellow in the ...

Destroy This Mad Brute. American World War I poster by artist Harry R. Hopps for the U.S. Army. Depicted is a crazed gorilla, representing Germany, carrying a bloody club and the limp body of a woman ...

The indications or uses for this product as provided by the manufacturer are: A diuretic for the kidneys and a mild laxative. "Swamp-Root" tends to promote the flow of urine thereby aiding the kidneys ...

African Americans turned to the courts to help protect their constitutional rights. But the courts challenged earlier civil rights legislation and handed down a series of decisions that permitted ...

The Smithsonian Chip Collection website launched in 1998 to provide access to our exceptional collection of microelectronics objects and images. The site contained information about individual ...

Small kerosene lamp with a round brass base and top. The top has vent holes all around and a long, thin wire handle is attached to the top. A clear glass globe sits in the center of the lamp with a ...

A desire to remove employees from Manhattan’s teeming humanity, particularly organized labor and “the machinations of the anarchists and socialists,” inspired William to purchase 400 acres across the ...

This steel cabinet, which Phyllis Diller calls her Gag File, has fortyeight file drawers containing more than 50,000 3-by-5-inch index cards, each bearing a typewritten joke or gag that Diller used in ...

Latino history is American history. Latinos trace their origins to Latin America and other Spanish colonies, both in the Caribbean and in the contemporary United States. These groups include, but are ...

Cookie Monster is a live-hand puppet originally performed by Frank Oz and currently performed by David Rudman. In a live-hand puppet, like Cookie Monster, one of the performer’s hands is in the puppet ...

In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, the first machine that could record sound and play it back. On the first audio recording Edison recited, “Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white ...