Found

Jews from the Ottoman Empire pioneered the Christmas lights market a century ago — but nativism, antisemitism and islamophobia obscured this history.

A talk with family, turpentine workers, historians, chefs, foresters, and beer brewers to get to the root of the rosin potato's origins.

A 1918 letter sent a historian diving into the archives to learn more about its author.

Presidents used to own their personal papers — but there were real security reasons for changing that.

Who designed the first sticker? And does anyone care about it anymore?

The Coney Island “Congress,” supposedly captured here in audio, was a conglomeration of counterfeits.

Class-obsessed consumers found the cold, hard and highly breakable figurines irresistible

Group sues Biden and National Archives over delay of JFK assassination records.

Forty-one of the 561 enslaved Africans on board the "Guerrero" died when the illegal slave ship sank off the Florida Keys in 1827.

The vintage pair of jeans was pulled from a dusty abandoned mineshaft.

Uncovering the earliest surviving fragment of Black-produced cinema.

On the importance of material ownership in the context of Black history.

What happens when forged documents enter the historical record?

Philadelphia and the dark history of collecting human remains.

The huge, declassified document includes death threats, red scare performances, and extensive investigation into her Yahoo! Groups fan site.

The grass-covered mounds represent 11,000 years of human history.

The sinister history of fumigating “foreign” books.

In a forbidding Wyoming desert, scientists and fortune hunters search for the surprisingly intact remains of horses and other creatures that lived long ago.

The new Army bra is the latest chapter in a longtime partnership.

An interview on the queer history of a forgotten prison.

The papers of American labor activist and socialist Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) offer a snapshot of early twentieth-century politics.

In midcentury America, the machine itself became a character.

Weird, revealing, and incredibly fun to read.

A pile of mammoth bones offers evidence that people were living in the region as early as 37,000 years ago.

The Smithsonian’s first update to its collection policy in 20 years proposes ethical returns and shared ownership. But will it bring transformational change?

A great-great-grandson of Joseph Smith Jr. found the Mormon prophet’s photo tucked inside a locket passed down for generations.

The piece of paper went missing for nearly 200 years, leaving some scholars to question whether it even existed

Let’s consider the significance and responsibility of outlining, drafting, and shaping our nation as the Founding Fathers put pen to paper.

Previously only rumored to exist, the two-minute film depicts a Mardi Gras parade from 1898.

Why Barnum Brown could not stop collecting.