Waiting for Godot, Festival d'Avignon, 1978

Waiting for Godot Has Been Translated into Afrikaans

What took so long?
Arrival of the Brides by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale

Filles du roi: the Founding Mothers of New France

Sent by Louis XIV, the filles du roi were sent to North America to birth new generations of colonists and help conquer the land.
Mohammad Mosaddeq, 1951

US–Iran Relations: 1953

What really happened in Iran back in the day, and what did the United States have to do with it?
Plans for the development of Manila by Daniel H. Burnham and Edward H. Bennett

Daniel Burnham in the Philippines

Building on his success as an architect and planner in Chicago, Daniel Burnham took American values and aesthetics to the new US colony of the Philippines.
Close-up of Lox Bagel with onions on paper sheet

Jewish Food, Miasma, and Geothermal Power

Well-researched stories from Smithsonian Magazine, Noema, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Tyler S. Sprague

Tyler S. Sprague on the Intersection of Structure and Design

An interview with Tyler S. Sprague, a historian of the built environment whose work depends on multidisciplinarity and a deep knowledge of structure and materials.
Wild Horses at Play by George Catlin, between 1834 and 1837

The Rise and Fall of the Equestrian Cultures of the Plains

The introduction of the horse to North America by the Spanish transformed the lives of the Indigenous peoples of the Plains in decidedly mixed ways.
A still from the film Sumpah Pontianak, 1958.

The Indonesian Frontier Town Named for a Jungle Vampire

The city of Pontianak is notable for sharing its name with a vengeful folkloric revenant known by various monikers across the Malay Archipelago.
German Singing Society, 22nd Infantry, Ft. Keogh, May 13, 1894

German Song in America

In the late 1800s, German American singing festivals united German immigrant communities and brought new kinds of cultural activities to the United States.
An illustration from The System of Saturn by Christiaan Huygens

Christiaan Huygens and the Scientific Secrets of Saturn

Seventeenth-century science was so competitive that Christiaan Huygens used a cipher to conceal his Saturn observations when sharing them with interlocutors.