"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.

Home to the worlds largest shell collection, the Smithsonian catalogues and studies shells both large and small, spiky and smooth (Brendan McCabe).

More on the unsuccessful plot to kill Lincoln: http://j.mp/VnSZ9g During his inauguration tour in 1861, the president's life was threatened in the city of Baltimore.

The Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this epic footage of Venus crossing the face of the sun on June 5, 2012

Article: http://j.mp/AwLdIY The global orchid community convenes in Singapore to compete for the title of best in show.

With an 80-acre scale model of the 1.6 million-acre Everglades wetland system, scientists study how to restore the flow of water that was interrupted years ago

Read more at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Wayne-Thiebaud-is-Not-a-Pop-Artist.html He made a name for himself painting pastries and other everyday objects, but his other work--cartoons and cityscapes--showcase the scope of his talents.

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

This spring, take a break and smell the flowers in New Mexico, Kansas, California and New Jersey. --- 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

Smithsonian magazine commissioned Drew Gardner for a project that connects Black Americans today to their lost ancestry. Read about Gardner’s project and process, as well as more details about the subjects of this incredible series here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/descendants-black-civil-war-heroes-wear-heritage-pride-180983397/ Video produced by Sierra Theobald. Special thanks to Drew Gardner Additional credits: Emma MacBeath, WikiTree US Black Heritage project; Ottawa Goodman, research and coordinator; Sam Dole, Penumbra Foundation; Elizabeth Zuck, set design; Calvin Osbourne, props and costume; Angela Huff, hair and make up; Diego Huerta, Lexia Krebs, behind-the-scenes filming; background prints by Fujifilm USA

Jane Butel, author and expert on food from the American Southwest, reveals the stories behind how chili peppers, beef and wine became part of the region's cuisine (Meredith Bragg)

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

In the spring of 1961, black and white civil rights activists rode buses to protest the segregationist policies of the Deep South (Marian Holmes, Brian Wolly, Photos courtesy of Corbis, Getty Images and Library of Congress, Audio clips courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways. Read more at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-freedom-riders-then-and-now-45351758/

Humans have been modifying plants since the beginning of agriculture, but now, globalization and new technologies have given us more control and more power over our food than ever before.

As the space shuttles complete their final missions, curator Valerie Neal at the National Air and Space Museum highlights the spacecraft's history and legacy in manned space flight.

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

In one fateful night, John Brown brought the country closer to Civil War (Video: Meredith Bragg). Read more at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Day-of-Reckoning.html

One of the most evocative and breathtakingly beautiful coastal landscapes in Britain is the historic county of Cornwall. It’s also a place steeped in legend, including that of Britain’s legendary King Arthur.

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

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.

Capturing a piece of an asteroid and bringing it to Earth is even more difficult than it is time-consuming. After four years in space, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx craft made a brief landing on the asteroid Bennu to collect samples of the ancient rock. Six months later, part of the spacecraft began its journey home to Earth, and earlier this fall, that sample collection canister landed, via parachute, in Utah. Scientists will be studying those samples of Bennu for decades in the hope of unlocking the mystery of how life on Earth began — but they’ve already learned enough to get them excited. In this episode, we speak with Linda Shiner, the former editor of Air & Space / Smithsonian magazine, about the challenges and triumphs of the OSIRIS-REx mission, and what scientists hope it will teach us about how life on Earth began. Find prior episodes of our show here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/podcast/) . There’s More to That is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Chris Klimek, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Genevieve Sponsler, Terence Bernardo, and Edwin Ochoa. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Music by APM Music.

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

Teeth are key to identifying elderly remains

New DNA analysis adds to growing research indicating the famous Pacific island did not collapse from overuse of resources before the arrival of Europeans

Officials in Extremadura are hoping to attract digital nomads and tech workers in a bid to boost the region's shrinking population

Investigators discovered that the original print of "The Roaring Lion" had been sold to a buyer in Italy

"Le Lyonnais" descended into the depths off the coast of Massachusetts after colliding with the "Adriatic," a sailing vessel that left the floundering steamship to fend for itself

The noisy-but-shy bird, known as the hoiho, has earned the most votes for a second time amid threats to its survival

"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

Experts have confirmed that the image of "Knight, Death and the Devil" is a real master engraving by the renowned German artist Albrecht Dürer

Archaeologists unearthed a series of mudbrick rooms filled with religious tributes, soldiers' personal effects, engraved weaponry and animal bones

When the blaze in Moscow subsided on September 18, 1812, the French—who had traveled hundreds of miles into Russia—were left without vital resources as a brutal winter approached

Scientists identified traces of the drug in the brain tissue of two individuals buried in the crypt of a hospital in Milan

The artist's cityscapes, once dismissed as too masculine, would later influence the floral artworks that became central to her iconic style

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 new study identified the tiny pollutants in the olfactory bulbs of eight cadavers, suggesting microplastics can travel through the nose to the brain

To boost the iconic queen conch's population, researchers are relocating the heat-stressed creatures to cooler, deeper waters to help them find mates

Due to a drought in Eastern Europe, the scuttled German vessels are reemerging 80 years after they disappeared beneath the river's surface

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

Una Pizza Napoletana on the Lower East Side has claimed the top spot in an annual ranking of pizzerias around the globe

Researchers say that the iconic painting's swirling sky lines up with Kolmogorov's theory of turbulence, suggesting that the artist was a careful observer of the world around him

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

The Galeón Andalucía, which is now making its way to London, was designed to resemble the armed merchant vessels manufactured by Spain and Portugal between the 16th and 18th centuries

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 annual contest unveiled its winners, highlighting avian photos that focus on conservation issues, the beauty of birds and their sometimes hilarious behavior

If the structures look familiar, it's probably because nature has been using them for a long time in places like nautilus shells, zebra stripes and onions