The Library of Congress is Full of Super Weir...

Heads-up, fellow Ridiculous Historians: this is an explicit episode, and maynot be appropriate for all audiences. It's no secret that Ben, Noel and Max are huge fans of etymology -- and there's one word that's mystified them for years. When did the English world fall in love with ...  Show more

Fellow Ridiculous Historians, we just returned from the beautiful Baha Mar resort, and we're going through a pirate phase. So, naturally, we have to share an hilarious Classic episode: the so-called Golden Age of Piracy was a time of lawless, terrifying, at-times amazing and obje ...  Show more

On this episode of Our American Stories, our audience loved Kristin O'Donnell Tubb’s wonderful story from her historical fiction book, John Lincoln Clem: Civil War Drummer Boy. So we asked if she would share another story with us. Here she is telling the story of the family that ...  Show more

In 1966, just as the foundations of the Internet were being imagined, the federal government considered building a National Data Center. It would be a centralized federal facility to hold computer records from each federal agency, in the same way that the Library of Congress hold ...  Show more

Hello! Libraries are about far more than borrowing books. We’re exploring how libraries around the world serve their communities and are adapting to changing needs. Sociologist Eric Klinenberg explains why libraries help build social solidarity and should be a priority for govern ...  Show more

When a 200-year-old legal document anonymously arrived at his office, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives c ...