Owney the Dog, immortalized in a stamp. Photo courtesy of the National Postal Museum

It’s been more than 120 years since a little dog named Owney trotted into an Albany, New York post office and took up residence there, sleeping among the mail bags. For nine years, Owney, by then a beloved pet to the mail clerks, served as the unofficial mascot of the U.S. Railway Mail Service, riding the rails from state to state. After his death, his body was preserved and spent decades on display at the Smithsonian Institution. When Owney was transferred in 1993 to the Smithsonian’s new National Postal Museum, the scruffy Postal pub would became one of that museum’s most popular attractions. This summer, Owney is finally being honored with his own postage stamp, one with interactive features sure to endear him to new generations.

“It’s been in the works for a long, long, long time,” says Nancy Pope, historian and curator at the National Postal Museum, who recalls that there has been talk of an Owney stamp since the 1980s. “People would ask, ‘Shouldn’t there be a stamp with Owney on it,’ so it’s been one of those things that people bring up on a regular basis.”

According to Pope, new postage stamps are chosen each year by a group called the Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC). Made up mostly of of average American citizens, CSAC looks through tens of thousands of petitions and decides which new stamps will be issued. “I think Owney just got in CSAC’s mind and they finally decided it’s time [they] do something for this dog,” says Pope.

A dog who was, by all accounts, extremely popular around the world. While researching Owney’s adventures, Pope, along with museum intern Rachel Barclay, discovered frequent mentions of Owney and his travels in various newspapers of the era.

“[Owney] has traveled the length of every railroad in the United States and has seen the inside and enjoyed the hospitality of more post offices than the oldest inspector of the service,” reported a January 4, 1895 article in the Hopkinsville Kentuckian.

And now, Owney’s story is being re-told for a new generation. Next month the museum will be launching an Owney augmented reality experience on its website and via a free iPhone app that will be triggered by the Owney stamp image. “When you hold that image up to your iPhone or the camera on your computer, Owney will just kind of pop up off the stamp,” Pope says. “He’ll start trotting and there will be music. You will hear his tags jingle and then he’ll sit down and bark.”

The three-dimensional Owney stamp is only part of the re-telling of his story. There will also be a new exhibit and an e-book, which will teach children geography using Owney’s rail travels as their guide.

“We really wanted to reinterpret how we talk about the Railway Mail Service connecting the nation, using Owney as the tool,” Pope says. “[We want ] to really engage families and teachers into teaching how important the Railway Mail Service was through the eyes of a dog that people can really relate to.”

The Owney Forever stamp will be released on July 27 and celebrated with a First Day of Issue Ceremony taking place at the Postal Museum, after which curators will debut the new Owney exhibit and the “Art of the Stamp: Owney the Postal Dog” exhibit, featuring original stamp art painted by artist Bill Bond. This ceremony, starting at 11 AM, will kick off the four-day Owney Family Fest. To learn more about Owney’s amazing journey, check out the article on the storied pup in the magazine’s upcoming September issue.

Update: This post clarifies information on the Owney the Dog iPhone app.

The adorable red panda cub, photo by Mehgan Murphy, National Zoo

Today, the ATM blog team has some bad news, some good news, and some better news. The bad news is that Mei Xiang, the Zoo’s giant panda, has been experiencing a pseudo, or false, pregnancy these past few months meaning we will not be having a baby panda cub this year. More bad news is that it’s scorching hot outside. And freezing cold inside. The good news is that it’s also Friday, which gives most people a reason to smile. The better news is that there are four new red panda cubs at the National Zoo and they are adorable.

Last month, on June 17, Shama, the female red panda, gave birth to two cubs in her den at the National Zoo’s Asia Trail in Washington, D.C. This was a few weeks after Lao Mei, the female red panda at the Zoo’s Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Va. gave birth to two female cubs on June 5. After the cubs were born, Zoo staff left the mothers alone to bond with and care for their cubs, confirming the births only about a week afterwards.

Getting weighed. Photo by Mehgan Murphy/National Zoo

It’s been a little over a month and Zoo staffers are still having minimal interaction with the cubs at this critical time, performing health checks whenever possible. They report that “all four newborns are steadily gaining weight and appear healthy.”

The red panda exhibit is currently closed to visitors to ensure to safety of the well-being of the mother and her cubs, but they expect Shama will allow the cubs to venture out in early fall. As they watch the cubs grow stronger, staff will then decide when the exhibit can be reopened to the public.

A wider view of the baby cub. Photo by Mehgan Murphy/National Zoo

More than 100 surviving red panda cubs that have been born at the National Zoo facilities since 1962.

West Coast East Side Revue, Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA, Sunday February 21, 1965 Courtesy of Mark Guerrero

When you think of Latin music, the sounds that have typically defined it—mambo, merengue, salsa, cha-cha-cha—naturally, come to mind. But what about music’s influence on more traditional U.S. genres like jazz, R&B, rock ‘n’ roll and hip-hop?

A newly opened exhibit, “American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music,” invites visitors to explore the depth and breadth of Latino music, which, historically, encompasses a sound that is at once distinctive, and all-American.

“In a huge way, what this [exhibition] is about is not just Latino music in a bubble, which, as we know, never exists in a bubble,” says Ranald Woodaman, of the Smithsonian Latino Center. ”It really is a huge story about Latin music, kind of at the heart of America.”

Divided regionally into the five cities best-known to American audiences in terms of Latino music production—New York, Miami, San Antonio, Los Angeles and San Francisco—this interactive exhibition focuses on post-World War II Latino music. While there are parts of the Latino music story that date back to the Great Depression, World War II was the era when many Latino musicians fighting in the war, like Tito Puente and Ray Barretto, were exposed to jazz, says Woodaman. From that exposure, the mambo sound was developed, “a fusion of more traditional Afro-Cuban, Afro-Caribbean rhythms with a U.S. jazz approach.”

Mambo would not be the only new sound created from melding cultures and influences, as the bilingual exhibit explains. From the rebellious Pachuco of the late 1930s, a counterculture created by Mexican-Americans who felt rejected by both societies, which would lay the foundation for Chicano music, to the intersections of Mexican music with that of German and Czech immigrants in Texas and the fusion of Caribbean cultures with urban cultures in Los Angeles and New York, Latino sound can be heard across genres.

With music playing in the background, maps, original records, fliers, promotional posters, videos, films and other ephemera from the era, including: Carlos Santana’s mariachi, Eva Ybarra’s accordion, a Celia Cruz outfit, original records from both independent and commercial music labels, as well as items from Héctor Lavoe, Ruben Bladés and Gloria Estefan, among others, tell the story. Listening booths, a mixing station and a dance floor encourage visitors to be a part of it.

“Learning is important,” says Woodaman, “but this exhibit offers an opportunity to immerse yourself in the music, in the rhythms, and use that as an entry point for learning.”

“I’d like people to come to this exhibit and basically get a sense of how varied, especially by region, Latino music traditions really are,” Woodaman says. “It’s really old, it’s been in the United States for a long time and … at the end of the day, what we call Latin music is part and parcel of the American experience.”

See “American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music” at the S. Dillon Ripley Center’s International Gallery until October 9. Learn more about Latino music and the exhibit at the American Sabor website. Created by the Experience Music Project in Seattle, Washington with curators from the University of Washington, the 5,000 square-foot exhibition was designed to be accessible to visitors of all ages. The Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) also designed a smaller version of the exhibit, intended for libraries and community centers, which is traveling the country simultaneously.

All Power to the People: The Story of the Black Panther Party, 1970 Photo: Collection of Civil Rights Archive/CADVC-UMBC

If you think you know the history of the civil rights movement in the United States, “For All The World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights,” a new exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture gallery in the American History Museum, encourages you to take another look.

“The vast majority, if not virtually all exhibitions on the civil rights movement dealing with visual materials almost exclusively are about the way photographs documented the movement—that’s pretty much what civil rights exhibitions have been for the past 25 years,” says curator Maurice Berger. “This exhibition asks a far different question.”

And that question, Berger says, is how visual culture—television, film, magazines, newspapers, toys, pamphlets, posters—was used, both by leaders of the movement and activists, as well as by everyday black Americans, to change prevailing ideas about race in the United States.

Divided into five sections, the exhibition takes visitors from the stereotypical images of blacks into which the civil rights movement was born, to those created to foster a sense of black pride and accomplishment. The third section, “Let The World See What I’ve Seen” : Evidence and Persuasion, examines how powerful depictions of the struggle helped change public perception, buoyed by materials related to the Emmett Till case. The exhibit continues through the exploration of how entertainment television dealt with black performers and the subject of race and concludes with a showcase of visual artifacts of daily life, from family snapshots to advertising campaigns and including campaign materials from the Black Panther Party.

“It’s one of the rare instances where an exhibition is able to make the claim that a political movement took advantage in an extraordinary way of the new technologies of seeing and representing the world,” Berger says.

Some of the highlights of this multimedia exhibition include: historic footage of Jackie Robinson’s first game in the major leagues, a look at the history of black magazines, clips from groundbreaking T.V. documentaries and shows, a touch screen story of the Emmett Till case and photographs documenting the movement taken by Gordon Parks, Roy DeCarava and Carl Van Vechten, among others.

In addition to the exhibition, there is also an illustrated companion book and a comprehensive online version of the exhibition. Berger, who began his research six years ago, calls the process a “very sustained six-year period of intensive research, archive building, exhibition organizing and writing of the book,” the culmination of which debuted in May of last year with the first stop on the six-venue national tour. Co-organized by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, this is the exhibit’s third stop.

“There have been claims that pictures matter, that images matter, that they can make a difference,” Berger says. “‘For All The World To See’ is living proof in so many ways that pictures—even things as ordinary as a snapshot— can truly change the way people understand issues and ideas in the United States and in the world.”

See “For All The World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights” at the National Museum of African American History and Culture gallery in the National Museum of American History through November 2011.

One of the two original pieces of Nakhla sent to the Smithsonian, virtually untouched since 1911. Photo courtesy of the Natural History Museum.

On the morning of June 28, 1911, somewhere between 8:30 and 9:00 in the morning, a fireball was observed northwest of Alexandria, Egypt. Few would realize what it was. But soon after, W.F. Hume, minister of the Geological Survey of Egypt, began taking eyewitness statements, and two months later published his report, “The First Meteorite Record in Egypt.”

One of those statements, from a farmer who claimed to have seen a fragment fall on a dog, gave rise to the popular myth that Nakhla, as the meteorite would be named, was “the dog killing meteorite,” an unsubstantiated claim, but the dramatic account is irresistible: “The fearful column which appeared in the sky at Denshal was substantial. The terrific noise it emitted was an explosion which made it erupt several fragments of volcanic materials. These curious fragments, falling to earth, buried themselves into the sand to the depth of about one metre. One of them fell on a dog. . .leaving it like ashes in a moment.”

Approximately 40 stones were recovered southeast of Alexandria, near the town of Abu Hummus. Of the stones recovered, Hume immediately sent two of them to the Smithsonian Institution, weighing 117g and 52g (or 4.3 4.13 ounces and .117 1.83 ounces). They arrived in August of 1911 and have been a part of the Natural History Museum’s collections ever since. Today, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Nakhla’s landing.

“At the time that Nakhla fell, we didn’t know that any of these were from Mars,” says Cari M. Corrigan, a geologist in the Division of Meteorites at the Natural History Museum. “All we knew was that they were different from the rest of the meteorites that we had, in general.”

Looking at the crystalline composition of the stones, it was clear that they had come from some sort of planetary body that had seen geologic processes, like volcanoes, and that the ‘parent body’ they came from had to be big enough for that kind of igneous activity to have taken place, Corrigan says.

Asteroids were ruled out, because they weren’t big or complex enough, so scientists started looking at other planets. “They didn’t say Mars, but Mars-like, or the moon, or something that size,” says Linda Welzenbach, collection manager of the National Meteorite Collection. Mars was a theory, but there was debate about whether or not you could actually get rocks, similar to what was found, off of Mars without them completely melting.

“There was very little science done on this rock until the late 1960s, early 1970s,” says Welzenbach, and identifying it was the result of a coalescence of information. A direct link was established in 1976 when the Viking spacecraft analyzed the Martian atmosphere. In 1983, scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center did a study where they measured some gases trapped in another Martian meteorite and compared that to the Viking landed atmospheric data. Their relationship to Nakhla was evident and in 1983, Nakhla was officially recognized as a piece of Mars.

The other Nakhla meteorite sent to the Smithsonian by Hume.

“Part of the reason it is significant to us is because it’s from Mars and it’s one of the first meteorites from Mars that we had,” Corrigan says. The first meteorite from Mars was Chassigny, which fell in 1815, followed by Shergotty, which fell in 1865. After Nakhla, there were no other Martian rocks until 1962 when Zagami fell in Nigeria, Welzenbach says.

“Studying these rocks has helped us understand the geologic history of Mars,” says Corrigan, “the interior and the geochemistry as whole, [and] how the planet evolved.”

Of the two original stones sent to the museum in 1911, the smaller one was eventually cut and used for scientific study, while the other has remained pretty much untouched since it fell. In 1962, E.P. Henderson, curator of the museum’s Division of Mineralogy and Petrology, as it was called at the time, wrote to the Geological Survey requesting some more material. They received 480g in 1962, a big piece—almost 17 ounces—and which is on display in the museum. Two smaller pieces arrived in 1977. The museum’s total holdings of Nakhla amounts to 650g, about 23 ounces.

Visitors can touch a piece of the 1.3 billion-year-old meteorite— young in comparison to most of the meteorites from the asteroid belt which are 4.5 billion years old—at the National Museum of Natural History.

Portrait of James Smithson, courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives

On this day, 182 years ago, James Smithson passed away in Genoa, Italy after a long illness at the age of 64. His will, which contained a puzzling provision, set in motion a series of circuitous events that would eventually lead to the creation of the Smithsonian Institution.

Smithson’s considerable wealth was left to his nephew Henry James Hungerford. But the will indicated that if Hungerford should die leaving no heirs—legitimate or illegitimate— the money was to go to the people of the United States of America to create something he called the Smithsonian Institution for the “increase and diffusion of knowledge” among men. The will was so extraordinary that it was published by the Times of London. While Smithson’s reasons and exact intentions are still unknown, the journey “from Smithson to Smithsonian” is intriguing.

“Nobody thought it would ever some to pass because his nephew was young and healthy and by all accounts quite good at spending money,” says Pamela Henson, director of the Smithsonian’s Institutional History Division. “It was very unlikely that this money would ever come to the United States.”

Born in France in 1765, James Lewis Macie was the illegitimate son of Hugh Smithson, who would later become the first Duke of Northumberland, and Elizabeth Keate Hungerford Macie. Upon the death of his mother, a widow of royal blood, Smithson inherited a considerable amount of money and adopted his father’s surname. A wealthy man, Smithson studied at Oxford and devoted his life to science, increasing his wealth through wise investments.

But in 1835, Smithson’s nephew died while living in Pisa, Italy without heirs. The executor of the estate contacted the American Chargé d’Affaires in London to set in motion the transfer of funds and eventually President Andrew Jackson was notified of the bequest. Unsure of whether or not he had the authority to accept the gift, President Jackson sent the issue over to Congress where a spirited debate ensued.

“This is pre-Civil War, 1830s, and states rights versus federalism is a hugely hot issue,” Henson says. “Southerners vehemently oppose this because they believe it’s a violation of states’ rights to create such a nation entity but John Quincy Adams, [the former president, now back in the House of Representatives] really takes this on as his case and pushes it through and he eventually triumphs.” Congress authorized the U.S. to accept the bequest on July 1, 1836.

If agreeing to accept the money was complicated, deciding what to do with it was almost impossible. Smithson, who had never set foot in the United States while living, apparently never discussed the provision in his will or his plans for the Institution with anyone. So, for ten years, Congress debated what “increase and diffusion of knowledge” meant and what such an establishment would look like. Several ideas were suggested, including: a scientific institute, a teacher’s training institute, a school of natural history, a university for the classics, a national observatory, a national library and a national museum. Eventually, a political compromise was reached, which provided for many of the different ideas suggested, and the Smithsonian Institution was founded, signed into law by President James K. Polk on August 10, 1846, and funded.

Not much is known about the life of James Smithson, whose papers, diaries and correspondence were lost in a massive 1865 fire in the Castle building. But a recent biography by Heather Ewing, who traveled throughout Europe looking in various archives for Smithson’s correspondence with others, does shed some additional light onto his life and scientific thinking. The mystery of why he decided to gift the equivalent of $508,318.46 to the United States and what his true intentions were may never be solved. “But it’s sort of fascinating what, by chance, that sentence at the end of his will turned out to be,” Henson says.

James Smithson’s remains, brought to the U.S. by Smithsonian Regent Alexander Graham Bell 75 years after his death, are interred in a tomb in the Castle Building. Learn more about his life and the founding of the Institution online.

Actress Nichelle Nichols. Photo by Mark Avino.

In the early 1960s, actress and singer Nichelle Nichols was selected to play the part of Lt. Uhura, the chief communications officer aboard the Starship Enterprise, in the new science fiction television program “Star Trek.” Directed by Gene Roddenberry, the show, featuring an interracial cast, would “change the face of television” and the trajectory of Nichols’ career. Roddenberry “wanted, demanded and got a totally interracial cast of equals—men and women,” Nichols said last week by telephone from her home in California. “It was a breakthrough for television, because it just did not exist.”

However, after a successful first season, Nichols tendered her resignation in order to pursue other opportunities. “I grew up in musical theater and my dream was not to be a TV or movie star” she said. “My dream was to be in the ultimate musical theater of Broadway.” A chance meeting that weekend with “her biggest fan” changed Nichols’ mind.

Invited as a celebrity guest on the dais for an NAACP fundraiser in Beverly Hills, Nichols was approached by one of the event’s promoters.

“He said, Ms. Nichols, there’s someone who wants to meet you and he says he’s your biggest fan, so I’m thinking of a young kid. I turn around and standing across the room, walking towards me was Dr. Martin Luther King with this big smile on his face.”

“By the time he reached me, he was laughing and he said, ‘Yes, Ms. Nichols, I am your greatest fan.’”

Upon hearing that Nichols planned to leave the show, Dr. King offered her some advice. “He said, ‘You cannot leave,’ Nichols recalls. “‘Don’t you see what this man [Roddenberry] has brought? He has changed the face of television forever, unless you leave.’”

According to Nichols, King spoke of television being a powerful tool for change. “‘TV is the most powerful education and this man has changed everyone’s attitudes towards women and people of color, you cannot leave,’” she recalls Dr. King telling her. “‘this is a God-given opportunity to change the face of television, change the way we think. We are no longer second class, third class citizens. He had to do it in the 23rd century, but it’s the 20th century that’s watching.’” The following Monday, Nichols rescinded her resignation and agreed to stay with the show. It was a decision, she said, she does not regret.

In town last month for the opening of the exhibition, “NASA/ART: 50 Years of Exploration,” at the Air and Space Museum and a number of NASA-sponsored events, Nichols shared how her turn as a fictional character aboard a futuristic spaceship helped create real-time opportunities for women and minorities in space.

Actress Nichelle Nichols and NASA|ART curator Bert Ulrich enjoy the exhibition. Photo by Mark Avino.

You attended the opening of  the museum’s exhibition as a special guest of the curator Bert Ulrich. What were your impressions of the exhibit?

Some of the most wonderful art that I have ever seen. [Done] with such expression and such an intuitive feeling of the majesty of space. Some  [were] done [as] very serious, beautiful art and some with a playfulness about it. One that was charming had a little Starship Enterprise on it. It touched your soul, it made you laugh and it made you proud.

How did you become affiliated with NASA and in what capacity?

Ten years after “Star Trek” was cancelled, almost to the day, I was invited to join the board of directors of the newly formed National Space Society. They flew me to Washington and I gave a speech called “New Opportunities for the Humanization of Space” or “Space, What’s in it for me?”  In [the speech], I’m going where no man or woman dares go. I took NASA on for not including women and I gave some history of the powerful women who had applied and, after five times applying, felt disenfranchised and backed off. [At that time] NASA was having their fifth or sixth recruitment and women and ethnic people [were] staying away in droves.

I was asked to come to headquarters the next day and they wanted me to assist them in persuading women and people of ethnic backgrounds that NASA was serious [about recruiting them].  And I said you’ve got to be joking; I didn’t take them seriously. . . . John Yardley, who I knew from working on a previous project, was in the room and said  ’Nichelle, we are serious.’

I said OK. I will do this and I will bring you the most qualified people on the planet, as qualified as anyone you’ve ever had and I will bring them in droves. And if you do not pick a person of color, if you do not pick a woman, if it’s the same old, same old, all-white male astronaut corps, that you’ve done for the last five years, and I’m just another dupe, I will be your worst nightmare.

And what happened?

They picked five women, they picked three African-American men, they picked an Asian and the space program has represented all of us ever since. That is my contribution and that is one of the things I am most proud of.

Are you still involved with NASA?

Yes. I’ve never not been at their request, anytime they call. I’m very, very much involved now because one of my recruits is the administrator of NASA, General Charlie Bolden. I will be his guest, one of the special guests, at the final launch of the last space shuttle next month.

What legacy do you hope to leave? Or hope you’ve left?

I decided, and I’m giving it much thought, I’m not racing into it. But I’ve decided to form the Nichelle Nichols Youth Foundation for Space Sciences—technology, engineering, math and attending performing arts. I want to further careers and interest in young people and bring back the majesty that the United States once held in education. So, for me, that is what I want to give. That is what I want to be known for. That is what I hope is my legacy.

Adorable andean bear cubs, courtesy of the National Zoo

It’s summertime and bears are up and active. But how much do you really know about bears? Do you know what to do if you have a bear in your backyard? Or how to camp safely without attracting them? What kind of bears live in your area? Well, our friends at the National Zoo would like to help educate you. This weekend, the Zoo is hosting “Bear Awareness Days,” from 10 AM to 2 PM. “The purpose is to raise awareness about bears in general,” says animal keeper Mindy Babitz,  “and to learn about conservation issues that affect all of the bear species.” Babitz, who has worked at the Zoo for almost 13 years and currently works with sloth bears, gave us a preview of what visitors can expect to learn.

1. Bear Facts—”Some people think that all bears are these fierce killing machines,” Babitz says, “that’s a big misconception.” In fact, only the polar bear is a true carnivore, most other bears are omnivores. Another misconception is that bears are always looking to attack. The truth is most bears are pretty shy and want to avoid you as much as you want to avoid them. “If you do come across a bear in the woods, chances are they’re just going to take off because they don’t want to be around you,” Babitz says. Bears do sometimes attack and can certainly hurt you, but the number of bear attacks—often sensationalized—make up a small proportion of the encounters bears have with people every year.

2. Do Not Feed the Bears— Bears are wild animals and you should not feed them, even if you see them in your own backyard. There is a saying, “a fed bear is a dead bear,” for good reason. Bears in the wild need to look for natural food. But if a bear is in an area with a high human population, they’re going to go for the easy food sources—bowls of pet food, bird feeders, trash—over the natural food sources. And once they start eating these foods, they will keep coming back. “If a bear gets used to having that food source and then you take it away, they’re going to be angry and looking for food because they expect it at that point,” Babitz says.  “Then you end up with a nuisance bear and normally a nuisance bear is going to end up being shot.” To stop that from happening, Babitz encourages people who live in bear country to get rid of the food sources that are going to attract a bear and put their trash cans out right before pickup.

3. Camping Safety—How would you set up a campsite to be bear safe? Check out the hands-on activities that will help visitors think through their decisions.

4. Conservation— Asian bears face habitat loss because of exploding human populations in China and India. They are also in danger of being poached and farmed for their body parts, which are used in some traditional Asian medicine. “It’s an absolutely horrific practice,” Babitz says.  And sloth bears are still being subjected to the dancing bear trade in some countries. Learn how the dancing bears are made to dance and get information on what you can do to help.

5. Bear Care—At the Zoo, animal keepers are responsible for the mental and physical well-being of the bears in their care. While they never actually go into the enclosure with the bears for safety reasons, they are able to interact with them. Find out how they keep the bears active, mentally stimulated and engaged in enrichment activities to make sure the bears develop species-specific behaviors, like foraging for food.

Bears are very intelligent animals. “Those of use who work with the bears often see them as a cross between a dog and a great ape,” Babitz says. “They have a lot of the behaviors and characteristics of a dog, but the intelligence is almost like an ape.” Visitors can get up close and personal with the bears through the viewing glass and, surprisingly enough, the bears like to people watch just as much as people like to watch them.

“Bear Awareness Days” will be held Saturday, June 4 and Sunday, June 5, 10AM-2PM at the National Zoo’s Asia Trail.

P-R-Z-E-... aw, forget it. Image courtesy of Mehgan Murphy, National Zoo

This week, we have a lot of really smart kids in town here to compete in the 2011 Scripps National Spelling Bee. The preliminaries began this morning at 8 AM EST and while we’re sure we couldn’t beat the 275 spellers in competition this year, the ATM blog team has come up with a list of words from around the Smithsonian, likely to stump even the savviest speller.

1. The P-Horse. It’s so hard to spell and pronounce that even the Zoo resorts to this nickname for the Przewalski’s Horse. Pronounced sheh-val-skee, the horse is named after 19th-century Polish naturalist Colonel Nikolai Przewalski, who found a skull of the horse and studied it in St. Petersburg. The brown-coated equine is native to eastern Europe and the Great Steppe crossing into Asia.

2. Artists—While math is the subject most commonly cited as a favorite among the spelling bee competitors this year, it doesn’t really require a lot of complicated spelling. Art or artists, rather, frequently do. The ATM staff has to be extra careful when writing about Georgia O’Keeffe (two e’s, two f’s), James McNeill Whistler (two l’s, no a) or Charles Willson (two l’s) Peale. The worst one is Eadweard Muybridge, who has way too many vowels in his first name. Check out their work at the American Art Museum and see if their art is any easier to understand than their names are to spell.

3. Volcanoes—Last year, a volcano erupted in Iceland, shutting down air traffic across Europe for days and affecting millions of passengers. Its name, the impossible to decipher Eyjafjallajökull. Considering that the bee contestants hail from around the United States, its territories and Department of Defense schools around the world, some might perchance live near one of the tough volcano names studied by the scientists at the Global Volcanism Program.

4. History—To help prepare for a spelling bee, many competitors study the origins of words. Learning about the origins of man, dinosaurs, civilizations and ancient life forms might be just as daunting. Walk around the halls of the Natural History Museum and learn more about ornithology, ichthyology, Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus afarensis and Paranthropus boisei, including how to spell them. Over at American History, there’s Evel Knievel’s motorcycle and the Stephen Colbert portrait. Why is it pronounced like he’s French? Is he hiding something from us?

5. Airplanes—Some of this year’s competitors traveled long distances to arrive at the bee, including 94 who are on their very first visit to the nation’s capital. But none probably rode on airplanes with names as complicated as: De Havilland, Mikoyan-Gurevich or Messerschmitt. See what other aeronautical tongue twisters you can find at the Air and Space Museum.

Eileen Collins, the first female pilot and first female commander of a space shuttle mission, photographed by Annie Leibovitz, 1999. Photograph courtesy of NASA Art Program.

When you think about the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), art may not be the first, or even the second, thing that comes to mind.  A new traveling exhibition, “NASA|ART: 50 Years of Space Exploration,” on display at the Air and Space Museum from May 28 to October 9, just may change that.

The NASA|ART project was established in 1962 by NASA administrator James E. Webb. Its mission was simple—commission artwork that captured the essence of what the agency and the space program were all about, in ways that photographs simply could not, says Tom Crouch, senior curator of aeronautics and art at the museum.

Mercury Astronaut Gordon Cooper’s 1963 Faith 7 spacecraft launch, depicted in Mitchell Jamieson’s First Steps, marked the first time that an artist was sent to a space event. The program, initially launched by James Dean, still continues today, under the leadership of Burt Ulrich, the program’s curator at NASA Headquarters.

Dean helped select more than 70 works of art, including drawings, photographs, sculpture and other artistic renderings “that would both represent the NASA|ART collection as it was and is and celebrate the 50 year history of the agency,” Crouch says.

The collection, arranged chronologically, takes viewers through an exploration of space—from Mercury to Apollo to Gemini, to the space shuttle, aeronautics and beyond—as told from the perspective of artists including Annie Leibovitz, Alexander Calder, Norman Rockwell and Andy Warhol, among others.

“Artists are given this sort of back door view of what NASA’s all about and what’s nice is that they can share that experience through their own imagination to the public,” Ulrich says. “It really took a lot of foresight, I think, for James Webb who started the program. I think he had this idea that through the great ages of history, art is often the residue of that [...] and it’s such a wonderful way of looking back at history.” In addition to depicting the people, places and great events that viewers already know, the artists also introduce viewers to other astronauts and aspects of space exploration they may not.

Chakaia Booker uses rubber to commemorate the Columbia crew in Remembering Columbia, 2006. Photography courtesy of the NASA Art Program.

Native American artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith uses various aspects of Native American symbolism in her painting Indian Science, which honors the first Native American astronaut John Bennett Herrington. Annie Leibovitz’s photograph entitled Eileen Collins captures the first female pilot (Discovery, 1995) and the first female commander of a space shuttle (Columbia, 1999) during training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Artist and fashion designer Stephen Sprouse (1953-2004) used imagery from the Sojourner Rover to create a work of art that was essentially a dress and a pair of slippers. The piece called NASA Rover Mars Pink, carried an additional twist. With a pair of 3-D glasses, the dress took on a whole new dimension. The designer debuted it in a line of clothing he showed at NYC fashion week in 2000.

Towards the end of the exhibition, artists commemorate the astronauts from the Columbia and Challenger missions in “Remembering Lost Crews.” Artist Chakaia Booker uses pieces of a space shuttle tire donated to her by NASA to create a sculpture, Columbia Tribute, which resembles a black star, hanging on the wall above the gallery.

The final piece, though, is an unexpected musical composition written by Terry Riley with a multimedia component designed by Willie Williams, and called “Sun Rings.” Performed by the Kronos Quartet, the piece incorporates actual sounds of space—radio waves from the far reaches of the universe converted into sound waves.

“The whole exhibit is the arrogance of man’s imagination,” says Nichelle Nichols, the actress who played Lt. Uhura on “Star Trek” and who later worked for NASA in the 1970s and 80s recruiting women and minorities to the space program. “I realize what a powerful word that is, [and] it’s not negative,” she continues. “This is what all the art is—to imagine what it is that takes us from ground zero to as far as the imagination can take you and then beyond; an incredible collection.”

“NASA|ART: 50 Years of Space Exploration is on display at the Air & Space Museum from May 28 to October 9. The museum is open daily (except December 25)  from 10AM to 7:30 PM for extended summer hours. See the website for more details.

Helmet worn by Peter L. Robinson in World War I

The Civil War, which left virtually no community in the country untouched, also changed the way Americans grieved for those who died in battle. At the end of the war, mourners in both northern and southern states began decorating the graves of fallen soldiers with flags and flowers. Seeking to unite the local practices into a national observance, General John A. Logan, leader of the Union Army’s veterans’ association, officially proclaimed Decoration Day on May 5, 1868. The holiday was first observed on May 30 of that same year, with a large ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, across the river from Washington, D.C.

Honoring the soldiers who died fighting in the Civil War, the holiday was recognized by all of the northern states by 1890. But many southern states, however, refused to acknowledge the holiday.

Despite this, Decoration Day continued to grow, and by the end of the 19th century it had been renamed Memorial Day. It wasn’t until after World War I, when the holiday was expanded to honor all Americans who died in battle, and at last recognized by most states. Memorial Day became an official federal holiday in 1971 and is now celebrated on the fourth Monday in May.

Currently on display at the National Museum of American History is the exhibition “The Price of Freedom: American at War,” which displays a number of artifacts from American armed conflicts. With the help of Jennifer Jones, chair and curator of the Armed Forces History Division at the musem , we’ve selected a few that are not to be missed.

Tricorn Hat— During the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), militia troops did not have uniforms, instead, they wore their civilian clothes into battle. This black felt tricorn hat was worn by Colonel Jonathan Pettibone, a member of the 18th Regiment, Connecticut Militia. When Col. Pettibone was killed in battle, the hat was worn by his son, Jonathan Pettibone, Jr.

Battlefield Relics— General Winfield S. Hancock, an 1844 graduate of West Point and a veteran of the Mexican-American War, was considered one of the best commanders in the Union army. When John F. Reynolds died in an early battle at Gettysburg, Hancock was selected to take over that wing of the army. His leadership and tactical skill in battle made him a formidable opponent. These battlefield relics in a wooden frame were presented to him at Gettysburg in 1885. Hancock would later be chosen as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States in 1880, when he was narrowly defeated by James Garfield.

Christian Fleetwood’s Medal of Honor— Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood was a free man of color born in Baltimore, Md. Educated at the Ashmun Institute (later Lincoln University) in Oxford, PA, Fleetwood also traveled to Liberia as a young man. When the Civil War disrupted trade with the country, he enlisted into the 4th Regiment U.S. Colored Infantry of the Union Army. In 1864, during the battle at Chaffin’s Farm, the 22-year-old Fleetwood carried the American flag through battle after two other color bearers had been shot down. For this act of bravery, he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Cher Ami— During World War I (1917-1918), 600 birds were owned and flown by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in France. One of those birds was Cher Ami, a Black Check cock carrier pigeon, who delivered 12 important messages during his service. Cher Ami was shot and injured during his last mission, but still managed to return carrying an important message about isolated troops needing relief and help. Cher Ami was awarded the French “Croix de Guerre” for his heroic service and returned to the U.S. where he died in Fort Monmouth, NJ in 1919 as a result of his wounds.

Gold Star Pin— The Women’s Committee of National Defenses recommended to President Woodrow Wilson that American women wear a black arm band adorned with a gold star in lieu of traditional mourning attire. In May 1918, Wilson agreed and coined the term “Gold Star Mother,” in a letter to the committee. The American Gold Star Mothers, Inc. is a nonpolitical, nondenominational nonprofit organization open to all mothers of fallen soldiers “as well as those who have a service-related death.” The “Gold Star” pin honors their loss, however; the actual Gold Star Pins are awarded by the Department of Defense to relatives of the deceased, not just mothers.

Remember Pearl Harbor Lapel Pin— After the military base of Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, Americans mobilized in support of World War II (1941-1945) with the patriotic cry, “Remember Pearl Harbor.” Thousands of buttons and pins were printed and distributed to both remind and rally Americans behind the war effort.

POW Bracelets— In 1970, Carol Bates Brown and Kay Hunter were two college students looking for a way to support U.S. troops fighting in the Vietnam War (1956-1975), when they came up with the idea for POW bracelets. Worn to honor and increase awareness about Prisoners of War and soldiers who are Missing in Action, the bracelets were traditionally worn until the POW returned to the U.S., whereupon the bracelet was presented to the former prisoner. Since 1970, millions of bracelets have been distributed nationwide.

At the National Museum of African American History and Culture, curators there shared with us a few patriotic artifacts they have already acquired— a sneak peak at what visitors can expect when the museum opens on the Mall in 2015.

Early American Powder Horn— Prince Simbo, a former slave and resident of Glastonbury, Connecticut, used this horn during the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), during which he served as a private in the Seventh Regiment, Connecticut.

Binoculars & Helmet used by Peter L. Robinson, Sr.—First Lieutenant Peter L. Robinson served in the U.S. Army during World War I (1917-1918). After his service, he graduated from law school and went on to teach military science at Armstrong High School in Washington, D.C.

Tuskegee Airmen Congressional Gold Medal— This medal was awarded to the famous aviators by President Bush on March 29, 2007. At the ceremony, the president said, “”These men in our presence felt a special sense of urgency. They were fighting two wars. One was in Europe and the other took place in the hearts and minds of our citizens.”

In September 2005, members of the VISIONS 05 expedition crew were studying the volcanic activity of the Juan de Fuca Ridge 200 miles off of the Oregon coast when they came across a white deep-sea octopus, Grimpoteuthis bathynectes, at a depth of 6,600 feet. They captured high-definition video footage of the octopus—one of the first high-definition videos of this species—which, complemented by beautiful music, makes for a spectacular video. The video made a debut appearance recently on the Smithsonian Ocean Portal. At the end of the video, the text states that “little is known about the deep-sea octopods,” so the ATM blog team got a little curious and sought out zoologist Michael Vecchione, director of the NMFS National Systematics Laboratory and renowned cephalopod expert, who helped to shed some light on this mysterious deep-sea creature. Here is what we’ve learned:

1.  Taxonomy: Dumbo octopuses are a group of deep-sea octopods. Vecchione estimates there are a few dozen species.

2. Appearance: They are different from the octopuses that most people recognize. Dumbos have fins on the sides of their bodies. Instead of jetting around and squirting water out of their funnels, they swim by flapping the fins and sometimes by pulsing their arms, which are webbed. They also have two little finger-like projections on their arms, in between the two suckers, called cirri. While scientists aren’t sure how the projections are used (for instance, whether or not they are sensory), they do know that they are associated with eating.

3. Behavior: Some Dumbo octopuses spend most of their time swimming around and others spend more time on the bottom of the ocean floor, flattened out. The one in the video does both. Dumbo octopuses are some of the largest invertebrates of the really deep sea.

4 . Location: They are usually found anywhere from 1,000 meters to about 5,00o meters below the surface. “People don’t normally explore those kinds of depths, so we don’t know a whole lot about what lives down there,” Vecchione says. While this octopus was found in an area with hydrothermal vent fields, there is no evidence that the animals are restricted to those kinds of areas.

5.  The name: Submarine pilots gave the octopuses their nickname because their fins resemble the ears of the cartoon character “Dumbo, the Flying Elephant.”

Vecchione has seen many videos of Dumbo octopuses, including this one shortly after it was recorded. The quality of the video is what makes it stand out, he says. “It was nice video,” he says, “it was nothing Earth-shattering, but it’s a very nice video of a Grimpoteuthis.”

Nothing special for a octopus-man, but we thought it was pretty cool. Take a look.

Nancy Wilson signs the deed of gift, donating two of her gowns to the American History Museum, alongside museum director Brent Glass, at the Music Center at Strathmore. Photo by Jim Saah (c) 2011, Strathmore.

Renowned jazz singer Nancy Wilson recently donated two of her designer gowns to the National Museum of American History, fulfilling a long-time dream of John Edward Hasse, the curator of American music.

“Mindful of her importance in American song and jazz, I’ve been seeking a donation from Nancy Wilson for some years,” says Hasse.

Born in Chillicothe, OH in 1937, Nancy Wilson knew she wanted to be a singer from a young age. With early influences like Billy Eckstine, LaVerne Baker and Nat King Cole, she began her professional singing career at 15, when she became the host of a local television show. In 1956 she began singing and touring with The Rusty Bryant Band throughout the Midwest, but Wilson had bigger ambitions. She moved to New York City in 1959, and soon after her arrival, the artist had a regular gig singing in a nightclub and within six weeks, she had a record deal with Capitol Records. Her songs were so successful that she recorded and released five albums in two years. The three-time Grammy award winner would go on to perform on variety shows, host one season of her eponymous Emmy Award-winning television show, and take acting roles on many popular TV series into the 1990s, including the The Cosby Show and Hawaii Five-O.

Hasse says he pursued an acquisition from Wilson because of her distinctive song styling, versatility, range of intensity, clear respect for the lyrics and her impeccable musicianship. “We can’t literally collect her voice, of course,” says Hesse, “so the question becomes, what material culture represents her?” Her distinctively-styled dresses seemed like an obvious choice .

The jazz vocalist’s decision to donate the gowns came in the wake of two events—her participation in an oral history interview for the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program and the decision of her manager, John Levy, to donate his professional archives to the museum.

As is true with most donations to the museum, these two dresses have stories.

In February of 2007, Nancy Wilson wore  a sliver-gray silk velvet wrap-dress with poet sleeves to the 49th Annual Grammy Awards, where she received her third Grammy Award for “Turned to Blue,” selected as best jazz vocal album. “I designed this dress for Nancy with an expression of elegance and timelessness,” said dress creator Angela Dean, according to a report.

In October of 2010, Wilson appeared at a special event at Jazz at Lincoln Center wearing a strapless “Trumpet” gown in champagne silk and wool. The dress, with hand-draped embroidered tulle and a matching tulle bolero, was designed by b michael. “Nancy has a sound and a motion that is visual and inspires the epitome of glamor, sophistication and sensuality,” said the designer, who grew up listening to Wilson’s music, according to a report.

Wilson's two dresses are flanked by the museum's director Brent Glass, left, and Eliot Pfanstiehl CEO of the Strathmore Music Center, and curator John Edward Hasse. Photo by Jim Saah (c) 2011, Strathmore.

“I’m not an expert on fashion design,” says Hasse, “but it seems to me that the dress styling, like Ms. Wilson’s public personae and her singing style, are graced with individuality, ‘class,’ and elegance.”

Wilson’s dresses now join the museum’s collection of famed ensembles, including gowns from: the First Ladies, Ella Fitzgerald, Beverly Sills and the Supremes.

While plans have not been established for the display of the Wilson dresses, the Levy Collection and the Jazz Oral History Collection can be found in the museum’s Archives Center.

Update: Nancy Wilson made the donation official April 22, signing the deed of gift after her sold-out performance at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland.

Mount St. Helens

On 8:32 AM, May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted.  The Sunday morning earthquake measured a 5.1 on the Richter scale and in its wake, “nearly 150 square miles of forest was blown over or left dead and standing,” according to the USDA Forest Service. “The eruption lasted 9 hours, but Mount St. Helens and the surrounding landscape were dramatically changed within moments.” That was 31 years ago. So, what about today? Which volcanoes pose great danger?

On the anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, the ATM blog team, with the help of curator Elizabeth Cottrell, director of the Global Volcanism Program in the Department of Mineral Sciences at the National Museum of Natural History, has compiled a list of five volcanoes that currently threaten population centers. They are:

1. Ecuador: Tungurahua—This stratovolcano is one of Ecuador’s most active, and it has been erupting this year. Tungurahua threatens multiple nearby populations, especially the city of Baños, located at the foot of the volcano. In 1999, Baños was temporarily evacuated due to a long-term eruption.

2. United States: Mt. Rainier—The highest peak of the Cascade Mountain Range, located southeast of Seattle, Washington, Mt. Ranier last erupted in 1894. A new eruption could melt its glacial ice, sending landslides of mud and ash (called lahar) into the Seattle-Tacoma metro area.

3. Indonesia: Merapi—In one of the world’s most densely populated areas lies one of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes. Merapi has been erupting for the past year, killing hundreds and displacing hundreds of thousands of residents in the Jakarta area.

4. Italy: Vesuvius—Best known for its massively destructive eruption in 79 AD that buried the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, Vesuvius last erupted in 1944. It is the only volcano on the European mainland that has erupted within the past hundred years. Vesuvius threatens millions of people living in or near the city of Naples.

5. Mexico: Popocatépetl—From the Aztec word for smoking mountain,Volcán Popocatépetl is the second-highest volcano in North America. Currently erupting, this stratovolcano threatens Mexico City.

To learn more about these and other volcanoes, visit the Plate Tectonics Gallery in the Geology, Gems and Minerals Hall of the National Museum of Natural History and check out the website of the Global Volcanism Program.