This is a trading post booth number 13 from the New York Stock Exchange built in 1930. Trading was conducted in front of posts connected to the stock ticker by pneumatic tubes. Floor brokers buy and sell shares, attempting to get their customers the best price. Each stock is represented by a spec

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History recently acquired at auction a rare 18th-century silver milk pot or creamer with engraved with symbols and an inscription that support the American colonists’ ongoing boycott of imported goods, especially tea, during the months following a

This rare silk banner was probably carried in a public parade in Philadelphia in the mid to late 1790s. Its elaborate design suggests the importance of such festivals, which provided a place for many Americans, voters and non-voters, to express patriotic sentiments or partisan views on current ev

The TV dinner represented a change in the way Americans were thinking about food. Introduced in 1954 by Swanson & Sons, of Omaha, Nebraska, it offered women--more and more of whom were working outside the home but still assumed to be responsible for cooking--an alternative to time-consuming meal pre

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prevented all but a few Chinese to enter the United States legally. In 1906, a major earthquake and resulting fire in San Francisco destroyed public records, allowing many Chinese to claim that they had been born in San Francisco. These men, with newly established c

“For many high school students in the United States, prom is considered one of the most highly anticipated events of the school year. Teenagers plan months in advance on what to wear to the event, and magazines have devoted entire issues to prom fashion. Typically held in the spring, the annual da

"On a Saturday evening in January 1864, abolitionist Anna Dickinson stood inside the Hall of Representatives looking out into the U.S. House’s packed floors and overflowing galleries. Two thousand members of the public, senators, representatives, cabinet members, First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln—and

Students will learn about everyday life in the Japanese American internment camps during World War II. Living in geographically isolated camps under harsh conditions and laboring for unfair wages, internees recreated a community structure that enabled them to live as normal a life as possible as

To control the form of war messages, the government created the U.S. Office of War Information in June 1942. OWI sought to review and approve the design and distribution of government posters. Posters such as this one and their messages were seen as "war graphics," combining the sophisticated sty

Acupuncture has gone in and out of fashion over the centuries in both China and the West. Part of a 2,000-year-old system of medicine that originated in China, acupuncture spread across Asia and the world with the migration of Asian peoples. In 2002, there were about 15,000 licensed acupuncturist