Meilan Solly

3 weeks ago | smithsonianmag.com | Christopher Parker |Meilan Solly

The pontiff, who died on Easter Monday at age 88, strived to make the church more inclusive. But critics believed his reforms either went too far or not far enough When Jorge Mario Bergoglio was 12 years old, he sent a love letter to a girl named Amalia, promising to buy her a house with a red roof and white walls when they eventually got married. Unfortunately for the lovestruck preteen, Amalia’s father refused to let the burgeoning romance continue.

1 month ago | smithsonianmag.com | Meilan Solly

A new exhibition at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London chronicles the German camp complex’s history, from its origins housing prisoners of war to its afterlife holding displaced persons In the final months of World War II, as the Allies advanced on Berlin, the Nazis evacuated tens of thousands of Jewish prisoners from concentration camps in Central and Eastern Europe to Bergen-Belsen, a camp in northern Germany.

1 month ago | smithsonianmag.com | Meilan Solly |K. Annabelle Smith

The British government claimed that eating carrots helped its fighter pilots shoot down German planes at night. In truth, the Royal Air Force relied on top-secret radar

1 month ago | smithsonianmag.com | Meilan Solly

History | Based on Hilary Mantel’s novel “The Mirror & the Light,” the last installment in the acclaimed television series chronicles the last four years of the statesman’s life The final years of Henry VIII’s reign were a dark period for Tudor England: a time when a queen could be beheaded on trumped-up charges of treason, and a longtime friend of the king could meet that same fate simply for staying silent.

2 months ago | smithsonianmag.com | Mike Dash |Meilan Solly

History | The discovery of a body on Somerton Beach in 1948 sparked theories that the dead man, now believed to be Carl Webb, was a Soviet spy, a ballet dancer or a jilted lover Around 7 p.m. on the warm evening of November 30, 1948, jeweler John Bain Lyons and his wife went for a stroll on Somerton Beach, a seaside resort a few miles south of Adelaide, the capital of South Australia.