Octavia Butler imagined the future on this typewriter

Every storyteller has a tool: a notebook, a camera, a microphone. For legendary author Octavia Butler, it was a powder blue typewriter. That typewriter is now in the Smithsonian Institution's Anacostia Community Museum, and acting curator Jennifer Sieck explains Butler’s influence on the country’s history. 

And, the megalodon was one of the biggest fish that ever lived, with seven-inch-long teeth and jaws with 40,000 pounds of bite force. Don’t worry: The megalodon swam between 3.6 and 23 million years ago. But you can still see a model hanging from the ceiling in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. Curator Nick Pyenson explains why Americans remain fascinated with megalodons.

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