Happy Birthday Smithsonian
This week in Washington, DC, the Smithsonian turned 162 years old.
The Smithsonian Institution was based on a gift of James Smithson, a British scientist, who left his entire estate to the United States of America in 1827. His gift of over 100,000 gold sovereigns, or $500,000, (just under $9.5 million in today’s dollars) required the government to establish the Smithsonian Institution, to “increase and diffusion of knowledge."
An act of Congress in 1846 expanded the growth of collection into the world’s largest museum complex (16 museums) with over 140 million objects and the National Zoo in Washington, DC. …read more
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