49 Fun Facts About Smithsonian

The Smithsonian's vast and eclectic collections have earned it which affectionate nickname?

The nation's attic: like a real attic, nearly everything in it is packed away out of sight, with only a sliver of the collection on show at any one time.

The Smithsonian is named after its founding donor, a scientist of which nationality?

British: James Smithson was an English chemist, though he was born in secret in Paris, where his mother had gone to hide her pregnancy.

James Smithson's will funded an establishment in Washington for what stated purpose?

The increase and diffusion of knowledge: the mandate was so vague that Congress argued for years over whether it meant a university, a library, an observatory or a museum.

James Smithson's fortune passed to the United States only after what happened?

His nephew died childless: Henry James Hungerford inherited first, and his death in 1835 sent the estate to a country that Smithson had never visited.

Before reaching the Smithsonian in 1948, the 1903 Wright Flyer spent twenty years on loan to a museum in which city?

London: it sat in the Science Museum while Orville Wright fought the Smithsonian over its claim that a former secretary's machine had been capable of flight before the Wrights flew.

Smithsonite, the mineral named after James Smithson, is an ore of which metal used with copper to make brass?

Zinc: Smithson's chemical analysis of calamine, an ore vital to brass-making, led to its zinc carbonate being named smithsonite in his honour.

One of the Smithsonian's most popular exhibitions began in 1912 when first lady Helen Taft donated what?

Her inaugural gown: she had worn it to her husband's 1909 inaugural ball, and her gift set a tradition, as every first lady since has given the museum a dress.

How was Smithson's bequest physically delivered to the United States in 1838?

As gold sovereigns: Richard Rush sailed home with 104,960 of them, and the Philadelphia Mint recoined them into just over half a million American dollars.

Which puppet in the Smithsonian's collection was first made from his creator's mother's old coat and a halved ping-pong ball?

Kermit the Frog: Jim Henson built him in 1955 for a local Washington television show, and that first version looked more like a lizard than a frog.

Which former president, then a congressman, fought to preserve Smithson's fund for an institution of learning?

John Quincy Adams led the side that beat senators such as John C. Calhoun, who argued that Congress had no constitutional power to accept the gift.

Which president signed the legislation establishing the Smithsonian on August 10, 1846?

James K. Polk signed the act the day Congress passed it, creating a body that sits outside all three branches of government and answers to its own Board of Regents.

The Smithsonian's first secretary was which scientist, whose surname became the unit of inductance?

Joseph Henry also signed up hundreds of volunteer weather observers who reported to the Smithsonian, a network that grew into the national weather service.

What is the nickname of the Smithsonian Institution Building, opened in 1855?

The Castle: a fire in 1865 gutted its upper floor and destroyed the papers and mineral collection of James Smithson himself.

What kind of stone is the Smithsonian's original 1855 building made from?

Seneca red sandstone: builders prized it because it is soft enough to carve easily when freshly quarried and then hardens on exposure to the air.

Which club of young Smithsonian naturalists in the 1850s named itself after a giant extinct ground sloth?

The Megatherium Club: its members lodged in the Smithsonian's own building, where they held sack races down the halls and sang beneath the windows of the secretary's daughters.

Which 1876 event's profits funded the Smithsonian's first expansion, the Arts and Industries Building?

The Philadelphia Centennial Exposition also gave many of its displays, and the building put up for them hosted a ball for the newly sworn-in President Garfield before a single exhibit went in.

Which famous landscape architect designed the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park in Washington?

Frederick Law Olmsted laid out the grounds after William Hornaday, a Smithsonian taxidermist shocked by the bison's near-extinction, campaigned for a zoo that would save species.

Which animals are the best-known residents of the National Zoo?

Giant pandas: the first pair arrived in 1972 as a gift from China after President Nixon's historic visit, and first lady Pat Nixon welcomed them to the zoo in person.

Which famous bear lived at the Smithsonian's National Zoo from 1950 to 1976?

Smokey: rescued as a cub from a New Mexico wildfire, he became the living symbol of fire prevention and drew so many letters that the Postal Service gave him his own ZIP code.

Whistler covered which dining room in blue paint and golden birds before it was moved to the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery?

The Peacock Room: its owner, a Liverpool shipping magnate, felt Whistler had gone far beyond his commission, and Charles Lang Freer later bought the entire room.

Which television cook's home kitchen stands in the National Museum of American History?

Julia Child: she stood over six feet tall, so the counters in the kitchen she planned with her husband Paul were made two inches higher than standard.

Which flag sits in a climate-controlled chamber at the National Museum of American History?

The Star-Spangled Banner flew over Fort McHenry and inspired the national anthem; it is shorter than it was because its owners snipped off dozens of pieces as souvenirs.

A lunch counter from which city is a signature civil-rights artefact at the Smithsonian?

Greensboro: four Black college students asked to be served at the whites-only Woolworth's counter there in 1960, and within weeks sit-ins had spread across the South.

Which Second World War bomber, displayed at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center, was named after its pilot's mother?

Enola Gay: Paul Tibbets gave the B-29 his mother's name shortly before flying it to Hiroshima, and the museum's planned 1995 exhibit around the plane was cancelled amid fierce opposition and replaced by a far smaller one.

Which Apollo 11 astronaut was director of the Air and Space Museum when its building opened?

Michael Collins, who stayed in lunar orbit while his two crewmates walked on the Moon, became the museum's director in 1971 and opened its building on the Mall for the Bicentennial in 1976.

What was the name of the Apollo 11 command module held on the National Mall?

Columbia is the only part of the Apollo 11 spacecraft that came back to Earth, so it is the one piece of the first Moon landing mission that a museum could ever hold whole.

Which television spaceship's original studio model has been in the Smithsonian's Air and Space collection since 1974?

The USS Enterprise: Paramount donated the 11-foot model that was filmed for the original 1960s Star Trek series.

Near which airport is the Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center?

Dulles International: the hangars beside it hold what the building on the Mall cannot, including the Space Shuttle Discovery, a Concorde and an SR-71 Blackbird.

Which famous gem reached the Smithsonian in 1958 by registered mail, in a box wrapped in brown paper?

The Hope Diamond: sending it cost $145.29, nearly all of it insurance on a million dollars, and the National Postal Museum still keeps the wrapper.

Which jeweller gave the Smithsonian its most famous gem in 1958?

Harry Winston bought the blue stone from the estate of Washington socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean in 1949 and showed it at charity events for a decade before giving it away.

Which animal, nicknamed Henry, has greeted visitors in the rotunda of the National Museum of Natural History since 1959?

An African elephant: it is also called the Fénykövi elephant, after the Hungarian hunter who shot it in Angola in 1955 and gave the hide to the museum.

Which abolitionist's personal hymnal, Gospel Hymns No. 2, is displayed in the Smithsonian's Slavery and Freedom gallery?

Harriet Tubman's copy dates from 1876, and the same museum holds a shawl that Queen Victoria gave her.

Which Smithsonian art museum is a giant hollow drum raised on four massive piers?

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: architect Gordon Bunshaft called it a large piece of functional sculpture, while one New York Times critic called the style neo-penitentiary modern.

Which Smithsonian museum opened on the National Mall in 2016?

The National Museum of African American History and Culture was opened by President Obama, and its three-tiered crown echoes the carved crowns of Yoruba sculpture from West Africa.

Which Smithsonian museum is the only one that charges admission?

The Smithsonian took over the former Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration in 1967.

Which actress wore the ruby slippers now displayed at the National Museum of American History?

Judy Garland wore them as Dorothy; in the original book the shoes are silver, but ruby red showed up better in Technicolor against the yellow brick road.

The National Portrait Gallery holds the only complete collection of presidential portraits outside which building?

The White House: the gallery's star, Gilbert Stuart's Lansdowne portrait of George Washington, was only on loan until 2001, when its owner moved to sell and a foundation's gift bought it.

Which free Smithsonian event has filled the National Mall most summers since 1967 with musicians, cooks and craftspeople?

The Folklife Festival usually runs around the Fourth of July, but for the 1976 Bicentennial it lasted about three months, from mid-June to early September.

Which official traditionally serves as chancellor, the nominal head of the Smithsonian?

The Chief Justice of the United States holds the post by custom, not by law: the statute only tells the regents to elect one of their own number as chancellor.

Who became the fourteenth secretary of the Smithsonian in 2019?

Lonnie Bunch, a historian, is the first African American to lead the institution; he had spent eleven years building one of its newest museums from nothing.

The Smithsonian's natural history collections began with which 1838–42 naval voyage around the world?

The United States Exploring Expedition circled the globe under Charles Wilkes and charted a long stretch of the Antarctic coast, still called Wilkes Land.

The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute is based in which country?

Panama: the institute grew out of a field station set up in 1923 on Barro Colorado Island, in the Panama Canal's Gatun Lake.

Which aviator flew her bright red Lockheed Vega, now in the Smithsonian, alone across the Atlantic in 1932?

Amelia Earhart then flew the same plane nonstop across the United States, and both flights were firsts for a woman.

Which regent personally exhumed James Smithson's remains in 1903 and brought them to the US capital?

Alexander Graham Bell sailed to Genoa because the cemetery was to be cleared for a quarry, and so brought the founder to a country he had never visited in life.

The Smithsonian's design museum in New York occupies the Manhattan mansion of which steel magnate?

Andrew Carnegie built it far uptown of what was then fashionable New York, and the neighbourhood that grew up around the house is still called Carnegie Hill.

Which architect of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York also designed the Smithsonian Institution Building?

James Renwick Jr. later designed the Washington art gallery that the Smithsonian reopened in 1972 under his name.

The National Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum opened in 1968 inside which reused 1867 building?

The Old Patent Office served as a Civil War hospital, and Walt Whitman, who read to the wounded there, called it the noblest of Washington buildings.

Which fairground ride did Smithsonian secretary S. Dillon Ripley install on the National Mall in 1967?

A carousel: some found it unseemly, but generations of children have ridden it outside the Arts and Industries Building.

The Smithsonian's astrophysical observatory left Washington in the 1950s to work alongside which university's observatory?

Harvard: the two observatories pooled their work in 1973 as the Center for Astrophysics, which still carries both names.