Word: smithson
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...Smithsonian Institution, custodian of the nation's giraffes and Rembrandts, collector of historic aircraft and coffee mills, and authority on bugs, fish and Indians, last week was celebrating its centennial. It was a good occasion also for recalling its little-known founder: James Smithson, an Englishman who never...
...1760s, Sir Hugh Smithson, Duke of Northumberland, took up with Elizabeth Keate Macie, reputed descendant of Henry VII. One result: a son, James Smithson, who became a leading chemist, but because of the bar sinister never a duke. Wrote he: "On my father's side I am a Northumberland, on my mother's I am related to kings, but this avails me not. My name shall live in the memory of man when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten...
...Smithson died in 1829; his nephew died childless in 1835. The U.S. got the money ($508,318.46 in gold sovereigns), and finally in 1846 set up the Institution. The bequest was large for those days, and with better luck or backing, the Smithsonian might have become the nation's scientific center. But it got no heavy support from the Government or anyone else. For the current fiscal year the Government appropriated $1,452,512 and most of this was earmarked for nonscientific custodial work...
Kind Commander. A black-hulled U-boat, its conning tower decorated with a goat insignia, surfaced near two seamen swimming amid wreckage from their torpedoed cargo ship. Hauled aboard, Cornelius O'Connor, 19, and Raymond Smithson, 24, were given a tin cupful of rum by a fat officer in the conning tower. Suddenly a U.S. patrol plane appeared in the distance. O'Connor and Smithson were pushed down into the control room while the U-boat made a crash dive. Blindfolded, they were marched toward the torpedo room, where German seamen sponged off the oil coating the rescued...
...James Smithson's original bequest amounted to $508,318.46. Other endow ments, increase of investment values, savings from income, etc. have swelled this hoard to $1,808,000. In 1919 the will of Charles L. Freer of Detroit provided nearly $2,000,000 to manage the art collections which he had already donated and housed next door to the Institution head quarters. This has increased to $4,770,000 bringing the total of the Smithsonian's investments to $6,577,000. Of this, $1,000,000 is deposited in the Treasury and draws 6% by law; the rest...