Word: smithsonian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Another intriguing item: the pickled brains of some former Smithsonian officials. It is said that one of the officials, a pioneering geologist named Major John W. Powell, donated his gray matter in order to settle a wager with a colleague about whose brain was larger. Curators are not sure what happened to the colleague's brain...
...Anything you can think of, we usually have two of 'em," says Al Bachmeier, a collections manager for the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. "After you count 40 bio-belt pouches (for collecting and transmitting information about heart and respiratory functions) from the astronauts, you begin to wonder why you need...
...previously been overlooked." At the National Natural History Museum, researchers found nine whale skeletons that somehow were misplaced in the 1950s and a never-opened crate containing the bones of big game shot in Africa by Teddy Roosevelt. Although many items seem ridiculous or redundant, Perrot says that the Smithsonian wants them both for scientific research and as "testimony of the past being kept for the future...
Once the inventory is complete, most of the objects not on display will be moved to a $28 million warehouse and conservation laboratory being built in Suitland, Md., six miles from the Smithsonian's main museums on the Mall near the Capitol. A new computer system will be capable of locating anything from hummingbird eggs to George Washington's egg poacher within an hour; now it takes days to find items, if they can be found...
Sooner or later, of course, even the new warehouse will be overflowing with odds and ends. Smithsonian officials say that they are trying to cut back on the number of items added each year (now anywhere between 1 million and 3 million), but the institution's grand acquisitors are hard to restrain...