Word: smithsonian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...really end for another year), we seem more fascinated with the subject than ever. At the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England, crowds are flocking to a new exhibition, "The Story of Time," which examines time from cultural, religious, artistic and scientific viewpoints. On this side of the Atlantic, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History has opened a permanent show on America's fascination with time. In bookstores, best-selling author James Gleick's Faster (Pantheon), which laments the accelerating pace of our lives, will be joined next month by The End of Time (Oxford University Press), British physicist...
...Revolution, the exact time of day or year mattered only to those in specialized jobs, such as astrologers and sailors. For the rest, the day began at dawn, noon was when the sun was highest in the sky, and sunset wrapped things up. Says Carleen Stephens, who curated the Smithsonian show, in 1790 fewer than 10% of Americans had a clock of any kind in their homes, and most of those had no minute hand...
EUTHANIZED. HSING-HSING, 28, giant panda given by China to the National Zoo to commemorate Nixon's 1972 visit; owing to kidney disease; in Washington. Hsing-Hsing, whose name means "shining star," will be preserved and displayed at the Smithsonian...
...within 35 years a 247-lb. Atlantic broadbill swordfish would be as rare as a tyrannosaur--I would have set it free, administered CPR or, if all attempts at resuscitation had failed, I would at least have had the carcass of the mighty fish gilded and sent to the Smithsonian...
Perhaps the government should play no role in funding art. That, indeed, would be a neat solution. No delicate categories to demarcate, no slippery slopes to get tripped up on and none of the moral ambiguity. No Smithsonian perhaps, and no safeguarding of the nation's cultural heritage either; working class families might even have to pay discomfittingly higher ticket prices in private galleries...