Word: smithsonian
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...book, Gardner notes that pseudo-scientific theories are sometimes the work of brilliant men who can construct quite intricate puzzles for others to undo. Ives Goddard of the Smithsonian Institution makes the same point about Fell's work: "Fell spends years putting together his information...He's constructed an elaborate puzzle for us to solve...Recently I spent a couple of hours with a reporter and we looked up several of these words [from Fell's lists comparing ancient European languages and modern Indian tongues]...they can all be refuted, but in the end it's a waste of effort...
...Davenport finds were immediately claimed by some to be frauds, and for several years a debate raged among archeologists all over the world. Science magazine carried letters both supporting and rejecting the authenticity of the tablets and the effigy pipes. Ultimately, investigations by officials of the Smithsonian Institution conclusively established that the tablets, and many other supposed artifacts, were frauds planted alongside authentic American Indian artifacts and skeletons of the Hopewell people...
...Ives Goddard, formerly of Harvard and presently of the Smithsonian Institution, where he is linguistic editor of the Handbook of North American Indians, doesn't think highly of Barry Fell's word lists. Goddard, who is an authority on Algonquin languages, says Fell's work in that area is "full of errors of analysis and interpretation. He has trouble getting Indian words and their glosses right, he mixes languages together [a cardinal sin in comparative linguistics]...There is not even a vague inkling of enough resemblances to require an historical explanation...
...extraordinary present, for sure. The Smithsonian, otherwise known as "the nation's attic," has created a paean to the daring imaginations of the Wright brothers, Goddard, Lindbergh, Rickenbacker, Sikorsky, Earhart, Douglas and Lockheed's Johnson. The scene stealers are located in three giant bays (each 124 ft. by 115 ft. by 62 ft. high). In the main entrance bay-the Milestones of Flight Gallery-are the Wrights' Kitty Hawk Flyer, the first aircraft to achieve manned, powered flight, and the Spirit of St. Louis, in which Charles Lindbergh, need anyone be reminded, flew the Atlantic solo...
...Director Michael Collins, the Apollo 11 astronaut who circled the moon in the command module Columbia while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin explored the lunar surface for the first time, figures that the Spirit is the most popular airplane in NASM. It was a big drawing card in the Smithsonian's old building as well, and Lindbergh himself viewed it there a number of times. Once, in 1959, Lindbergh asked museum officials if he might see the plane alone and startled them when he also requested a ladder. Without a word, he climbed the ladder and lifted himself into...