This Day in Smithsonian History

Smithsonian Institution Archives, Institutional History Division

This Day in Smithsonian History

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Date	Event
May 1, 1847	At festivities that included Masonic ceremonies attended by six to seven thousand persons, the cornerstone of the Smithsonian Institution Building is laid. The occasion is regarded in Washington as a public holiday. Festivities include a mile-long procession from City Hall at Judiciary Square to the White House and then via Pennsylvania Avenue to the south side of the site. William Beverly Randolph was appointed Grand Marshall by the Board of Regents. The gavel used and the apron worn by the Masonic Grand Master of the District of Columbia, B. B. French, are the same as those used by George Washington during the laying of the cornerstone at the Capitol. Inscription on the cornerstone reads: "On the 1st day of May, 1847, was laid, in the city of Washington, this foundation-stone of a building to be appropriated for the Smithsonian Institution; founded by bequest of James Smithson, of Great Britain."
May 1, 1929	Secretary Charles Greeley Abbot establishes the Division of Radiation and Organisms. Its function is to investigate the effects of radiation upon living organisms, mainly plants, and the division works is part of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The original Division of Astrophysical Research is devoted to Solar Radiation Problems.
May 1, 1970	The Archives of American Art formally joins the Smithsonian Institution as a bureau. Regional branch offices are located in New York, Detroit, San Francisco, and Washington, and field offices are located in Boston and Santa Fe. The Archives was founded in 1954 in Detroit as an independent research institution committed to encouraging and aiding scholarship in the visual arts in this country from the 18th century to the present time.
May 1, 1978	"The TIME of Our Lives" exhibit at National Portrait Gallery opens. It features people whose portraits graced the cover of Time Magazine for the past 20 years. The reception was attended by many of those featured, as well as the artists. These included Eugene McCarthy, John Sirica, Jamie Wyeth, William C. Westmoreland, Lady Bird Johnson, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, and Julia Child.
May 1, 1980	"American Portrait Drawings," 96 drawings by 75 artists opens at the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition included works by James McN. Whistler, Willem de Kooning, and Benjamin West.
May 2, 1923	The Freer Gallery of Art opens to the public. For the opening week, there were issued 3,300 invitations, and between May 9 and June 30, the total attendance was 32,648 visitors.
May 2, 1966	A historic collection of original drawings and Sunday newspaper color pages, known as the "Cavalcade of American Comics," is exhibited at the Smithsonian's National Museum of History and Technology, now the National Museum of American History.
May 3, 1968	The National Collection of Fine Arts, now the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is dedicated, having moved out of the Natural History Building and into the Old Patent Office Building which was vacated by the Civil Service Commission. At the dedication, President and Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson are escorted through the galleries by Secretary and Mrs. S. Dillon Ripley. The public opening was on May 6.
May 4, 1978	Leonard Baskin's bronze statue of Spencer Fullerton Baird, the second Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, is unveiled in the Victorian Garden behind the Smithsonian "Castle." To accommodate the statue, the garden is relandscaped by the Office of Horticulture.
May 4, 1978	The first exhibition produced by the Smithsonian Institution Archives opens in the Great Hall of the Smithsonian Institution Building, honoring Spencer F. Baird, first curator of the U.S. National Museum and second Smithsonian Secretary.
May 4, 1981	The National Air and Space Museum theater is renamed the astrophysicist and third Smithsonian Secretary, Samuel Pierpont Langley Theater.
May 5, 1997	The establishment of a Center for Latino Initiatives is announced at a press conference by Secretary I. Michael Heyman. The center coordinates Latino research and projects at the Smithsonian.
May 6, 1983	"The Silk Route and the Diamond Path," consisting of esoteric art created along the ancient trans-Himalayan trade routes, opens at the Evans Gallery, National Museum of Natural History, and includes rare sculpture, painted scrolls, ritual objects, and fragments of wall paintings.
May 7, 1987	A new invertebrate exhibit opens at the National Zoological Park, marking a major step toward transforming the Zoo into a biological park.
May 8, 1989	An agreement is signed with the Heye Foundation on the transfer of Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, collections of more than one million objects from the native peoples of North, Central, and South America. The George Gustav Heye Foundation's collection will be transferred to the Smithsonian Institution where it is now part of the new National Museum of the American Indian.
May 8, 1995	The Smithsonian Institution launches its Home Page (www.si.edu) on the World Wide Web. The site is officially opened with a demonstration in House Speaker Newt Gingrich's office. The site contains more then 1,500 electronic pages and contains overviews in Spanish, German, and French. Within the first 24 hours the page receives about 100,000 hits.
May 9, 1838	The English Court of Chancery suit pertaining to the James Smithson bequest brought by Richard Rush is decided in favor of the United States.
May 10, 1876	The Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia officially opens to the public. On the first day the exhibition is open it has 186,672 visitors. When Congress appropriated money for the government exhibits at the Centennial Exhibition, it was considered a loan, and suggested if income from the exhibition was sufficient for the loan to be repaid, Congress might then allow part of those funds to be used to construct a National Museum Building. The exhibition did well financially and on March 3, 1879, $250,000 was appropriated for building the National Museum, what is now the Arts and Industries Building. At the close of the exhibition, Spencer F. Baird convinced many exhibitors to donate their artifacts and specimens to the National Museum. The museum acquired some 62 boxcars of materials in 4000 cartons.
May 10, 1916	The Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation is founded by George Gustav Heye in the Borough of Manhattan, New York City. The nature of the museum was stated as "A museum for the collection, preservation, study and exhibition of all things connected with the anthropology of the aboriginal people of North, South and Central Americas, and containing objects of artistic, historic, literary and scientific interest."
May 10, 1976	The Arts and Industries Building is restored as closely as possible to its original appearance to house a recreation of the 1876 Centennial Exhibition. Among the notables present at the opening ceremonies for "1876: A Centennial Exhibition" are Secretary S. Dillon Ripley and Chief Justice Warren E. Burger who arrive in the horse-drawn carriage that had carried President Ulysses S. Grant to the 1876 exposition in Philadelphia. The Centennial recreation is one of 23 special Bicentennial of the American Revolution exhibitions and projects at the Institution, known collectively as "The American Experience." Another highlight is the exhibition "A Nation of Nations" in the National Museum of American History.
May 10, 1984	More than 500 volunteers and National Zoological Park employees work May 10-13 building a panda-sized exercise complex for the middle-aged duo, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing. The structure, designed by a New York architect, includes inclined ramps and stairs, balance beams and swings, a tunnel, high-rise platforms with feeding stations and even a hammock for naps.
May 11, 1984	Honoring the 150th anniversary of the birth of James McNeill Whistler, the Freer Gallery of Art opens an exhibition of all of its oils, watercolors, pastels and drawings, comprising some 300 works, by Whistler, as well as his only surviving architectural scheme, the Peacock Room. Freer attendance during the exhibit increased 50% over the comparable 1983 period.
May 12, 1987	Under secretary Dean Anderson signs a formal agreement with the Department of Agriculture's National Finance Center making the Center the Institution's payroll/personnel processing center. At the time, the NFC was handling the payrolls of more than 20 federal government agencies, including the Census Bureau, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
May 13, 1878	Secretary Joseph Henry dies at 12:10 p.m. in Washington, D.C. His funeral takes place on May 16 at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. He served as the first Secretary of the Institution from 1846 to his death in 1878.
May 14, 1968	After a judicial review of the Smithsonian Institution/Cooper Union Museum agreement, the Supreme Court of the State of New York rules that the transfer of the Cooper Union Museum to the Smithsonian could be accomplished and that the museum was legally an entity within the Smithsonian Institution. On July 1, 1968, the Smithsonian takes over the Cooper Union's museum, and the museum is renamed the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Design.
May 14, 1970	"The Smithsonian Institution," by Paul Oehser, former editor-in-chief of the Smithsonian Press, is released on May 14, selling for $8.95 a copy.
May 15, 1981	"The American Red Cross, a Century of Humanitarian Progress, 1881-1981" opens at the National Museum of American History, and continues through September 7, 1981.
May 16, 1983	The Museum Support Center, a collections management facility, opens in Suitland, Maryland. The center will meet the need for proper housing and protection of millions of museum artifacts and specimens. The formal dedication is held on May 16, but Smithsonian staff members were allowed to tour the facility from May 10-13.
May 16, 1997	"Space Race" opens at the National Air and Space Museum. The new exhibit in the Space Hall is the first time that American and Soviet objects pertaining to the Space Race have been displayed together. The exhibit includes rockets from World War II to a model of the international space station.
May 17, 1878	Assistant Secretary Spencer Fullerton Baird is unanimously elected the second Secretary by the Board of Regents. Baird's association with the Institution began in 1848 when he was aided by a grant of money from Smithsonian funds for research on the natural history of Pennsylvania. His term as Secretary lasts for nine years, from 1878 until his death in 1887.
May 18, 1977	"Little Olomana," a small steam locomotive like those used by industrial railways from 1870-1940 which was purchased in 1883 by the Waimanalo Sugar Company for service on a Hawaiian plantation railroad, is retired to the Railroad Hall of the National Museum of History and Technology, now the National Museum of American History.
May 18, 1979	"Dynamics of Evolution," the first exhibit hall in any American science museum to explain the basic steps of evolution, opens as a permanent installation in the National Museum of Natural History.
May 18, 1984	The Viking Lander I is officially transferred to the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This makes NASM the only museum in the world to possess an object that has landed on another planet, because the Viking Lander I rested on the surface of Mars. A copy of the Lander has been on display at the museum since February 6, 1980.
May 19, 1883	The relics of George Washington and other distinguished persons are transferred from the Commissioner of Patents to the National Museum, along with the Colonel Lewis collection of Washington relics, purchased for $12,000 by Congressional appropriation, and never previously unpacked in Washington. Included in the Lewis collection are two portraits of George and Martha Washington, painted by John Trumbull, considered among the choicest treasures of American art.
May 20, 1977	"Painting and Sculpture in California: The Modern Era" opens at the National Collection of Fine Arts, now the Smithsonian American Art Museum, with works created from 1900 to 1976 by 199 artists.
May 21, 1974	A signing ceremony is held in the Secretary's Parlor to establish the Edward P. Henderson Meteorite Fund. The fund, named in honor of the benefactor, a curator emeritus of the National Museum of Natural History, is the SI's first large money endowment specifically designed for the study of meteorites in the history of the Smithsonian. Henderson came to the Smithsonian in 1929, after ten years as a United States Geological Survey chemist.
May 22, 1908	By act of the United States Congress, the colossal marble statue of George Washington by Horatio Greenough, which since 1875 has occupied its well-known position in front of the United States Capitol, is transferred to the custody of the Smithsonian Institution. The statue was removed from the plaza east of the Capitol building in November 1908 and was installed in the west hall of the Smithsonian Institution Building soon after. It remained in the west hall until September 1962 when it moved to the National Museum of History and Technology, now the National Museum of American History.
May 22, 1987	The Enid A. Haupt Garden opens on a 4.2-acre quadrangle adjacent to the Smithsonian Institution Building and Arts and Industries Building. The garden includes urns, red-brick paths, lampposts and 19th-century-style furnishings; below it is a three-story underground museum, research, and education complex. The garden is named for its donor, Enid Annenberg Haupt, who contributed $3 million toward construction of the garden.
May 23, 1984	"Ethiopia: The Christian Art of an African Nation" opens at the National Museum of African Art. The exhibition includes painted wood icons, crosses, crowns, incense burners, and percussion instruments from the 15th century to the present. Modern photographs showing religious objects in use are also displayed.
May 24, 1977	"The Thomas Eakins Collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden," the first extensive showing (118 works) of one of the largest Eakins collections in the United States, opens at the Hirshhorn. It is held in conjunction with "Thomas Eakins: A Symposium," a day-long series of lectures by four leading Eakins scholars.
May 25, 1965	Fire breaks out in Hall 11 of the Museum of Natural History. The loss to the building, cases, and equipment is estimated $10,000 and the loss to the museum of the specimens was irreplaceable. One case of Pueblo Indian figures, the earliest documented in the world, was totally destroyed. Another case contained religious objects from Franciscan Missions in the Southwest. The only object saved was a copper bell. Faulty electrical apparatus was believed to be the cause of the fire.
May 26, 1897	The Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration opens. It is located on the fourth floor of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. In 1968 the museum becomes a part of the Smithsonian Institution and is renamed the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Design.
May 27, 1981	Docent Abby Holtz receives a 15-year award pin. She is the first docent to serve the Smithsonian Institution for this length of time.
May 27, 1994	"In Search of Giant Squids," a permanent exhibition, opens at the National Museum of Natural History. The exhibition explores and interprets the mystery and complexity of the world's largest invertebrates. A bioluminescent "giant" squid, able to flash blue-green light in the ocean depths, is a highlight of the exhibition. The curator is Clyde Roper, a leading authority on squids.
May 28, 1914	The rehabilitation of the Langley aerodrome at the Curtiss airplane factory is completed, and the aerodrome is successfully launched with Glenn H. Curtiss piloting the craft. Secretary C. D. Walcott provides a controversial statement that the tests thus far have shown that the late Secretary Samuel P. Langley had succeeded in building the first airplane capable of sustained free flight with a man, a statement that the Institution later retracted.
May 29, 1981	A 30-second public service announcement, "Think Smithsonian," is produced by the Office of Public Affairs to bring the Institution's many varied activities to the attention of television audiences. It is distributed to 100 stations within 500 miles of Washington and is broadcast by approximately 75 percent of those stations.
May 30, 1985	"Mammals in the Limelight" opens in the National Museum of Natural History as a permanent exhibition. The exhibition consists of murals showing environmental changes of North America by depicting the landscape as it was 50, 30, 20, and 10 million years ago. Also included are mounted skeletons, including fox-sized horse, titantothere and giant stegomastodon, which reflect how animals adapted to the environmental changes.
May 31, 1966	The Court of Claims Building is turned over to the Smithsonian Institution for renovation into the Renwick Gallery of Art (P.L. 89-435). The building served as the first Corcoran Gallery of Art and was designed by architect James Renwick, Jr., who also designed the Smithsonian Institution Building.