Description: Because World War I was sure to go down in history, the curator of the History Division, Theodore T. Belote, began collecting artifacts documenting the war even before it was over. As the war wound down and soldiers started returning home, Belote and his superiors at the US National Museum worked with the War Department and contacts in the Army and the Navy to document the
Description: [view in Spanish][edan-image:id=siris_sic_13396,size=150,left]Much of the Smithsonian's early natural history collections came from Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. The fourth Annual Report (1850) discusses several Latin American expeditions, in particular the exploration of islands near Nicaragua by Ephraim G. Squier, who served as U.S. charge d'affaires