Description: Did you know that Joseph Francis invented the first metal life-saving boat? Or that Gail Borden invented the process for creating condensed milk? Neither did I until I heard The World Is Yours episode titled “Unheraled American Inventors,” which originally aired on April 4, 1937.Where most of the episodes I’ve listened to begin with the host walking up to two people while they
Description: Eliza Scidmore was a lifelong photographer, writer, and world traveler. In addition to facilitating a gift of cherry blossom trees from Japan to the U.S. capital, Scidmore donated her time, photographs, and some artifacts to the Smithsonian’s collections. She also accessed the world through colonial channels that she reinforced with her writings.
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_14623,size=300,left]Born in 1936 in Washington DC, John Robert Edward Kinard would become the first African American director of a Smithsonian museum at the age of 31. Kinard’s circuitous path into museum work took him from development work in Africa to community organizing on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to a dilapidated theater on Nichols Street in DC’s
Description: The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) was created on November 18, 1989, when President George H.W. Bush signed an act allowing the transfer of the Museum of the American Indian into the Smithsonian to create NMAI. As one of the Smithsonian’s newer museums, the images in this gallery show the evolution of postcard use at the Smithsonian. The NMAI postcards mainly