Description: In August 1996, the Smithsonian marked its 150th anniversary with a huge birthday celebration on the National Mall. For its sesquicentennial, a term which this author constantly forgets no matter how many times she looks it up, the Institution threw itself a two-day birthday party, sprinkled with special exhibit tents, concerts, nineteen birthday cakes, a special website, and
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_arc_391602,size=250,left]William Stimpson, co-creator of the Megatherium Club, was not only an exceptional zoologist, but also considered an extremely modest, warm-hearted friend, according to Robert Kennicott. Stimpson collected specimens for the Smithsonian’s invertebrate collection, of which he described 948 species.Stimpson was born on February 14,
Description: Impacting the National Air and Space Museum with her caring attitude and dedication to her work in the Building Management Department, Annie Sullivan is an individual to be remembered.
Description: As the architect Victor Lundy turns 90, we look back at the redwood shade structures he designed in the mid-1960s for the terrace of the new Museum of History and Technology (today the National Museum of American History).
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_8206,size=350,right]Born around 1815, James Thomas Gant was one of twelve children born to free parents on a plantation a few miles northeast of the Washington DC-line.1 As a free black man who lived through nearly the entire nineteenth century, he would see the Civil War, the destruction of slavery, the rise and fall of an all-too-brief period of