Description: Natural history specimens and ethnographic artifacts were among the earliest collections of the US National Museum. In 1910, the National Museum of Natural History building opened to showcase these collections. Wings were added in the 1960s, and a collections storage facility in Maryland opened in 1983 to help house the National Museum of Natural History’s 126 million objects.
Description: In the short story “The Hildebrand Rarity,” (part of the novel For Your Eyes Only), the villainous American millionaire of the story, Milton Krest, reveals that he goes on his yacht to various locations in the world to retrieve exotic specimens for the Smithsonian so that he can write off the pleasure cruises on his taxes as scientific research on behalf of his foundation.