Description: While in graduate school, I read that museum professionals wear many hats in one day. This could not be truer at the Smithsonian Institution Archives. [caption id="attachment_7424" align="alignright" width="180" caption="Climbing the Plank to the Top, May 27, 2010, by Lauren Dare, Digital photograph."][/caption] I’ve worn many hats working in the Institutional History Division
Description: On January 16, 1907, a man carrying packages asked a carpenter for directions to a former colleague's office in the U.S. National Museum. Minutes later, that man pulled a rifle out of one of the packages and murdered an illustrator working for the Smithsonian.
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_arc_287602,size=250,left]As a child in England in the 1930s, Oliver Sacks enjoyed playing with his Uncle Abe’s spinthariscope. It was, he would later recall, “a beautifully simple instrument, consisting of a fluorescent screen and a magnifying eyepiece, and inside, an infinitesimal speck of radium.We take a look at the spinthariscope at the Smithsonian.