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unusual facts about Smithsonian



1947 Centralia mine disaster

American folksinger Woody Guthrie wrote and recorded a song about the Centralia mine disaster entitled The Dying Miner. Guthrie's recording of the song is now available on the Smithsonian-Folkways recording Struggle (1990).

Andrew Cockburn

Apart from his books he has written for National Geographic, Los Angeles Times, The London Review of Books, Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, Harper's Magazine, CounterPunch, Condé Nast Traveler, New York Times, and the Dungarvan Observer.

Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa

The manuscript was discovered in the Barberini archives of the Vatican Library in 1929 by Dr Charles Upson Clark, who edited it for the series Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections in English (1942) and Spanish, (1944).

Biarmosuchia

Hopson, J.A. and Barghusen, H.R. (1986), An analysis of therapsid relationships in N Hotton, III, PD MacLean, JJ Roth and EC Roth, The Ecology and Biology of Mammal-like Reptiles, Smithsonian Institution Press, pp.

Boller and Chivens

A 41-cm (16-inch) Boller and Chivens Cassegrain reflector originally housed at the Harvard-Smithsonian Oak Ridge Observatory in Massachusetts is available for public use at the National Air and Space Museum's Public Observatory Project on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

Bowers Museum

The museum has cultivated partnerships with the Smithsonian, the Nanjing Museum, the Shanghai Museum, and the British Museum, among others, to bring national and international exhibitions from the world's greatest museums to Southern California.

Calvert Vaux

Together they designed many significant projects, such as the grounds in the White House and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. Vaux’s work on the Smithsonian inspired an article he wrote for The Horticulturalist, of which Downing was the editor, in which he stated his view that it was time the government should recognize and support the arts.

Center for Short-Lived Phenomena

CSLP restructured in 1975, with some activities moved to other portions of the Smithsonian to become the Scientific Event Alert Network, and eventually the Global Volcanism Program.

Chalk Emerald

The ring was donated by Mr. and Mrs. O. Roy Chalk to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in 1972 and is part of the Smithsonian's National Gem and Mineral Collection.

Chandra Kintala

He received 6 US patents and a Smithsonian medal sponsored by Computer World in 1998.

Chester Rural Cemetery

Two monuments in the cemetery have been documented by the Smithsonian Institution Research Information System: "Sorrow" by Samuel Murray, and the Civil War Memorial, by Martin Milmore.

Clovis culture

The controversial Solutrean hypothesis proposed in 1999 by Smithsonian archaeologist Dennis Stanford and colleague Bruce Bradley (Stanford and Bradley 2002), suggests that the Clovis people could have inherited technology from the Solutrean people who lived in southern Europe 21,000–15,000 years ago, and who created the first Stone Age artwork in present-day southern France.

Colin Woodard

His work has appeared in dozens of publications including The Economist, Smithsonian, The Washington Post, Newsweek/The Daily Beast, Bloomberg View, Washington Monthly, and Down East, where he was a contributing editor.

Cooper Hewitt

Cooper–Hewitt, National Design Museum, a museum of the Smithsonian Institution dedicated to design

Dan Milner

In 2009, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, an arm of the Smithsonian Institution, America's national museum, released "Irish Pirate Ballads and Other Songs of the Sea," which features many of Irish America's foremost musicians and singers, including John Doyle, Joanie Madden, Susan McKeown, Mick Moloney, Brian Conway, Gabriel Donohue and Robbie O'Connell.

Donald S. Lopez, Sr.

(July 15, 1923 – March 3, 2008) was a U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force fighter and test pilot and until his death the deputy director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Far East of Eden

Most players will note that the series also makes reference to another 'creator', Paul Hieronymus Chada, who is presented as a 19th-century Smithsonian sociologist/historian similar to that of Sigmund Freud or Karl Marx.

Fokker Eindecker fighters

Boyne, Walter J. The Smithsonian Book of Flight for Young People.

Folkways Records

Since acquiring Folkways, the Smithsonian has expanded Asch's collection by adding several other record labels, including Cook, Monitor, Fast Folk, Dyer-Bennet, and Paredon.

From the Vault

Stories from the Vaults, a behind-the-scenes series focusing on the Smithsonian Institute

Greta Pratt

She is the author of two books of photographs, Using History (Steidl, 2005) and In Search of the Corn Queen (National Museum of American Art, 1994), and her works are represented in major public and private collections, including the National Museum of American Art: Smithsonian Institution, The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Portland (Oregon) Art Museum, and Minneapolis Institute of Art.

John C. Ewers

At the time of his death he was Ethnologist Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution and was the first recipient of the Smithsonian's Exceptional Service Award as well as the Western History Association's Oscar O. Winther Award and the American Alliance of Museums's Distinguished Service Award.

John Francillon

Richard Kurin, Hope Diamond: The Legendary History of a Cursed Gem, New York: HarperCollins Publishers & Smithsonian Press, 2006.

Julian day

The Modified Julian Date (MJD) was introduced by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in 1957 to record the orbit of Sputnik via an IBM 704 (36-bit machine) and using only 18 bits until August 7, 2576.

Karen Latham

The Latham women's paintings have been shown in the Smithsonian, Nature in Art museum (UK), Hiram Blauvelt museum, and the Gilcrease museum.

Langley Aerodrome

Aerodrome No. 5, the first Langley heavier-than-air craft to fly, is on display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Aerodrome No. 6 is located at Wesley W. Posvar Hall, University of Pittsburgh, and was restored in part by the Pitt engineering students.

Lesley Riddle

Riddle also made appearances at the Smithsonian Folk Festival and the Mariposa Folk Festival.

Loren McIntyre

Over the following years McIntyre's photos and articles would appear in more than 500 publications, including Time, Life, Smithsonian, GEO, Audubon, and South American Explorer.

Marc Leepson

His work has appeared in many magazines and newspapers, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, and Smithsonian, Preservation, and Military History magazines.

Michael Aaron Dennis

Conducted a postdoctoral fellowships at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum and the UCSD.

Michael McCoy

McCoy’s innovative design of products, furniture, and interiors has led to museum exhibitions of his work worldwide, including the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum in New York, the British Design Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, the Axis Gallery in Tokyo and the Cranbrook Art Museum.

National Anthropological Archives

It is located in the Smithsonian's Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland and is part of the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History.

Nkisi

Recently some modern artists have also been interested in creating nkisi of their own, most notably Renee Stout, whose exhibition "Astonishment and Power" at the Smithsonian Institution coupled her own versions of nkisi with a commentary by noted anthropologist Wyatt MacGaffey.

Peter Wagner

Peter J. Wagner (born 1964), American paleontologist and Smithsonian curator

Philip Freelon

In 2009, along with partners J. Max Bond, Jr. (of Davis Brody Bond) and David Adjaye (of Adjaye Associates), Freelon was selected by unanimous decision to design the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Philip K. Lundeberg

"Working with Howard I. Chapelle, he directed the construction of some thirty museum-quality scale models to illustrate the development of American warship design. In 1981, he organized the Smithsonian's exhibition to mark the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown, entitled "By Sea and By Land: Victory with the Help of France.

Phyllis Sheffield

Jeff Klinkenberg wrote about their work and it has been displayed at the Smithsonian.

Pop Hart

Hart's work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Brooklyn Museum; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Smithsonian Institution; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the British Museum, and other institutions in the United States and Europe.

Punjab gharana

He has played in some of the most prestigious venues and festivals around the world, including the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C., Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, Lincoln Center in New York and the prestigious Royal Albert Hall.

Redfern Fokker Dr.1

The aircraft plans were developed using Peter M. Bowers' triplane plans, Smithsonian plans and original plans from Reinhold Platz, the original German designer of the Dr.1.

Robert Nickle

Robert Nickle's work is included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, David and Alfred Smart Gallery, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Indianapolis Museum, Smithsonian Museum, Carnegie Institute Museum and the National Gallery in Washington.

Saint Louis Science Center

The Planetarium was designed by Gyo Obata of Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum with a unique shape (Obata was later tasked in the 1970s with designing the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.).

Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute

It hosts a large (25 ha) forest dynamics plot that is part of the Center for Tropical Forest Science/ Smithsonian Global Earth Observatory and is slated to be the Mid-Atlantic core site in the National Ecological Observatory Network.

Smithsonian Institution Libraries

The original library was founded by an Act of Congress on August 10, 1846, when the Smithsonian Institution was named a trust instrumentality of the United States.

Southern Railway Ps-4 class

The engines are notable for their green with gold trim liveries, and have been regarded by Smithsonian curator John H. White, Jr. as being "among the most celebrated passenger locomotives operated in the United States...."

Stan Stokes

Stokes's works hang in the Air Force art collection, the United States Air Force Academy, The Pentagon, the San Diego Air & Space Museum, the Palm Springs Air Museum, the National Museum of Naval Aviation, and the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

T. V. Raman

On April 12, 1999, Emacspeak became part of the Smithsonian's Permanent Research Collection on Information Technology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Trade literature

Kernan, Michael, "Generations of old mail-order catalogs make colorful index to what folks prized and paid for, way back when," Smithsonian vol.

William J. Hough

Quoting from archives: "These papers consist of Hough's correspondence with David Dale Owen concerning the selection of stones for the Smithsonian Building and an original proposal for the Smithsonian Building from the architect, James Renwick, Jr.

WorldWide Telescope

One of the tours featured was made by a six year old boy, while other tours are made by astrophysicists such as Dr. Alyssa A. Goodman of the Harvard/Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Dr. Robert L. Hurt of Caltech/JPL.


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