Steve berry he has a cool job, he looks after this stuff in the building. It is really neat. A really interesting place, kind of where it started. The smithsonian was started by a man named james smithson. He was an innocuous british chemist. He was just a guy who had an interest in science at the time. He died at he had 500,000 when he died and he left it to his nephew. His nephew had been married and had kids, life would be great, he would have cap the money, but he died childless. The provision said the money would go to washington, d. C. To found the Smithsonian Institution for the increase and diffusion of knowledge. That is what the language says. Here is the neat part. He had never set foot in america. Why did he leave a half Million Dollars to place he never set a foot in . To this day, nobody knows. The guess is he was somewhat bitter. , soas an illegitimate son for the 30 years of his life, he first was known as james lewis macey. Because he was illegitimate, he was never all
Deliver west point to the british offers insights. He talks about british and american participants after the plot was uncovered. This was hosted by colonial williamsburg. Its about an hour. Thanks so much for that warm welcome. Im really pleased to see as many people in the audience tonight when i was driving down from Northern Virginia through heavy rain it might be a biblical quote but fortunately thats not the case. You have to keep checking your assumptions. If your assumptions are incorrect it can lead you to some very wrong conclusions. I would like to illustrate that by the following story which i hope you will find somewhat humorous, although somewhat ribald as well. Heres the story. The smiths were unable to conceive children and decided to use a surrogate father to start their family. On the day the proxy father was to arrive, mr. Smith kissed his wife goodbye, said, well, im off nowment the man will be here soon. Half an hour later, just by chance, a baby photographer happe
Nothing this this room can change. To my left down the block is the colorado river. This is an important site in the citys history. This is where waterloo was. It was a cluster of cabin occupied by four or five familieses including j. Carol. Im standing at the spot where the cabin was. This is where Mirabella Mar was when he and the rest got word of a big buffalo herd in the vicinity. They jumped on the horses congress avenue wasnt the avenue. It was a muddy ravine then that led north to the hill where the capitol sits. The men galloped on the horse s. They stuffed their belts full of pistols and rode into the midst of the buffalo firing and shouting. Lamar at 8th and Congress Shot this enormous buffalo. From there he went to the top of the hill to where the capitol is. He told everybody this should be the seat of a future empire. Watch our oh eventses from austin saturday at noon eastern on c arespan 2s book tv and sunday afternoon at 2 00 on American History tv on cspan 3. During thi
Operated on socialist principles, using time money that could be earned with an hour of labor and exchanged for goods that took the same amount of labor to make. At new harmony robert del owens edited the new harmony gazette which took aim at what they called the trinity of evils private property, irrational religion, and marriage, which in their view was based on the other two evils. Like other 19 century utopian experiments, new harmony failed quickly, but Robert Dale Owen continued to pursue his interest in social reform. With the feminist freethinker Francis Wright also born in scotland, he founded a community devoted to educating freed slaves. He wrote the first book advocating for Birth Control alecto to represent indiana in the house of representatives and the 1840s and in that capacity he drafted a bill to create the smithsonian institution. He subsequently sat on his first board of regents and shared the Smithsonian Building Committee which built what we know we now know is th
There isn’t a day that some horrible news doesn’t come into our home via newspapers, magazines or email. Today is no different. Yesterday’s headline was that the Republican held House reauthorized a two-year government surveillance power in the FISA bill, and Speaker Mike Johnson cast the winning