Within the first five minutes of walking through the front door, I discovered the most interesting thing about this museum.   Did you know that the Smithsonian Museum is named after a person?  I didn’t.

James Smithson desired for his fortune, “to found, at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment…”   When he died in 1829 he left most of his fortune with his nephew.  He had one stipulation: If his nephew died without an heir, all of his wealth would go to the United States.  Since his nephew was only 22, that didn’t seem likely.  Amazingly, his nephew died at age 28 without having children. 

Here are some other things I discovered about this interesting story:

·         James Smithson wasn’t even a U.S. citizen.  In fact, he’d never even been here once in his life time!  Can you imagine bequeathing your fortune to a country you’d never even visited?

·         There were those in Congress that argued the money should be refused! (Now, I find that AMAZING!)

The beginning point of the Smithsonian is a large, old castle.  It is the information center and a starting point, but I personally found more interesting things in here than in any other part of the institution!  Everything in the museum has been donated, and as it has been said that, “Every gift has bequeathed another.”  The story behind each gift; who donated it; why they gave it; and what led them to give it intrigued me.

Going in a group of nine, and trying to all stick together, takes a lot of give and take of interests.  Matt wanted to spend time in the area of dinosaur bones (and there were a lot of them!)  I would have gladly skipped this part as it didn’t seem that terribly different than the Natural Museum in Chicago, Illinois, that I visited a seemingly hundred times when I was a kid (Chicago Public School field trips.) 

The room that was filled with gems and stones was a place I could have spent a few days.  I found it incredibly interesting that these gorgeous gems were formed by natural elements from the periodical table (something that has always held my fascination.)   Some of the stones and gems were made of the exact minerals and elements, in the same proportions, but yet were completely different colors.  

We went to an I-max movie that is 3-D.  This is the kind of film that they give you those silly looking glasses to wear while watching it.  If you have seen one like this, I am betting it was not in comparison to the one they show at the Smithsonian.  The film we seen was about dinosaurs, and the optical illusion made it as if there were dinosaur birds flying straight towards you.  Many times it felt as if you could reach out and touch it right before your eyes.  If you are a science fiction /Stargate/Atlantis lover, think; “Hologram”.  It is just like it.  It’s amazing.

Today we spent another day at the museum and this time we were at the Air and Space Museum. For a homeschooler mom that just finished encouraging a semester’s worth of studying the planets and solar system, this was a dream.  There was another 3-D movie about astronauts and the study of exploring the planets and solar system; and an Albert Einstein Planetarium that explained Black Holes in a way that I could have never come close with my available resources from home.

Tomorrow, it’s on the agenda to see the White House.  Stay tuned…