On August 10, 1846, President James K. Polk signed a law that created one of the strangest, most wonderful institutions on Earth: the Smithsonian. The strangest part? The man who funded it had never set foot in America. His name was James Smithson, a wealthy British scientist, and when he died in 1829 he left his entire fortune to the United States for, in his own words, 'the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.'
Congress argued for years about what to do with all that gold. Build a university? A library? An observatory? Finally they settled on a great national museum and research center based in Washington, D.C. The first building, a red sandstone castle with turrets and towers, opened in 1855 and still stands today. Slowly the Smithsonian started collecting absolutely everything: dinosaur bones, moon rocks, the original Star-Spangled Banner flag, the Wright brothers' airplane, Dorothy's ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz.
Today the Smithsonian has grown into 21 museums and the National Zoo, holding more than 157 million items. If you visited and looked at every object for one second, it would take you over four years without sleeping. Best of all, every single museum is free to enter, just as James Smithson wanted. A stranger from England left his money to a country he'd never seen, and that country turned it into a place where anyone, rich or poor, can walk in off the street and see the wonders of the world.
