The Smithsonian Institution was established
On this day · 10 August 1846
A British scientist who never set foot in America left his fortune to found a place "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge."
On 10 August 1846, President James K. Polk signed the act creating the Smithsonian Institution, ending nearly a decade of congressional argument over what to do with a strange and generous gift.
The money came from James Smithson, a British chemist and mineralogist who had never visited the United States. His 1826 will left his estate to a nephew, but stipulated that if the nephew died without heirs, everything should go “to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.”
The nephew duly died childless in 1835, and the bequest arrived as 104,960 gold sovereigns — worth more than $500,000, a fortune at the time.
Lawmakers spent years debating whether to build a library, a university, or a research laboratory. The compromise was all of the above, governed by a Board of Regents. Today it runs 21 museums and the National Zoo.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
