August 10 · This Day in America
President James K. Polk signs a law eight years in the making, and the United States accepts a strange and generous gift. James Smithson, a British scientist who never set foot in America, had willed his entire fortune to a country he had only read about, to found in Washington "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." Congress argued for years over what that even meant. A national university? An observatory? A library? In the end it built something larger than any single idea: a place to gather, study, and show the whole sweep of the natural and human world, and to give it back to everyone, for free. Today the Smithsonian holds more than 150 million objects across its museums and the National Zoo. It began as a foreigner's faith that a young republic could be trusted with curiosity itself.
Source: siarchives.si.edu
Also on this day · 1874
In West Branch, Iowa, a blacksmith's son is born in a tiny board cottage. Orphaned by nine, Herbert Hoover worked his way through Stanford's first class, made a fortune as a mining engineer, then fed millions of starving Europeans after the Great War. He became the 31st president just before the Depression broke over him. His humble beginning and his vast humanitarian relief work are both true at once.
Source: hoover.archives.gov
“the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men”James Smithson's bequest, 1826