Smithsonian Institute / Smithsonian Institution
“The Smithsonian Institute was founded because of an unusual bequest by James Smithson. His will stated that if his nephew died without issue, his estate would go to “the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institute, an establishment for increase and diffusion of knowledge.”
Many of you might not be aware there’s no such museum known as the Smithsonian INSTITUTE, it’s actually “always been” the Smithsonian INSTITUTION.
However, if you’ve been exposed to any sort of culture, it’s hard to have missed the Smithsonian Institute since it’s referenced so often. I was able to find 134,000 matches for a “Smithsonian Institute” search on Newspapers.com, so plenty of others remember it that way as well.
Amazingly, I found INSTITUTE listed on the official https://www.smithsonianmag.com/. If you inspect the code of footer, the alt text is listed as “Smithsonian Institute logo”, and the URL is “smithsonian-institute-logo.png”, yet the actual graphic clearly says, “Smithsonian Institution”.
Which do you recall?
For more Smithsonian Institute new clips:
https://flic.kr/s/aHsm8H6KEJ
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