Every So Often,

I receive a email or video from the Smithsonian Institution,

I never really questioned who Smithson was until I read this article from them, about how the Smithsonian Institution came to be, James Smithson (1765-1829) was a well-to-do English scientist who had never visited the United States, in his 1826 will, he left his estate to his nephew, but he ended his will with an odd clause that said if that nephew died without heirs, legitimate or illegitimate, the estate would go “to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men.”  when Smithson’s nephew died without heirs in 1835, the peculiar clause went into effect, on July 28, 1835, Smithson’s solicitors notified the United States government of the bequest, an 1835 article in the National Intelligencer told the public that a “gentleman of Paris” (he was born in secret in Paris, where his mother had gone to hide her pregnancy), had left a bequest to the United States, for the purpose of endowing a National University, the amount he left was not small, it totalled half a million dollars, or 1/66 of the United States' entire federal budget at the time, but here was the rub, just twenty years before, the British had burned the Capitol, and anti-British sentiment was still quite high and led to a fierce debate in congress, but cooler heads prevailed and the bequest was finally accepted by Andrew Jackson.