National Museum of Natural History

Robert Bateman had a big exhibition at the National Museum of National History, which is the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum, it's the largest by a factor of four in the world.

The American Museum in New York, which is, I'd say, a little more famous, is one-fourth the size of the National Museum of Natural History.

So this is a massive museum right on the mall there in Washington, D.C. And our original focus was an exhibition there.

We got it approved and then the director was, had his head chopped off and went rolling down the hall and some big political scandal.

And when the U.S. or the Saudis or somebody is just going to take them out.

And President Trump wants a 30-foot statue of George Washington out in front of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

Imagine that, folks.

A museum that's actually about American history, including George.

But the diamond will never be returned to France.

Instead, it will eventually be donated to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.

It remains on display there to this day, and each year, millions of visitors come to admire its beauty, just as the thief Paul Miéte once did when he was planning an extraordinary heist that began on September 11th, 1792.

[instrumental music plays] Next on History Daily, September 14th, 1812.

Dale received his PhD in comparative biochemistry from Iowa State University and worked in the pharmaceutical industry for many years.

However, the rest and best of the story comes after Dale retired and began volunteering for the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

There he worked for the past 15 years curating the fossil insect collections.

He initiated the Kishine formation fossil insect collection project and has been responsible for all field work and curation of the collection and interaction with and reports to the U.S. Forest Service.

You're listening to a reading of articles and features from Scientific American magazine on the Niagara Frontier radio reading service.

In 2024, evolutionary geneticist Moreno Maillard and his colleagues published a major study of ancient DNA from the island, using remains from 15 individuals held in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

Radiocarbon dating showed that the remains were from a range of times between 1670 and 1950. all dated to after the supposed 1600s collapse.

Some also dated to after European contact.

I mean, it's interesting.

Three weeks after the July 4th report sort of taking issue with all these various things at the Smithsonian National History Museum, Trump issues this executive order ordering the National Park Service which manages the National Mall, you know, which is the green space that many of the Smithsonian's museums face onto, instructing the National Park Service to erect signage that people would essentially have to pass by in order to enter the museum, you know, warning them that like there could be misleading information inside.

To my knowledge, I haven't triple-checked recently, but as of a couple weeks ago, at least one person who lives in Washington DC confirmed that there had been no signage erected yet.

Obviously that could change at any time.

There are several amazing documentaries that highlight reefs.

And of course, the Smithsonian Natural History Museum's website, ocean.si.edu, is a great resource, as well as NOAA.

NOAA has great coral reef educational materials as well.

We'll put some

You know, national museums, uh, have articles on it.

The Smithsonian, uh, Smithsonian National Museum, they have more sources, stories behind it, and who owned it.

Um, yeah, just look it up if you wanna learn more.

Also, if you don't have Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your streaming service, you could always join our website, mysteriesandbeyond.com, where we have our most recent episode on there and five of our previous episodes on there as well.

The Hope Diamond.

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. You've probably seen it.

45.52 carats of deep blue diamond.

Worth probably $250 million.

So it's certainly wasn't for the money.

Um, but I got into it, I think, with my, uh, postdoc supervisor at the, uh, National Museum of Natural History, Jun Wen, um, who's been studying it a bit for quite a while, among other groups in the Rosaceae.

Um, and we really started to figure out that it's a really cool system for understanding, um, not just the evolution of this specific group, but how plant groups might evolve, um, on our planet as it changes, especially with respect to climatic and environmental changes over time.

Hmm.