President Theodore Roosevelt had a lifelong connection to the Smithsonian. He played a critical role in the acquisition of the Freer Gallery of Art, encouraged research and study of the Panama Canal Zone (now celebrating 100 years of Smithsonian involvement in 2010), and was a staunch supporter of the U.S. National Museum. He signed the bill authorizing the construction of a new building for the Museum (today the National Museum of Natural History), which opened its doors to the public 100 years ago. While on a post-presidency expedition to East Africa, jointly sponsored by the Smithsonian, he collected many animals for the Museum. These specimens formed the basis of one of the Museum's most popular exhibits for much of its first century.
When Roosevelt was only in his twenties, he offered the National Museum his childhood natural history cabinet, which he had begun at the age of nine and playfully called the “Roosevelt Museum of Natural History.” The collection featured insects and nearly 250 carefully labeled specimens of birds and mammals, including a number of Egyptian birds he had collected in the Nile Valley at age fourteen, while traveling with his father. The Museum accepted these donations and Roosevelt's continued patronage in the years to come, even when he was in the White House ...
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Text courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution
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