I’ve been in the back rooms there a couple of times, long ago, and I can scarcely imagine that we haven’t burnt one down yet.
And the Smithsonian was way better than the Natural History museum I used to work for.
We had a new fire marshal visit, and he was very full of himself and wanted to throw his authoritye around, but was over his head ten minutes into the visit.
“Why are there steel fire doors here?”
“Because there are over three million jars in that building, holding around five hundred thousand gallons of alcohol, preserving specimens. And the most important collection of dried plant specimens in the Western hemisphere is on the top floor.”
“Uh, OK, I need to go look some things up, I’ll be back later.”
