Government

Historians who know nothing else about American religion often know one thing for sure: in July of 1925 fundamentalists got their noses rubbed in the dirt at the Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee. That building, of course, housed the famous Monkey Trial, the place where rural traditionalism met and finally bowed to the forces of urban secularism. This image, perpetuated by numerous journalists, by the popular play and movie Inherit the Wind, and even by respected textbooks, contains some truth and considerable mistruth. The task is to get it all sorted out.

The telephone was first introduced at the Centennial Exposition in 1876 and was an instant success. Although first rented only to "persons of good breeding" and seen as an expensive luxury for doctors and businessmen, the telephone soon transformed American life. Trees gave way to telephone poles as operators known as "hello girls" began to connect a sprawling continent.

Welcome to Images from the History of Medicine (IHM). This system provides access to the nearly 60,000 images in the prints and photograph collection of the History of Medicine Division (HMD) of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM). The collection includes portraits, pictures of institutions, caricatures, genre scenes, and graphic art in a variety of media, illustrating the social and historical aspects of medicine.

The Smithsonian is committed to enlarging our shared understanding of the mosaic that is our national identity by providing authoritative experiences that connect us to our history and our heritage as Americans and to promoting innovation, research and discovery in science. These commitments have been central to the Smithsonian since its founding more than 155 years ago.

What does a new and deadly epidemic look like? The first two AIDS patients admitted to the NIH research hospital arrived six months apart–in June 1981 and in January 1982–but many more filled beds soon thereafter. In the early years, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recalls, it “was like living in an intensive care unit all day long.” The patients were very sick, and despite the best efforts of NIH’s dedicated doctors and nurses, most patients eventually died.

For more than two hundred years the Royal Institution of Great Britain has been at the centre of scientific research and the popularisation of science in England.

Michael Faraday, the discoverer of electro-magnetic induction, electro-magnetic rotations, the magneto-optical effect, diamagnetism, field theory and much else besides, was born in Newington Butts (the area of London now known as the Elephant and Castle) on 22 September 1791. His father, James, was a blacksmith and a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London in the late 1780s from North-West England. Very little is known of the first few years of Faraday's life. In an autobiographical note Faraday recalled that he had attended a day school and had learnt the "rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic".

Begun formally in 1990, the U.S. Human Genome Project is a 13-year effort coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. The project originally was planned to last 15 years, but rapid technological advances have accelerated the expected completion date to 2003. Project goals are to
identify all the approximate 30,000 genes in human DNA,
determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA,
store this information in databases,
improve tools for data analysis,
transfer related technologies to the private sector, and
address the ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) that may arise from the project.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory operated by the University of California. LLNL was founded in September 1952 as a second nuclear weapons design laboratory to promote innovation in the design of our nation's nuclear stockpile through creative science and engineering. Livermore has also become one of the world's premier scientific centers, where cutting-edge science and engineering in the interest of national security is used to break new ground in other areas of national importance, including energy, biomedicine, and environmental science

The National Museum of American History (NMAH) is devoted to collecting, preserving, and interpreting artifacts as a special class of historical evidence—and as principal expressions of human creativity. The Museum is interested in how objects are made, how they are used, how they express human needs and values, and how they influence society and the lives of individuals. NMAH's natural focus is on the history of the United States of America, including its roots and connections with other cultures.