A guy was driving down the street in a sweat because he had an important meeting and couldn't find a parking spot.
Looking up to heaven, he said: "Lord, take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I will go to mass every Sunday for the rest of me life and give up me whiskey!"
Miraculously, a parking spot suddenly appeared.
The guy looked up again and said: "Never mind, I found one."
The Smithsonian InstitutionIn 1846, an Act of Congress signed by President James K. Polk established the Smithsonian Institution as a trust to administer the generous bequest of James Smithson, an amount over $500,000. In 1826, James Smithson, a British scientist, drew up his last will and testament, naming his nephew as beneficiary. Smithson stipulated that, should the nephew die without heirs (as he would in 1835), the estate should go “to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” The motives behind Smithson's bequest remain mysterious; he had never traveled to the U.S. and seems to have had no correspondence with anyone there. |
