The Demon Crown

NOTES FROM THE HISTORICAL RECORD

Sigma Force has its roots buried beneath the Smithsonian Castle, a massive and turreted red sandstone structure built in 1849 at the edge of the National Mall. From that one venerable building, the sprawling complex of museums, research facilities, and laboratories of the Smithsonian Institution was born. But before all that and throughout the Civil War, this single building housed the entirety of the Smithsonian’s collections.

But where did this shining testament to science get its true start?

Oddly enough, it wasn’t an American who founded the institution, but rather an eccentric British chemist and mineralogist named James Smithson. Upon his death in 1829, he bequeathed a half-million dollars to the United States (about twelve million in today’s value, or roughly 1/66th of the federal budget at the time) to found “an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.”

Still, to this day, there remains a cloud of mystery surrounding this benefactor. For one, James Smithson never set foot on American soil, yet he left his fortune and a substantial mineral collection to this new nation. Furthermore, during his life, Smithson never spoke of his intention to bequeath such a largesse upon the United States, and oddly after his death, his nephew buried him in Genoa, Italy, rather than in England. One of the reasons little is known about the man today is that near the end of the Civil War, in 1865, a devastating fire broke out at the Castle. While the lower levels were spared (only sustaining water damage), the upper levels were torched. Most of Smithson’s handwritten papers — including his diaries and research journals — were destroyed. In that one fiery act, the man’s lifelong work was forever lost to history.

But the intrigue surrounding Smithson didn’t end with his death. In the winter of 1903, the famous American inventor Alexander Graham Bell traveled to Italy against the expressed wishes of the Smithsonian Board of Regents and broke into Smithson’s grave in Genoa. He collected the man’s bones into a zinc coffin and fled back to the United States aboard a steamship. Upon his return, Bell interred Smithson’s remains at the Castle, where they remain today.

So why did the inventor of the telephone defy the wishes of his fellow Smithsonian board members to secure Smithson’s body in such a harried manner? Was it merely, as claimed by most, that Smithson’s grave was being threatened by the expansion of a neighboring Italian quarry? Or was there something more going on concerning the eccentric James Smithson — first, his out-of-the-blue donation, then the mysterious fire that destroyed his heritage, and finally the strange journey by Alexander Graham Bell to secure his bones?

For the shocking truth about a dark American secret, keep reading…