{"id":20,"date":"2005-09-30T02:12:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-30T02:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dov-gadol.ca\/blog\/gofani\/2005\/09\/30\/natural-history-museum\/"},"modified":"2005-09-30T02:12:00","modified_gmt":"2005-09-30T02:12:00","slug":"natural-history-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dov-gadol.ca\/blog\/gofani\/2005\/09\/30\/natural-history-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Natural History Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OK, I seem to have neglected talking about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nhm.ac.uk\" title=\"The Natural History Museum\" target=\"_blank\">The Natural History Museum<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I was as impressed with the building as with the actual collection. As with most things in London, the museum has been around in some form or another since 1753 <i>&#8230;when physician and collector of natural curiosities, Sir Hans Sloane, left his extensive collection to the nation&#8230;<\/i> The current building dates from about 1883.<\/p>\n<p>The collection includes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>55 million animals, including 28 million insects<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>nine million fossils<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>six million plant specimens<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>more than 500,000 rocks and minerals<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>3,200 meteorites in our collections<\/li>\n<p><\/ul>\n<p>Well&#8230;thats quite a bit, isnt it?<br \/>Needless to say, I didnt see everything.<\/p>\n<p>Fossils, plants, animals, insects, the human body and how it works, rocks, minerals, gold, silver, copper, diamonds, iron, the earth and how it works <i>(there is a giant spring in the middle that has to be kept wound)<\/i> and numerous school groups.<\/p>\n<p>This leads me to a story.<\/p>\n<p>As I wandered through the museum, I noticed that lots of the boys, in high school, wore their ties very short and some had pins at the bottom. I asked one boy about the pins, he explained that there were for various school sports; this case he was the captain of the cricket team. Dont ask me about cricket, Ill just refer you to the Insect collection. I thanked him, before I could offer him a flag pin, he was gone. <\/p>\n<p>Later, in the gift shop, where I didnt buy an 8 &pound; mug, and while waiting at the cash, I asked another boy about his short tie, he response was quick and too the point&#8230;Fashion I had my answer. <\/p>\n<p>He asked if I was from America, I responded that no, I was from Canada, and offered him a flag pin. I also offered the other kids around (3 or 4 flag pins) He was very cheeky, asking me more questions in the 4 or 5 minutes were together than I could answer. I did my best.<\/p>\n<p>We all paid and went on our way, less than a minute later, a small group of students from the same school surrounded me asking for pins, of course I gave them each a pin, more smiles and more rapid fire questions. How did they know about the pins? The boyfrom the cash. <\/p>\n<p>Their teacher tried to get them together, but without much luck.  I moved into a corner to pack myself to get on my way and again more students. I had a problem, there were 8 or 9 of them, but I only had 4 pins left. I wasnt happy, and I know I was going to disappoint some of them. I explained that I only had 4 pins and that couldnt do anything about it. I reached out and put the 4 pins in 4 hands. I apologized again, they thanked me and started to walk off to join their classmates, I had to find out who told them about the pins, boy number 1 again. I laughed and told him that I didnt have any more, so dont send anyone else. <\/p>\n<p>They and I were finally on my way out, we ended up walking to the tube station together, more questions and more of the teachers trying to control them.  <\/p>\n<p>I would have loved to chat with them, given them a lesson about Canada, but that was not part of their teachers plans. <\/p>\n<p>We went on our separate way at the Tube station.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t get much else done, museums are exausting.<\/p>\n<p>S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK, I seem to have neglected talking about the The Natural History Museum I was as impressed with the building as with the actual collection. As with most things in London, the museum has been around in some form or &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/dov-gadol.ca\/blog\/gofani\/2005\/09\/30\/natural-history-museum\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dov-gadol.ca\/blog\/gofani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dov-gadol.ca\/blog\/gofani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dov-gadol.ca\/blog\/gofani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dov-gadol.ca\/blog\/gofani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dov-gadol.ca\/blog\/gofani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/dov-gadol.ca\/blog\/gofani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dov-gadol.ca\/blog\/gofani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dov-gadol.ca\/blog\/gofani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dov-gadol.ca\/blog\/gofani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}