Melodrama at the Smithsonian

And that’s exactly what happened. The nephew died in 1837, eight years after James’s death in 1829, without an heir. So the money came to America.

But why? That’s the intriguing part of the story. James Smithson never visited the US, and as far as we know had no close connections to anyone here. So why give his fortune to America? One theory is that he did it out of spite to the British people, who had treated him badly because of the circumstances of his birth.