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The Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum is in South Kensington, the museum is home to life and earth science collections comprising some 70 million items. There are five main collections: Botany, Entomology, Mineralogy, Palaeontology and Zoology. There is also a wildlife garden containing native fauna and flora. The museum is renowned for its exhibition of dinosaur skeletons, particularly the large Diplodocus cast which dominates the entrance.
The foundation of the collection was a bequest by Irish doctor Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753). Sloane's collection was initially housed in Montague House in Bloomsbury in 1756 which was the home of The British Museum. In the late 1850s, Professor Richard Owen saw that the natural history departments needed a bigger, separate building.
Land in South Kensington was purchased, and in 1864 a competition was held to design the new museum. The winning entry was submitted by Captain Francis Fowke who died shortly afterwards. The scheme was taken over by Alfred Waterhouse who substantially revised the agreed plans. Work began in 1873 and was completed in 1880. The new museum opened in 1881, although not fully completed until 1883. Both the interiors and exteriors made extensive use of terracotta bricks to resist the sooty climate of Victorian London. The bricks include images of plants, animals and fossils.
The Darwin Centre (named after Charles Darwin) holds a collection of millions of preserved specimens. Lectures and demonstrations occur daily, and are sometimes webcast. The shared space is designed to bring visitors into close contact with working scientists. The Darwin Centre is also home to Archie the squid, an 8 metre long giant squid taken alive in a fishing net near the Falkland Islands.
The museum will also hold the remains and bones of The River Thames Whale that lost its way on 20 January 2006 and ended up in the Thames. Despite major rescue attempts, the Bottlenose Whale died shortly before it was due to be released back into open waters when it suffered a convulsion and died on board the barge taking it toward the sea. These bones were donated following a campaign by The Sun newspaper.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_History_Museum)
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