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Voyages of Discovery

April 19, 2001 - July 22, 2001

Museum: Natural History Museum

Location: 1st Floor, Center (Hall 10)

Exploring the human drama of key British scientific voyages by Sir Hans Sloane, Captain James Cook, and Charles Darwin during the Age of Sail, this exhibition presents the places, animals, plants, and people they encountered. Treasures brought back from distant and unknown lands and now on view for the first time include rare botanical, entomological, geological, and zoological specimens, as well as artworks, photographs, prints, and drawings. Organized by The Natural History Museum in London, England.

Highlights include:

• the herbarium sheet with the first record of cocoa, the basis for milk chocolate, from Sir Hans Sloane's 17th-century voyage to Jamaica
• objects from Captain James Cook's mid-18th century voyage to the South Pacific
• Charles Darwin's pocket sextant and beetle collection from his early 19th-century voyage to Galapagos aboard the HMS Beagle
• a photograph of an iceberg taken with the 1st camera to be used on a scientific voyage on the Challenger.

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