This story in yesterday’s paper made me smile. For 27 years, people have been walking past a display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, not paying any attention to the fact that it refers to Precambrian as an “era” when it’s actually a dimensionless unit of time (as we all know, right?) Anyway, 11-year-old Kenton Stufflebeam of Allegan, Michigan, noticed the glaring error during his vacation to Washington and alerted museum officials. The museum responded with a letter of gratitude to Kenton (although they misspelled his name and city - sigh) and promised to fix the problem.

It seems Kenton knew the period was misnamed because his fifth-grade teacher, John Chapman, had nearly made the same mistake in a classroom earth-science lesson before catching himself. “I knew Mr. Chapman wouldn’t tell all these students bad information,” he told reporters covering the story… Full story