4. Peale’s life has nothing to do with this book, but it surely deserves its own museum exhibition and more. His career, which began in poverty in Maryland, was a long string of first-ever’s. He opened the first modern American museum, painted the first portrait of George Washington in 1772, organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801 to dig up fossils in New York, displayed the first mastodon skeleton in any museum in the world, and owned the American patent to the first version of the copy machine back when it was called a polygraph (not to be confused with a modern lie detector). He also named most of his children after famous painters and scientists, which has considerable relevance to Chapter 6.