On a trip to Washington DC a little while ago, I found myself with time to kill before my flight home, and I knew exactly what it was in that city of treasures that I wanted to see: The Space Shuttle Discovery. But that being near the airport, I figured I also had time to check out something else, something even rarer and more noteworthy, something that was rumoured to be among the three million artefacts preserved in The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.