Charles Darwin letter returned to Smithsonian over 30 years after theft; Guardian, 6/2/16

Alan Yuhas, Guardian; Charles Darwin letter returned to Smithsonian over 30 years after theft:

"More than three decades after a letter by Charles Darwin was stolen, the FBI’s art crime team has recovered and returned it to the Smithsonian.

The letter, part of the Darwin’s correspondence with an American geologist, Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, was written in May 1875 to thank his fellow naturalist for field studies of what became Yellowstone national park.

It was stolen in the mid-1970s from the Smithsonian archives, not long after it arrived there as part of the papers of George Perkins Miller, another 19th-century geologist.

An FBI spokesperson told the Guardian the letter was stolen by an employee before it could be inventoried in the large collection, so the theft at first went unnoticed. Earlier this year, the FBI received a tip from someone who said they knew where the letter was kept – in the Washington DC area, not far from the Smithsonian...

The FBI’s art crime team was created in 2004, as the black market sale of artifacts expanded after the invasion of Iraq. It says it has recovered more than 2,650 items valued at more than $150m."