The Chambered Nautilus - 12/29/15

By John Racanelli

Published December 29, 2015 at 3:36 PM EST

"This is the ship of pearl, which poets feign, sails the unshadowed main / and its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell /as the frail tenant of its growing shell." Oliver Wendell Holmes described this remarkable creature in his 1858 poem “The Chambered Nautilus.”

Holmes was a doctor, essayist, Harvard professor and Supreme Court justice. However, the brilliant Holmes got the chambered nautilus wrong. It is not "a frail tenant."

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John Racanelli

As chief executive officer, John Racanelli leads a team of 600 full and part-time employees and 1,000 volunteers in pursuing the National Aquarium’s mission to inspire conservation of the world’s aquatic treasures. More than 1.5 million people annually visit the Aquarium’s venue in Baltimore, Maryland, while millions more are touched by the Aquarium’s education programs, outreach activities, social media campaigns and conservation initiatives.

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