site.btaEarth and Man National Museum Opens 37 Years Ago

Thirty-seven years ago tomorrow, the Earth and Man National Museum opened in central Sofia. It uses a remodeled industrial building and thanks to donations. On this occasion, every year on June 19, the Museum honours its donors with Donor's Day.

The Museum said Tuesday that they have had 1,120 donors of mineral specimens since the museum's inception, with 59 donors in the last year alone. Some of the donated specimens were purchased specifically to fill the museum's collection.

Donors are presented with a certificate of donation: a small gesture to the people who created and continue to support the museum. A temporary exhibition of new arrivals is being prepared to showcase the best examples of donations and field collections that have enriched the museum's holdings over the past year. Among them are rubies from the Polar Urals and from Bulgaria, topaz from Nigeria, a rich collection of agates, silicified trees and corals from the Eastern Rhodopes, fossil resin from Indonesia, minerals from Vitosha and Plana Mountains, fluorites from the UK, Mongolia and Bulgaria, mineral specimens from gold deposits in Zimbabwe and the island of Madagascar, native copper from the area of Kyustendil.