San Francisco's Academy Of Sciences

One night in 1853, only three years after California became a state, seven men assembled in a candle-lit room in San Francisco and founded the first scientific institution west of the Atlantic seaboard. The venerable Academy of Sciences was newly rebuilt in 2008: Bay Area residents and tourists alike enjoy this world-class museum, which is located in Golden Gate Park. Inside, visitors will marvel at the deepest coral reef aquarium in the world, a four-story tropical rainforest dome, a towering T-rex skeleton, a colony of African penguins, a fully-immersive digital planetarium, and the many other exciting venues, exhibits and animals to be discovered within the Academy.