Kid, 13, Catches Error at the Met

There was a mistake in a map at the Metropolitan Museum of Art—but nobody noticed until 13-year-old Benjamin Lerman Coady visited with his mom. The Connecticut seventh-grader and history buff was checking out a permanent exhibit on the Byzantine Empire when he spotted the problem: A map that purported to show the empire at its height was missing Spain and a section of Africa, the Hartford Courant reports. He told a docent, who referred him to the front desk to report his finding on a form.

"The front desk didn't believe me," Coady says. "I'm only a kid"—and not all the error reports the museum receives are correct, says a curator. In this case, however, Coady was on the money. After several months, he got an email from the Byzantine art curator. "You are, of course, correct," it said. The curator invited him to visit again and meet her. He may have "the makings of a young historian," she notes. But he has different plans: "I want to move to Greenwich and open a modern exotic car shop." (More map stories.)