1.The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London.
2.Its collections,which number more than seven million objects,are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents,illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present.
3.The British Museum was established in 1753,largely based on the collections of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane.
4.The museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759 in Montagu House in Bloomsbury,on the site of the current museum building.
5.Its expansion over the following two and a half centuries was largely a result of an expanding British colonial footprint and has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions,the first being the British Museum (Natural History) in South Kensington in 1887.
6.Until 1997,when the British Library (previously centred on the Round Reading Room) moved to a new site,the British Museum was unique in that it housed both a national museum of antiquities and a national library in the same building.