13 year old boy beats world-famous Museum of Art by spotting a mistake in a map on his first visit

Benjamin Coady

A 13-year-old boy and student of Renbrook School in West Hartford, Connecticut, Benjamin Lerman Coady has outsmarted the staff at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art after quickly pointing out an error in one of their exhibits' maps. Coady, who reads ahead in his school's history textbooks, told the Hartford Courant that he recognized the mistake on his first visit to the museum last summer. Originally he thought the museum would be a walk-through of 'just art on the wall,' having toured the American Museum of Natural History a few times before, but he was attracted to the historic map - catching an analytical eye.

The map in question according to the dates printed on it, excluded Spain and parts of Africa that would have been in the Byzantine Empire (file photo) The map in question was one of a region Benjamin had been recently studying in school, that of the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century. Benjamin said he began examining the dates on it, catching that the specifics deemed it to represent the region when the empire was at its largest. However Spain and parts of Africa were entirely missing, he said. Approaching the front desk, they told him to fill out a form, detailing his complaint, but he said he never expected to hear back from them. 'The front desk didn't believe me,' he told the Courant. 'I'm only a kid.' culled from Mailonline