Seth MacFarlane, the creator of TV’s Family Guy, paid good money to preserve the private papers of Carl Sagan.
That’s what the Washington Post says, anyway. Yeah, that Seth MacFarlane, the guy who not only started the animated hit Family Guy, but the guy who does most of the (best) voices for that cartoon.
It turns out Sagan’s widow (his third of three wives), Ann Druyan, met McFarlane while he was working on an updated version of Sagan’s famous TV series Cosmos with TV’s current friendliest scientist, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Then it turned out the Library of Congress wanted Sagan’s personal papers, so Seth McFarlane paid an undisclosed sum so they could have them.
That’s great. Although it does make one wonder, if Carl Sagan’s personal papers are so important to the world, why didn’t his widow just GIVE them to the Library of Congress?
Read the Who2 biography of Carl Sagan.