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There Are More Museums In The U.S. Than Starbucks And McDonald’s – Combined.

Few places in our world are more educational than museums. After all, where else could we hope to see so many pieces of actual history that tell so many stories about our ancestors? From prehistoric spears to Egyptian mummies, from ancient Greek sculptures to medieval armor, and from the first radio to the first planes used in war during WWI, museums have it all. Unfortunately, there are millions of people with direct access to museums that have never even visited one.

The International Council of Museums (ICOM) created International Museum Day in 1977. The organization chooses a different theme for the day and coordinates every year. Some of the themes include globalization, indigenous peoples, bridging cultural gaps, and caring for the environment.

  • There is a World Brick Museum in Maizuru City, Japan.
  • In the late medieval period, parts of the Palace of Versailles were used as a museum and anybody could enter but only if he had ”correct clothes”. In this case, this meant silver shoe buckles and a sword. Luckily it was possible to rent them at the entrance.
  • Besides standard museums like art, science, and history museums there are also less conventional ones: museum of SPAM, PEZ candy, potato, salami, mustard, chocolate, banana, and ramen museum.
  • The Oceanographic Museum in Monaco was built on a cliff, 85 meters (279Ft) above the sea.
  • McLean, Texas has a museum dedicated to barbed wire.
  • In 1989, Harrison Ford and Lucasfilm donated Indiana Jones’ fedora hat to the Smithsonian museum. In 1999 they donated the bullwhip too.
  • There are more museums in the U.S. than there are Starbucks and McDonald’s combined. – Source
  • The Museum of Endangered Sounds exists to allow the streaming of once popular technological sounds. ie. the dial-up tone, ICQ chat tone, Windows 95 startup. – Source
  • In 2016, a 91-year-old woman filled out a crossword that turned out to be $116k artwork in a German museum. – Source
  • Barnum’s American Museum had crowds that would linger inside too long. To make way for new paying guests, signs saying “This Way to the Egress” were put up. Not knowing Egress was another word for Exit, people followed the signs to what they assumed was a fascinating exhibit but ended up outside. – Source
  • The camera that recorded the only known footage of the first plane strike on 9/11 is now in the Smithsonian Museum. – Source
  • The largest art heist in history was completed in 1990 at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, totaling 13 paintings worth $500M. To this day, all of the empty frames are still hanging, acting as placeholders until the pieces are returned. – Source
  • The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum is powered by solar energy. – Source
  • Older U.S.A. presidential limousines are at the Henry Ford Museum, but after Sept. 11, 2001, the Secret Service adopted a policy to destroy the limos after they are taken out of service in order to protect their security secrets. – Source
  • There is a photograph in the virtual museum of Canada dated 1941 where a man in modern clothes is thought to be a time traveler and is given the name of “The time-traveling hipster”. – Source
  • There is a Museum of Failed Products in Ann Arbor, containing thousands of consumer products that never took off, including gems like Clairol’s A Touch of Yoghurt shampoo and Pepsi’s AM Breakfast Cola. – Source
  • The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia employs 74 cats to take care of rodents. These cats are so important that they even have their own press secretary, and there are special kitchens in the Hermitage that prepare food for them. – Source
  • the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia employs 74 cats to take care of rodents. These cats are so important that they even have their own press secretary, and there are special kitchens in the Hermitage that prepare food for them. – Source
  • More people visited an art museum, science center, historic house or site, zoo, or aquarium in 2018 than attended a professional sporting event.
  • 97% of Americans believe that museums are educational assets for their communities.
  • 89% believe that museums contribute important economic benefits to their community.
  • 96% would think positively of their elected officials for taking legislative action to support museums.
  • 96% want to maintain or increase federal funding for museums
  • The word museum comes from the Greek “mouseion,” the temples dedicated to the Muses and the arts they inspired. Around the 4th century BC, Aristotle founded a mouseion at his Lyceum school for the collection of specimens for his zoological studies.
  • By nature of their offices, the Vice President and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States serve as two of the 14 trustees that govern the Smithsonian Institution. This includes the National Air and Space Museum, which is one of the most visited museums in the world.
  • The first pope to establish a collection of art at the Vatican was Julius II, whose reign began in 1503. His own collection, which included an excavated marble statue of Apollo (now known as the Apollo Belvedere and thought to be a Roman copy of a lost Greek bronze), was brought to the Vatican where it became a pillar of the Belvedere Sculpture Gardens.
  • The Plastinarium museum in Germany houses a bizarre collection of plastinated corpses. The museum even demonstrates the fascinating yet graphic process of plastination to the visitors.
  • The first public museum in the world was the Ashmolean Museum, named after the antiquary Elias Ashmole. The remains of a dodo, which later inspired Lewis Carroll in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was one of the oddities included in this collection.
  • The collection of the American Museum of Natural history grows by 90,000 specimens every year!
  • The camera that captured the only known footage of the first plane strike on 9/11 is on display at the Smithsonian museum.

Sources:

Days of the Year

History of Museums

Kickass Facts

AAM-US

OUPBlog

Museum Facts