26National Civil Rights Museum
The motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated is now the National Civil Rights Museum.
27. There is a Disgusting Food Museum in Berlin which displays disgusting dishes from all around the world. They even have a tasting bar for visitors to try some of them.
28. New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) is the largest art museum in the US and fifth in the world at 633,100 sq. ft. The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia is the largest in the world at nearly twice its size at 1,100,000 sq. ft.
29. An enormous Buddhist relic known as the Buddha's Begging Bowl, weighing 350 to 400 kg is kept in the Kabul museum. When the Taliban captured Kabul, they destroyed all other Buddhist relics except the bowl, since at some point Quranic verses were inscribed on it.
30. The Confederate Truce Flag is now housed at the National Museum of American History. It was preserved by General George Armstrong Custer, who was present at the surrender of Robert E. Lee.
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31Newseum
Newseum was an interactive museum and a neighbor to the Smithsonian. It closed down in 2019 due to a lack of funding. It stood for the freedom of journalism, and some of the items it displayed included artifacts from WW2 Germany, Unabomber’s cabin, and the antenna on top of the World Trade Center.
32. The British Museum used to have a special room called “The Secretum” where “obscene” works were stored. The driver behind it was said to be The Obscene Publications act of 1857 but items were locked up before this. Though most of the artifacts were made public in the 1960s, a few items remain under key in the Cupboard 55 and 54 in the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities.
33. In 1819, when King Francis visited the Pompeii exhibition with his wife and daughter, he was so embarrassed by the erotic artwork that he had it locked away in a “secret cabinet”, a gallery within the museum accessible only to “people of mature age and respected morals.” It was reopened and closed a lot of times throughout history and was finally re-opened for viewing in 2000. Minors are still allowed entry into the Secret Museum in Naples only in the presence of a guardian or with written permission.
34. In 1990, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was robbed of 13 paintings worth a total of $500 million. None of them have been found, and the museum is still offering a $10 million reward (the largest reward by a museum in history).
35. When Nazis invaded Greece, the staff of the Archaeological Museum in Athens buried all statues and artifacts in concrete fortified trenches stretching from the basement. The Nazis found an empty museum. No one gave away the secret.
