Putting my experiences of Life In NYC in a more personal perspective, and checking in with international/national, tech and some other news
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Saturday, March 28, 2015
am NY - Secrets of the Museum of Natural History
Ok, this is not going to be a great weekend for outdoor dining and nothing is blooming in the parks yet, but NYC has all these great museums ( have already mentioned the NYC Fire Museum)
Here are some surprise aspects of the Museum of Natural History
Not everything is at it appears in the American Museum of Natural History. (Credit: Flickr user Guian Bolisay)
It's true. After the visitors leave and the lights go out inside
the American Museum of Natural History, all the exhibits spring to life.
Or at least, we wish they did.
amNewYork recently received a special guided tour of this New York
City landmark. And although we cannot confirm (or deny) that Teddy
Roosevelt's statue gallops through the exhibit halls after dark like in
those popular "Night at the Museum" films, we did uncover some other
surprising facts and interesting secrets about the museum.
You probably didn't hear about this stuff on that class trip you took in the fourth grade.
Why the animals look so life-like
Ever wondered how they get those animal
statues that appear in the dioramas throughout the museum to look so
life-like? Well, are you sitting down? Those models look realistic
because they are real. They were made using the actual skin, teeth and
bones of real animals found (and killed) in the wild. "That's how
science was done, down the barrel of a gun," museum docent Vickie Costa
said. Carl Akeley, considered a pioneer of modern taxidermy, developed a
new technique at the turn of the 20th century. Instead of stuffing the
animal carcasses with straw, he used clay to create hollow molds of the
actual specimens and measurements taken in the field. The animal's skin,
when tanned, would fit like a glove. Costa says the museum has since
discontinued its use of taxidermy, so it goes to great lengths to
preserve these rare pieces. (Credit: AMNH)
What's 100 percent real?
On the flip side, only 85 percent of what
you see in the dinosaur exhibits on the museum's fourth floor are real.
But there is one piece there that is 100-percent authentic. To find it
you'll have to have look down at the base of one of the dinosaurs. The
Glen Rose Trackway (pictured here on the right) is as real as it gets,
according to Costa. This 107-million-year-old series of fossilized
dinosaur footprints was excavated from the bed of the Paluxy River in
Texas in 1938. (Credit: AMNH)
That's not T-Rex's real head
What's got a bigger head than Kanye West?
T-Rex. The dinosaur's skull is so heavy that its body couldn't hold it
up, Costa said. The skull you see mounted atop the Tyrannosaurus rex
that stands inside the museum's Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs is
actually fake. The real head is inside a glass case on display nearby. (Credit: AMNH/Tara Conry)
The whale had a nip-tuck
You may have noticed that the giant
94-foot-long blue whale suspended above your head in the Hall of Ocean
Life is looking more svelte these days. That's because it's had some
cosmetic work including a nip-tuck. For more than 30 years, the model
that the museum had been displaying had been pretty factually
inaccurate. When the piece was created, the only information researchers
had to go off of was measurements taken of a dead, decaying whale that
washed ashore a beach in 1925 on Georgia Island. Once they were able to
study a living version of the mammal, they realized that they needed to
make some adjustments. As part of a massive renovation of the hall in
the early 2000s, sculptors shaved down the whale’s bulging eye sockets,
trimmed the tail, corrected the blowhole with a protective lip around
it, added a navel, and applied more than 25 gallons of fresh paint. (Credit: Flickr user Chris Ford)
You can say 'I do'
If you ever dreamed of performing your
first dance as newlyweds under a giant blue whale, the museum can make
that happen. Many might not know that private events including weddings
and bar mitzvahs are hosted here. The museum has its own in-house
caterer, and multiple venues that can be rented out. There's been
receptions in the Hall of Ocean Life, sit-down dinners in the Hall of
Dinosaurs and cocktail parties in the Hall of African American Animals,
where guests mingle around a herd of elephants. (Credit: AMNH)
The museum can make for a great date
especially if you're able to arrange an exclusive after-hours tour for
you and your beau. That's what the wife of New York Yankees pitcher CC
Sabathia did in 2012. For Valentine's Day, Amber Sabathia surprised her
hubby with a private tour of the museum after it closed to the public.
The tour included a stop in the Hall of Gems, a museum official said.
The couple posed for a photo in front of a fake dinosaur near the main
entrance of the museum, which Amber shared on Twitter. (Credit: Getty/ Flickr user Charles Tilford )
The big jewel heist
One of the greatest jewel heists of the 20th century took place inside the museum.
On the night of Oct. 29, 1964, Jack Roland Murphy, also known as "Murph
the Surf," and Allan Dale Kuhn broke into the museum by scaling a
fence, going up a fire escape to the fifth floor, creeping along a
narrow ledge and swinging down to the fourth floor on a rope, the New
York Times reported. (They had spent a week visiting the museum to study
its layout.)
From the museum's Morgan Hall of Gems, they stole
$410,000 worth of jewels including the 563.35-carat star of India
(pictured above), one of the world's largest start sapphires, the Times
reported. The estimated loss would be equivalent to millions today, the
report said.
A museum official later revealed to the press that
the burglar alarms on the glass cases had been inoperative for years and
the windows had been left open a crack.
The burglars were caught
soon after, however, when a tipster who had shared an elevator with them
the day of the heist told police he overheard suspicious-looking men
discussing a museum, according to the Times. (Credit: AMNH)VIDEO OF VISIT TO GEMS:https://youtu.be/7yFHlzSUWzM
The museum is not a movie set
Although the 2006 "Night at the Museum"
movie did include some scenes that had been filmed outside the actual
American Museum of Natural History, none of the interior shots were done
on location. They were actually filmed in Vancouver, Canada on a set
that was designed to resemble parts of the museum. To recreate the look
and feel, the creators visited the museum in Manhattan and took copious
amounts of notes and photos, according to museum officials. And after
the movie opened, the museum saw a 20% increase in visitors during that
holiday season. (Credit: Kerry Brown/20th Century Fox Films Corp.)
The film characters aren't all there
Don't even attempt to roam the museum
trying to find every single real-life character portrayed in the "Night
at the Museum" films; you'll never find them all. That's because many of
them, including Sacajawea, Pharoah Ahkmenrah and Atilla the Hun
(pictured above), are not nor have they ever been on display in the
museum. (Credit: Kerry Brown/ 20th Century Fox Film Corp.)
You can find the "dum dum" head
That said, you can find some of the items
featured in the movies inside the museum, including the "Easter Island
Head," the sculpture that called Ben Stiller's character "dum dum" in
the first film after it was brought to life. It's actually a replica of
one of the "moai" that were discovered off the coast of Chile on Rapa
Nui or "Easter Island." The sculptures featured defied ancestors.
This
one was made from a mold secured during a museum expedition in the
1930s and is located in the Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples.
On the third floor, you'll also find the white-headed capuchin monkey
that most likely inspired the character of Dexter. Elsewhere in the
museum, you can seek out Genghis Khan, T-Rex and many of the animals
seen in the movie, too. (Credit: Youtube/AMNH)
You can sleep over
If you do want to stake out the museum
overnight to see for yourself if anything springs to life, the museum
will let you -- for a price. The museum has hosted a number of "Night at
the Museum" events in recent years, letting kids and their families
sleepover. But starting in December, it also began offering an
adults-only version of the program open to those 21 years or older. At
$350 per person, it includes a champagne reception with a buffet and
live jazz music, a flashlight tour, special presentations and the chance
to sleep under the giant whale in the Hall of Ocean Life. Oh, and
attendees are free to roam the museum on their own. There are two more
adults-only sleepovers scheduled in April and June of 2015, but they've
already sold out. (Credit: AMNH) ANOTHER VIDEO: DINOSAURShttps://youtu.be/ls5h9Nvr-0w
Lucy's Beatles' connection
Everyone knows Lucy. This popular exhibit
in the museum's Hall of Human Origins features the
3.18-million-year-old bones from a single individual, presumably female.
The museum considers it one of the most complete skeletons found to
date from the early hominids that flourished between 4 and 2 million
years ago. But do you know the origin of Lucy's name? When scientists
discovered her in 1974, they didn't christen the skeleton after one of
their spouses or children. They called her "Lucy," because while they
were celebrating their incredible find they were blasting the Beatles'
song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," Costa said. (Credit: AMNH)
The museum nearly closed
In the early days of the museum, the
exhibits were not nearly as sophisticated or interesting as they are
today. "It was more of a collection of "cabinets of curiosities," Costa
said. It started out as just a collection of exhibits inside the Central
Park Arsenal and finally moved into its first building in 1877. But not
long after that, the museum was in jeopardy of closing because it was
considered "boring," Costa said. "The trustees were told to shut it
down, because people weren't coming here." But rather than giving up,
Morris K. Jesup, then the president of the museum, launched into a
"golden age of exploration," she said. From 1880 to 1930, the museum was
involved in several expeditions around the world that led to the
discovery of the North Pole, dinosaur fossils in Asia and many more
breakthroughs. And with each finding the museum's collections improved
and expanded, and the people came. (Credit: AMNH)
Meet the real Indiana Jones
One man at the center of many of these
expeditions was Roy Chapman Andrews, who is believed to be the
inspiration for the Indiana Jones character. Andrews worked for the
museum during the early 1900s, starting out as an assistant and working
his way up to director. His early work focused on studying whales at
sea. But he is most famous for leading the historic expeditions through
Mongolia's Gobi Desert, where his team discovered many new mammal and
dinosaur fossils, including the first nests of dinosaur eggs, according
to the museum. You'll find his photo hanging inside the museum. (Credit: AMNH)
Step into the museum's past
When you step inside the Hall of
Northwest Coast Indians on the first floor, you're not just getting a
glimpse into the history of Native Americans. The exhibit also sheds
light on the museum's own history as the hall itself is more than a
century old. It first opened in 1896 and is part of the original
building. As the museum grew it simply just built expansions onto the
existing structure that was erected in the 1870s. Today, the museum is
made up of 25 interconnected buildings.(Credit: AMNH)