Interesting facts about the American Museum of Natural History

One of the museum’s most popular attractions is the life-size, 94-foot-long model of a blue whale suspended from the ceiling of the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life. The whale is so huge, it takes three entire days to clean it.

The museum’s Titanosaur, one of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered, is so massive (122 feet long) that it had to be posed with its head and neck sticking out of the exhibit room into the hallway.

The museum was tasked with safekeeping The Times Capsule, commissioned by The New York Times Magazine and designed by architect Santiago Calatrava. The five-foot stainless-steel vessel, set to be opened in the year 3000, has inside its crevices Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a Purple Heart from the Vietnam War, a cellphone, and more.

Did you know the T-rex didn’t actually stand upright? When the museum first mounted its Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in 1915, it was incorrectly posed standing upright like a kangaroo. It wasn’t corrected until 1993 to show a more scientifically accurate, horizontal stance.

The museum’s Willamette Meteorite, the largest found in North America, has a natural hole worn through it by water erosion. Some Native American tribes consider it a sacred object.

The museum's Hall of Gems and Minerals houses the Star of India, a 563-carat sapphire, one of the largest in the world. The gem was once stolen from the museum in 1964 but was recovered within days.

A few of the anthropological dioramas, like the head of the Vereaux Brothers' mannequin, contain actual human skulls and teeth, particularly those created decades ago when scientific ethics were different. Today, the museum follows strict guidelines regarding such displays.