Did You Know?
In honor of our 125th Anniversary, Milwaukee Public Museum curators wrote special exhibit labels highlighting some amusing, bizarre and interesting facts about the Museum, its dioramas and objects. Stop in to step up to learn the back story about some of your favorite exhibits, such as:
Who is Simba?
Sim, short for Simba, the Swahili word for lion, was found as a tiny cub found on the African plain after a fire. He was kept as the camp mascot by Milwaukee Public Museum employees on expedition in Africa, and then shipped north with them when they returned home. He lived and played in the taxidermy studio and on the roof of the Museum-Library building, and specifically enjoyed chasing bowling balls down the hallway. When he got too big for the Museum he moved to the Washington Park Zoological Garden where he lived to be 20. Sim now permanently resides in the African Hall.
What's with the Easter Island Head?
Museum artist Adolph Seebach sculpted the six-foot, one-inch head from Rapa Nui (better known as Easter Island) out of Keene's cement, a kind of hard-finish plaster. Place two of these heads on top of each other and you get the average size of the real moai, Easter Island Heads. The largest moai discovered is 70 feet tall.
How was the Torosaur found?
Found on a "Dig a Dinosaur" expedition in the Hell Creek Badlands in Montana, this dinosaur was discovered while two volunteers, Bob and Gail Chambers, accidentally stumbled upon it while avoiding a snake.
Who is Timba?
Timba the African Elephant was collected in 1911 by MPM taxidermist Carl Akeley, the man considered to be the father of modern taxidermy. Akeley was working for the American Museum of Natural History in New York at the time, and sold Timba to MPM in 1914. Timba had to be cut into five parts to be moved from the Museum-Library building to his present home. Even the freight elevator was not big enough to hold him!
Why are they knitting sweaters in the Irish house?
In Ireland, where many families had fathers and sons who were sailors, it was never certain whether men at sea would return home safely. Though it may seem morbid, Irish women knit sweaters that had a family's special design that could identify sailors lost at sea, since any paper documents on a victim would most likely be destroyed by the water.