Our Full Tour of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History | Abraham Lincoln’s Top Hat

I'm not sure how much of this intro you can hear because it's super windy, but we are getting ready to go into the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. I'm pretty sure we can film. We'll find out. Let's go check it out. Here we have it. Look at all these flags. The entrance is up here. Nice thing about all these museums, they are free and you actually do not need a reservation for just show up. They do have some tables, some food trucks. I don't know who would want a milkshake right now as cold as it is. Here's the entrance. Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History. Some rules and I think online it said you can take pictures and film certain areas. So I just asked and they said pictures and videos are encouraged. You cannot, I think, do photos or video of the flag, the original flag, or if there's an exhibit that shows no cameras. Those are the only places you can't. Lower level is the cafeteria and ride simulators. Level one has quite a bit of stuff. We are on level two. Level three. There's the lower level, the upper level, the museum store, and then we came in right over there. The Star-Spangled Banner. So this is an area, I think, that they said when you actually see the flag that you cannot take photos or film, but everywhere else you should be able to. Okay, they did not let you film or take photos in the Star-Spangled Banner area, just so you know. Let's head to two west or should we go to east? To east. Let's go to east. We came in right through those front doors. Let's go right. There's a covered wagon. Here we have a map of Disneyland and a map of Magic Kingdom. Look how different it looks. Disneyland and on past that is the Albert Small Documents Gallery, which is all Disney stuff. Check that out. You've got a steamboat ticket here. Look, gift of Disneyland Resort through Michael Eisner. That's cool. Oh, we got a Splash Mountain over here. Oh, look, Splash Mountain. Wow, that is cool. The poster and fan made buttons. Of course, one of my favorite rides, Pirates of the Caribbean, the redhead action figure. Then, of course, you've got some Mickey ears. Okay, so here is a VR little thing you can do, but that's that covered wagon we passed by. So you literally just make a loop around and that's a little Disney section. Now we can choose to go maybe to the other side and just get all of level two done. This video might be kind of all over the place because it's first time here, but there's the Star Spangled Banner area we just went in. We went to two east. Now we're heading to two west and then we should be done with like the second floor, but after we go two west, then we can go like one west, three west, three east, one east. Here is a school desk 1875 to 1900. They have a toy Noah's Ark from 1888. That is really cool. They've got a statue over here. We'll try to make another lap around. Some more restrooms. What is this? George Washington. Wow. Two west also has this exhibit within these walls. One house, five families, 200 years of history. Now I don't see that it says no photos or videos, so I think I should be good in this one. This is a real house. That is insane. Of course, I was in real estate for a long time, so the Fair Housing Act of 1968. It's a real house. We have a paint sample. Look how old that wood is. The fact that they were able to put it in the museum is pretty cool. It's nice too because they have all of this information you can read about. There's the kitchen. What do we have here? Oh, yep. So now we are over to the 1870s and 1890s, which is around the time our house was built. See, they do encourage you, please touch this model which shows the portion of this house rented by the lynches. There's the house over there. What can you do here? Can you lift this two and a half gallon pail? Can you? Yeah, you can. And here is a quilt. Oh wow, there's this side, this portion of the house. Look at this. And just make note, we totally went the wrong way. You need to start when you come in, start this way and walk around. That way you can follow the timeline. We went the wrong way. That was really cool. Lots of information. And that is this exhibit. So that was within these walls. Now we're going to go this way and head down this side. How did we become U.S.? like super detailed video because we could spend hours and hours in here, but at least you can get an idea of what it's like on the inside. Look at this old sign. Everything's so old. It's also not super busy in here right now, which is nice. I'm guessing on some days you probably come in here, you can't really even get to look at some of the stuff because so many people, but it's not bad today. There's a clog shoe. Right up here is where we came into this exhibit. Just to finish out this side of the area. I think, I don't think there's much over here. Oh, this is just like a hangout spot. So there was the George Washington statue. Now we're over here. Just on the other side of that statue, the American Democracy, A Great Leap of Faith. Thomas Jefferson's desk. Wow. He wrote the first draft in June 1776. That is pretty neat to see there. George Washington's document box. Jefferson banner. Oh, here's a little voting. That's crazy. That is the great historical clock of America. So there's the end of it. We're going to come back and go along this side now and then walk back to the front of this exhibit where we came into. Look up here. Look at all of the pins and different objects. Wow. This is the magnifying glass that was used for the hanging chad. The judge used that magnifying glass right there. This is cool. All of the different objects they've got here. Here is a quilt of political ribbons. Look at this Bible. Belonged to Delaware farmer Stokely Sturgis. Here is Thomas Paine's Common Sense. 25 print editions appeared within a year. And now that brought us back to the statue. So we did that side first. Now we're doing this side. I think that's basically it over here. That back area didn't have anything. So now we're going to take the escalator up or down? Up. As you go here, upstairs, we have the Entertainment Nation. American culture. This might be my favorite exhibit here. This looks awesome. We've got some Star Wars. We have Wizard of Oz. Dorothy. Slippers. Yeah, this is going to be my absolute favorite one. Here are the costumes from Return of the Jedi, 1983. And over here, look at this. Dorothy's ruby slippers, 1939. That's really cool. I've said it multiple times, but we are big movie people and the fact that they've got all of these like costumes in here. Oh man, this is awesome. Buffalo Bill play set. Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey poster here. Look at this. This is 1923. Let me zoom out. Here's a look at the whole poster. Right here we have Tom Thumb's top hat. 1875 baseball mitt. Uncle Tom's cabin. This is like my favorite part so far of the entire museum. Frank Sinatra's bow tie. Baseball signed by Babe Ruth. There's a lot of cool items in here. And so you can see how they're labeled. Like this hat's labeled 18. You look down below and it'll tell you what it is. This is the 21. Here's the animation sketch of Mickey Mouse for Steamboat Willie, 1928. Joe Lewis's boxing gloves, 1936. Got some instruments over here. This is a piece of the original stage from the Woodstock Music Festival, 1969. It's crazy that they still have some of this stuff, but very cool. Here we have Eddie Van Halen's guitar. Here's a baseball signed by Jackie Robinson. And then on down from that we have Lone Ranger mask. We have Diana Ross's dress, 1967. Roger Staubach, Muhammad Ali robe. All training for a championship bout with George Foreman. Here we have shackles from the television miniseries Roots, which is, if you've never seen Roots, I would recommend watching it. Here is Billie Jean King's uniform. Got some Disney items. There's shoes worn by Fred Rogers. And the costume worn by David Newell as Mr. McFeely. This is cool. And then all of the Sesame Street items. We've got the women in sci-fi and fantasy costumes. So we've got Catwoman. This is cool. That's used in the X-Files. Xena, Warrior Princess. Walking Dead. All in the Family. Props from the television sitcom All in the Family. We have signposts from the set of M.A.S.H. You see it's over there. Here we have it. This is pretty freaking cool. Sylvester Stallone's boxing robe from Rocky. Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls jersey worn during 1996-1997 season. Look at that. Cyndi Lauper's punk prom skirt from the cover of her debut solo. Willie Nelson's bandana. Bill Nye's shirt, bow tie, and lab coat. Prop Mosquito and Amber from Jurassic Park. This is insane. Stopwatch from 60 Minutes. That's so cool. I would always get mad when that would come on after a program because it'd be like a NFL game and then right after 60 Minutes would come on with the stopwatch. We have a gold-plated microphone used by Oprah during the 24th season opener. We've got the John Stewart suit that he wore when he interviewed Barack Obama. About everything you could ever want to see in here. Tony Hawk's first board. Look at that. That would be number 19 right there. We have a costume from The Handmaid's Tale. We have Prince's yellow cloud guitar. Phoenix Sun's jersey in Spanglish. We've got Randy Moss's hat and necktie. Toby Keith's guitar. Oh, that's so sad. Ellen DeGeneres wore when she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And then shield used by Chris Evans as Captain America. Look at this. From Hamilton on Broadway. That's really cool. And we finished that exhibit. That was a very cool exhibit. I guess we'll walk this way and see what all they have over down here. Radio. Television. Look. Look at that. Old school camera. Very old phone. Area you can hang out at. It's kind of confusing here on everything, so sorry if it's not making any sense, but there's just things to look at everywhere. Wow. 1677. 1663. 1656. This exhibit is the Hall of Culture and of the Arts. Okay, so like maybe some different magazines and stuff. So this one just has like photos. Now we still have the whole other side to go and downstairs, but they do have this little section where you can buy some merch. I do like how on each different like wing of the building, they've got some sort of big thing that you can look at. It's also a good guiding point. This is, let's see if we can see what this is. Nipper listing to a record the trademark of Emily Berliner's gramophone company that is later RCA. Okay, yeah, the RCA dog. I actually have a stuffed animal that is the RCA dog. This was one of four made in 1915. Look at that. As a reference point, there's the Star-Spangled Banner exhibit. Now all of these museums stay open from 10 to 5 30. I don't think I mentioned that. 10 to 5 30. And it kind of stinks because they all close at 5 30, so you got to try to hurry and get to the next one. This next exhibit is the First Ladies. Got some of the First Ladies. This is a very popular section. So this exhibit does kind of have a line formation where you go down and look at all of these dresses. Jacqueline Kennedy's state dinner dress. There's a lot in here, that's for sure. Eisenhower. Got all the plates over here. Good grief, that's a lot. Mary Todd Lincoln. Look at this. Oh, Lady Bird. Lady Bird Johnson. Here we have Melania Trump. Then Obama. Michelle Obama. Then Laura Bush. Hillary Clinton. Barbara Bush. Nancy Reagan. And Rosalind Carter. Martha Washington 1789-1797. It is pretty cool that they go down and you can see all of these. I mean, it goes through each and every one of them. Here are the most recent ones. Reagan. Clinton. Bush. Obama. That was the First Ladies exhibit. But there's this little area, the American Presidency. Let's just do a quick lap around. Pretty cool to see all this history. This is a very big exhibit because we're still on the Presidents. So the First Ladies and the Presidents are all together. It's a lot, a lot of stuff here. Outfit worn by Richard Nixon. This place is huge. Oh, there's a podium where you can look like you're doing an interview over here. This was worn by Jacqueline Kennedy. Harry Truman put a bowling alley in, so here is a pin that was used. Of course, we did the Truman House in T. West. That was a cool tour. He definitely was all about having a good time. Barack Obama had the White House tennis court adapted so it could be used for both tennis and basketball. That was basketball used by the President. Here is one of the Smithsonian Institution's most treasured items. This is the Lincoln top hat that he wore on the day he was killed. That is unreal. Yeah, George Washington's hair. Here we have hair from George Washington to President Pierce. Here we have a watercolor that shows Mount Vernon, Washington's home. Here we have George Washington's chair and surveying compass. This easy chair was located near his bed. This by far has been the biggest exhibit yet. That was massive. Ballot box. 1969, right? I think. To say this place is huge is an understatement because over here we have gunboat Philadelphia. We have this grave marker and then we also have the price of freedom and then we still haven't even made it down to the bottom floor yet. We're going to start kind of picking it up a little bit. We're not going to go through every single spot but here is, look at this, a crew payroll. The gunboat Philadelphia. You can learn more about that in here. We're going to do a quick lap through the price of freedom, Americans at war. Yeah, we'll kind of just point out if we, I mean everything's pretty cool in here, but if we see something that's like really awesome that we have to say that we want to show you, we'll stop and show that. Over here we do have George Washington's uniform. That's amazing. Here we have Andrew Jackson's uniform. Literally stuff on both sides. Look at this. Whoa. These are just massive exhibits. World War II, Korean War, Cold War, Here is part of the Berlin Wall. This is insane. All right, we made it through the price of freedom so the last little piece we have is down at the very lower level. Making our way down to the bottom floor and then we're going to wrap this up. This video is probably really long. This is a massive place. Down on the lower level we have the Latino gallery. We might just kind of do some walk-bys here because it's been, it's been a long day in here. What's over here? Food. Here is Hall of Transportation. Again, going to be super quick here in these exhibits. You see they had trains, cars. Here are ships. Check this out. Touring car. First motor trip across the United States in this car. Can you imagine? Motorcycle. Another car. Big train. Oh cool. Oh yeah, there you go. Omaha, Nebraska. That exact one? That's cool. Oh cool. It's like you're on a train. Here's an old-school RV and we just made one big lap around. This is pretty cool. Engine on a boat. I think we're just going to kind of walk to the front of this one. Life vest from the Titanic. Camera. All right, now just the other side and then we should be, should be good. Here's a look at Julia Child's kitchen. Kind of just skipped over the food one. We're just going to go see what's on the very far end of level, of this lower level, and then I think we're just going to have to call it. This is way bigger than what I was expecting. We have a 1969 Ford LTD Lowrider. There's a cafe over there. I think it closes at three. The museum store, which we will go in in a second. This is one west. So let's just do a quick look through here. Look at the old pizza hut. Oh, this is like history of science and technology. This is the Hall of Invention and Innovation, which I think we're going to probably skip over. Looks pretty cool, but we are running out of time today. Here's a place kids age zero to six can go in. Conference center. Tables you can eat at. Lots of ads. That's pretty cool. That's the Hall of American Business. American Enterprise. These are some good ones. There's that RCA dog again. Mr. Peanut. Of course, the Raisin Pillsbury Doughboy. This is pretty cool, though, showing all the, like, different, yeah, the merch and stuff, the way they advertised. It is a cool little section. We're just going to skip over the science and technology in the archive center. Now the cafe is currently open. I thought online it said it was closed at like three, but maybe on certain days it stays open later. Is that where we might head that way for a second? So it says the America's Table Cafe is open 11 to 3. This is the, is this the Jazz Cafe? Must be open a little later. They do have a Starbucks in here. So you can see the main courses up here. They've got some desserts over here. Of course, Starbucks is over here. Oh, a Cajun grilled cheese. Look at these desserts. So you can come grab you something to eat. Now just make note there are no food or drinks beyond this point. Getting ready to head into the store, and here are some old electronics. Pretty cool to look at. Museum Store. Won't spend a lot of time filming in here, but you can see they just have a variety of pretty much everything, including hats, shirts, ornaments. Let's see if they've got stickers. Wow. Entertainment nation over there. We finally made it back outside. What a time in there. All right, that was our trip out to the Smithsonian Institution Museum of American History. I don't even know where to begin. It is massive, and you could spend hours upon hours upon hours in there. There's a ton of cool items, a bunch to see. I mean, it's just, it's a lot bigger than I thought it would be. That's why we made a separate video of it, but just know going into it, you can spend a very long time in there. You'll probably need to pause, get a drink, get a snack. A lot to do, a lot to see. You can also buy a Smithsonian ear warmer. Yes, that's right, and hopefully we did an okay job of showing you everything, but it was very overwhelming, and we didn't want to show everything because the video is probably long anyway, but that is what it looks like. It's free 10 to 5 30 are the hours. I think I said that. Wrap it up. Wrap it up. Yep. With that being said, that does it for today. Thanks for watching.