Nation's Largest Pinball Museum to Open

Reuters: Decades after he slept under a pinball machine wedged into his cramped apartment, David Silverman will open the America's largest museum dedicated to speeding silver balls and fast-motion flippers.

The National Pinball Museum will open in November in the heart of Baltimore's tourist district and will include exhibits on the history of pinball - its beginnings in 18th-century France, its move to America, the advent of the flipper in 1946 and, later, digital technology.

The museum will be stocked with up to 900 pinball machines from Silverman's collection, ranging from an original French bagatelle game with pins and no flippers to a Stars Wars-type game, one of just 15 ever made.

"Pinball is more than a game," Silverman said from the museum's new home. "We aren't building an arcade, we are building a museum."

The museum will also feature space for private parties, educational programs and two floors of "pay-to-play" pinball machines. Silverman, in his 60s, a landscape designer from suburban Washington, D.C., got his first pinball machine when he was in his 20s. He kept it in his apartment, where he had no other option but to sleep beneath it. Soon he married, moved to larger quarters, and his collection grew to 300 machines that he kept in a backyard storage building.

At his wife Mimi's suggestion, Silverman opened the space as a museum. He now owns 900 pinball machines. The collection outgrew his property and was moved to a larger space in Washington, D.C. Now, the National Pinball Museum is graduating to the four-story brick and glass building in Baltimore.

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Video games, advancing technology and the decline in arcades have rendered pinball nearly obsolete. There is only one pinball manufacturer left in the United States, Illinois-based Stern Pinball.

But Silverman and other enthusiasts say the game's popularity is rising after early-decade doldrums. "For many of us, the interest in pinball is still there," said Bernie Kelm, 42, a co-founder of the Free State Pinball Association.

Free State began in the 1980s and operates three pinball leagues in the mid-Atlantic, with an active roster of about 120 players. The organization also provides an online database of every operating pinball machine in the region.

Among some of the other pinball museums in the United States are the Silver Ball Museum in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda, California. This weekend, Pacific Pinball will hold its annual pinball exposition in San Rafael, California, which draws thousands of attendees and offers 400 playable games.

Prior to moving to Baltimore, the National Pinball Museum drew 6,000 visitors over nine months to its Georgetown location before a change in leasing agency forced it to relocate.

Silverman hopes the game's resurgence, the foot traffic and Baltimore's quirkier image, will allow the museum to be financially sustainable. The Georgetown location cost $300,000 to open and operate. Baltimore would cost considerably more, he said.

Despite a modest staff of five, Silverman hopes his museum will spark the next generation of pinball enthusiasts. "We're different," Silverman said of pinball loyalists. "But we're all in it to make everyone aware that pinball is still alive."

Alleged Impropriety at the Las Vegas Mob Experience

Courthouse News Service: The operator of the Las Vegas Mob Experience "looted" the company of more than $658,000, the new owner claims in Clark County Court.

Plaintiff Vion Operations says it bought the exhibit's "future receipts" for $4 million in February this year, relying on bogus claims from the exhibit's former manager, lead defendant Jay Bloom. Vion claims Bloom grossly overstated the anticipated attendance, concealed $8 million in debt and miscalculated ticket prices.

Bloom stepped down on July 5, only 4 months after the attraction at the Tropicana Hotel and Casino opened. The Mob Experience is a separate entity from the city-sponsored Mob Museum, which is slated to open sometime this year in downtown Las Vegas.

According to Vion's lawsuit, Bloom disclosed $8 million in debt, but Vion says the actual debt is now $16 million. Vion claims that Bloom failed to pay payroll taxes, and failed to pay contractors and electricians $2 million, saddling the new owner with $6.4 million in construction liens for lack of payment.

Bloom diverted more than $658,000 from the museum since 2009 and spent it on personal expenses such as car payments, credit card bills, cable TV, utilities, pool cleaning, maid service, groceries, and so on, "using categories in his own records such as 'cash for Jay,' and 'to be accounted for later,'" according to the complaint.
Now the museum "cannot operate and it cannot pay its existing debts without additional financing," Vion says.
Also named as defendants are Bloom's wife, Carolyn Farkas; Eagle Group Holdings; Eagle Group Marketing; ADD Productions; and Order 66 Entertainment.

Vion and co-plaintiff Strategic Funding Source seek damages for fraud.

Vion is represented by Todd Touton with Lionel Sawyer & Collins.

Why is a KLM Jet on Top of an Airport Terminal?

Terminal U: Passengers flying into Amsterdam Schiphol may be wondering why a passenger jet is parked on the roof of the airport terminal.

The flight crew of the KLM Cityhopper Fokker 100 did not mistake the roof for the runway.

In fact, the jet retired last year and was donated to the airport by KLM. It has since become a permanent museum attraction, open to the public on the roof of the Panorama Terrace: a viewing platform attracting nearly 1.5 million visitors every year.

Visitors have the chance to view the cockpit, listen to announcements from the air traffic control tower and sit in the original passenger seats.

NYC's Newest Tourist Attraction: The Elevator Museum

Exhibit Marks the Empire State Building's 80th Year

eTurboNews: In its 80th anniversary year, the Empire State Building today unveiled a new, permanent exhibit that captures the global icon's astonishing history, engineering and construction. Curated by Carol Willis of New York City's Skyscraper Museum, the installation is located on the 80th floor of the World's Most Famous Office Building and further enriches and enhances each visitor's Observatory experience.

Anthony E. Malkin, Empire State Building Company, stated, "As part of our more than $550 million Empire State ReBuilding program, we have completely upgraded our Observatory experience. From our brilliantly restored art deco masterpiece lobby, to this celebration of the unprecedented and unmatched feats of engineering and construction of the Empire State Building, we have created a totally new offering to our millions of annual visitors." He added, "The new 80th floor exhibit's homage to the pioneering work of the architects, builders, and laborers of the day adds to our $2 million, multi-media exhibit about the groundbreaking work on energy efficiency performed at the building and offers educational value for every visitor."

With content from The Skyscraper Museum's archives, the exhibit illustrates three main themes:

Speed: Construction took only 11 months from the setting of the tower's first steel columns on April 7, 1930, to the completed building by March 31, 1931–a full month before the official opening ceremonies on May 1, 1931.

Scale: Gigantic in every dimension, the record-breaking tower required immense amounts of materials and equipment to build what is still one of the tallest and largest man-made structures in the world

Steel: The building's steel frame was intricately designed with remarkable proportions, and all aspects of its construction remain extraordinary, even today

The exhibit shares numerous remarkable facts as well as reproductions of nostalgic photos and mementos of the more than 3,400 workers who helped create history. Documents include stunning period photographs, architectural sketches and renderings, construction notes, and daily bookkeeping documents presented on a series of photomurals, banners, two panels and seven stands. In a unique twist, the exhibit uses the windows of the building to show views from 1931, creating a period look unimaginable unless seen.

Empire State Building visitors view the exhibit along route to the world-famous 86th and 102nd floor Observatories. The building is open daily, 365 days a year, from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m.

New Dinosaur Exhibit Set to Open

A new dinosaur exhibit is set to open at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum on July 16. It will feature some 300 fossils and 20 skeletons, and try to explain things like what dinosaurs ate, how they reproduced and why they disappeared.

'The emphasis is on how do we know what we know,' says chief curator Luis Chiappe. “It's the nature of science. We know a lot about dinosaurs, but we also don't know a lot about them.”

 The exhibit, which uses the specimens to illustrate how scientists pose questions and sometimes answer them, is in part aimed at instilling wonder in visitors who have grown up watching dinosaurs on television and in movies.

“When you turn on the television and you watch some of the dinosaur documentaries, they make you feel as if we know everything about that, and that's not the case. There is so much that we need to discover,' says Mr Chiappe.

The new exhibit is seen as an important step in upgrading the museum ahead of its 100th anniversary in 2013.

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D.C. Lawmakers Call for Immigration Museum

National Mall

AP: Several members of Congress called Thursday for a presidential commission to study the formation of a "melting pot museum" in Washington to tell the history of immigration and migration that formed the nation.

Democratic Virginia Rep. Jim Moran introduced legislation Thursday that calls for studying the creation of a National Museum of the American People without any federal taxpayer funds. The bill had 11 other co-sponsors.

"The people of the United States do not have a comprehensive and accurate picture of all the peoples who created and continue to build the nation," the bill says.

Moran has been a critic of the trend toward building individual ethnic museums on the National Mall. Another presidential commission this year called for a Latino history museum to be added to the Smithsonian Institution.

"There's almost an infinite number of museums you could have to represent a near infinite number of peoples that have come together to form one nation," he said.

Still, calling for an immigration museum wasn't intended to impede any others, Moran said.

A New York-based coalition pushing the idea said more than 140 ethnic and minority groups support the museum's creation. They include people of Chinese, Arab, German, Jewish and Irish descent, among others.

Sam Eskenazi, the group's director, said he envisions a museum that weaves together a story beginning with the first humans in the Western Hemisphere and continuing through the development of the United States. It could include a genealogy center for visitors to trace their heritage.

"This is a dramatic story, the making of the American people," he said.

The museum concept wouldn't necessarily replace any other museum proposed for the National Mall, Kraut said. The Smithsonian is developing an African-American history museum that is scheduled to open in 2015. Other groups have proposed museums devoted to the history of women, gays and other groups.

Any well-done museum can draw a broad audience of those interested in history, he said, but cautioned against any museum that simply celebrates different groups.

Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum Turns 35

USA Today: On July 1, 1976, as part of the nation's Bicentennial celebration, Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum welcomed visitors to its modern building on the National Mall. Over the years, hordes have eyeballed the 1903 Wright Flyer, the Spirit of St. Louis, Friendship 7 and the Apollo 11 command module. It is billed as the most popular museum in the world (amazing, since legendary tourist draws such as the Louvre in Paris are so much bigger).

As of May, the museum says it has welcomed 303,674,128 million (!!!!!) visitors to its two sites (the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center opened outside D.C. near Dulles International Airport in 2003 and now is the most popular museum in Virginia).

The 35th anniversary at the main museum flagship includes the Imax movie that premiered on opening day. To Fly! will be showing at 1976 prices: 50 cents for adults and 25 cents for children. At 2 p.m., curators Michael Neufeld and Alex Spencer will discuss their book, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: An Autobiography. It will be on a live webcast on the museum site, so you can hear it even if you can't be in D.C.

If you can't go, visit the 35th anniversary website, which includes congratulatory messages from Apollo 11 astronaut and the mist Air and Space director, Michael Collins -- even from Elmo of TV's Sesame Street. Anyone can post memories of trips to the museum. Seeing To Fly! -- and feeling as if I were soaring over the world -- would be my exhilarating experience.

The Air and Space facilities host the world's largest collection of historic aircraft, spacecraft and flight artifacts. There are 22 exhibition galleries in the flagship building and two exhibition hangars at the Udvar-Hazy Center. A third hangar is due at year's end. Admission is free at both, but expect to pay $15 for parking at Udvar-Hazy.

Plans for Bruce Lee Museum in Hong Kong Shelved

Hollywood Reporter: Plans to build a Bruce Lee museum at the late megastar’s former residence in Hong Kong have been abandoned. The Hong Kong government is unable to reach an agreement with the owner of the property, businessman Yu Pang-lin, for the last two years.

"Despite our efforts, we are unable to reach a consensus with the property owner over the scope of the restoration," the government said in a statement. Yu intends to restore the existing two-storey building in Kowloon Tong and to construct a new 20,000 sq. feet structure that would house facilities including a museum, an archive, a martial arts academy, and a screening room, according to local media reports. But the proposal of the new structure, five times the area of the existing building, has been rejected due to the low-density land use designation of the area.

Lee died at the Kowloon Tong residence in 1973 at the age of 32, due to swelling of the brain.

Over 100 artifacts of the late action icon of such kung-fu classics as Enter the Dragon and Fist of Fury that has been amassed by the Hong Kong Tourism Commission for the planned museum will be displayed in the Hong Kong Heritage Museum in 2012.

A Bruce Lee museum is planned by Lee’s daughter Shannon in Seattle, where Bruce studied and taught martial arts.

'Miracle on the Hudson' Plane Arrives at Museum

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Sensor Network to Protect Museum Artwork

MPRNews: Museums work hard to provide the best environment for artwork so that it can both be seen, and be protected from the elements. Heat, light and humidity can all have disastrous effects on prints, paintings and even tapestries.

A new device created by the folks at IBM is giving museums a whole new level of sophistication when it comes to monitoring gallery conditions.

National Public Radio visited the Cloisters Museum - a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York - where the sensor is being tested out.

The IBM sensors -- each housed with a radio and a microcontroller in a case about the size of a pack of cigarettes -- can measure temperature, humidity, air flow, light levels, contaminants and more. They are inexpensive and run on low power, and several can be positioned in a room, scientists said Wednesday.

The information collected goes into a three-dimensional "climate map" that can be accessed on a computer, and the data can then be analyzed to adjust the climate, spot trends and even make predictions.

The data collected will help museum staff determine how best to accomodate for such anomalies as sun shining through a window onto a specific part of the room, a group of people walking into a gallery after being out in the rain, or a packed opening event.

You can read more about the technoology here.

Beatles Exhibit Opens at Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Cleveland Leader: As a part of its first redesign in its 15-year existence, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, has opened an exhibit which they say is the world's largest collection of items from The Beatles.

The exhibit was announced on Wednesday, and contains nearly 70 items, including several that are on display for the first time. Visitors can get a peek at Paul McCartney's handwritten arrangement for "Birthday", guitars played by John Lennon and George Harrison, the drum head from the kit Ringo Starr used in February 1964 on "The Ed Sullivan Show", and notable pieces of clothing worn by each of the group members either on tour or on film.

Jim Henke, vice president of exhibitions, said:

‘For many years now, we have been fortunate to have a great relationship with Yoko Ono, which enabled us to have many John Lennon artifacts. This time around, we were able to work with Ringo Starr and with George Harrison’s estate, so they are well-represented in the exhibit. We also worked with some collectors who had other key Beatles pieces, and before we knew it, we had an absolutely incredible collection.”

These items have gone on display as a part of the museum redesign. The redesign includes upgrades to technology and various changes that are aimed at presenting the history of rock and roll in a more chronological order. The redesign is funded in part by the Rock Hall's $35 million capital campaign.

Other upgrades to the facility include a 50-foot red carpet to welcome visitors, giving the Rock Hall a touch of Hollywood, and new interactive kiosks, over-sized images of various inductees, and listening stations. The final upgrades include a new video wall, and are expected to be in place before the Hall of Fame Induction ceremonies in 2012.

Chicago's Real "Night in a Museum"

MSNBC: If you’d like to visit Chicago this fall, and you enjoyed those "Night at the Museum" movies, then consider entering the Month at the Museum contest put on by the Museum of Science and Industry.

If you win, you’ll save a bundle on hotel fees, take home $10,000 and have some amazing vacation stories to tell about one of the world's largest science museums.

As it did last year, the 14-acre museum is seeking a short-term “roommate”: someone willing to live inside the museum for 30 days and share his or her experiences and observations with visitors on-site and online.

More than 1,500 people from around the world applied to live inside the museum last year. After the online votes were tallied, Chicagoan Kate McGroarty, a writer, director, teacher and performer, won the contest. She had her own see-through office cube, private sleeping quarters and free run of the museum from mid-October to mid-November 2010. Her days were spent interacting with guests and participating in live demonstrations; her evenings were spent poking around the museum’s exhibits and back rooms.

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She also kept a video diary and blog where she chronicled everything from her handstand in a simulated tornado to the hatching of baby chicks to sleeping inside the museum’s World War II-era German submarine – which paranormal investigators examined by taking audio and video readings.

If you're envious of McGroarty's adventures, check the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry's website later this month for the official application opening date. In the meantime, the museum is taking suggestions (via Twitter and Facebook) for activities the winner might do inside the museum during the one-month stay.

Parts of Hitler's Atlantic Wall Headed to NOLA Museum

eTurbo News: For the National WWII Museum, today is not only the Normandy D-Day landings anniversary, it is also the Museum's 11th birthday. This year, the Museum is receiving a unique gift from the Utah Beach Museum at Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, France – three large segments of Nazi Germany's infamous Atlantic Wall. Each piece measures 5.5 feet tall and 18 inches thick, the sections total 35 feet in length and weigh nearly 22 tons, all pockmarked from the fire of incoming Allied troops.

Completed in 1944, the Atlantic Wall was a series of fortifications Hitler ordered built to guard Europe's west coast from Allied assault. Made up of mines, pillboxes, tank traps and the famous "Rommel's asparagus," the Atlantic Wall stretched more than 3,200 miles, presenting a formidable defense for the Allied troops charged with executing the D-Day invasion.

D-Day was the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. The name stands only for "D" as in "day" since the final invasion date was unknown and weather dependent. It began early on the morning of June 6, 1944, when 156,000 servicemen from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and other Allied countries boarded an armada of more than 5,000 ships and Higgins landing craft that ferried them from English harbors to the beaches of France and into a hail of German gunfire.

The operation cost U.S. Forces 2,499 dead that day alone (total Allied deaths were 4,414), but D-Day marked the beginning of the end of the war in Europe. By June 11, with the beachheads firmly secured, ships had ferried more than 326,000 troops and more than 100,000 tons of equipment to France. Paris would be liberated on August 25. Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945.

The wall segments will be removed to make way for a significant expansion to the Utah Beach Museum. The project, led by American architect Nicolas Kelemen, includes the construction of a new hangar that will house a life-size replica of a B-26 bomber, as well as a flight simulator.

The ambitious extension and renovation has received the support of several key donors in the US, including Texas Lieutenant-Governor David Dewhurst and businessman, Gene Dewhurst. The Dewhurst brothers' father was a highly decorated pilot who led a B-26 mission over Utah Beach on June 6, 1944.

In New Orleans, The National WWII Museum will commemorate the anniversary with a full day of activities and programs including presentations by D-Day veterans Hal Baumgarten and John Pellegren.

'Miracle on the Hudson' Plane Takes Final Journey

Daily Mail: It captivated the world two years ago when it safely landed on the Hudson River, and now the so-called Miracle on the Hudson plane is on the move again. This time, however, the river crossing it made was a lot slower and a lot drier.

The US Airways plane was rolled out of a warehouse in Harrison, New Jersey, on Saturday and transported on the back of a huge truck across the Passaic River. From there it began the trek to a North Carolina museum where it will become a piece of American history.

Accompanied by a convoy of police cars and film crews, the damaged Airbus A320 eased out of the J. Supor and Sons warehouse lot where it has sat since the splashdown in January 2009 made its pilot, Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, a national hero. With traffic stopped and people rolling down their windows to take pictures with their cell phones, the flatbed truck crossed the river into Newark, took a left on to Route 21 South and then a right toward the heart of downtown.  The caravan passed the Prudential Centre Arena before turning on to Broad Street, Newark's main drag, for a few blocks before heading south west. 

US Airways Flight 1549 was bound for Charlotte from New York on January 15, 2009, when it struck a flock of geese after take off and lost power in both engines. Mr.  Sullenberger, who came to be known as Sully, considered trying to land at nearby Teterboro Airport in New Jersey but quickly recognised that would be too risky. He decided to touch the plane down in the middle of the frigid Hudson.

Within minutes, rescue boats and commuter ferries arrived and eventually rescued all 155 passengers and crew. The riveting scene was captured in photographs showing passengers lined up along the wings of the slowly sinking plane. This time, on land, the plane's trip to Charlotte, North Carolina, and the Carolinas Aviation Museum is expected to take about a week.

Museum president Shawn Dorsch said the journey will take so long because the 120ft-long plane must take back roads to avoid obstacles such as toll booths, bridges and overpasses. The wings were shipped separately.

Four hours after it left Harrison, the plane had gone about 25 miles to Piscataway, just north of the Rutgers University campus, according to a tracker on Supor and Sons' website. Mr.  Dorsch said Capt. Sullenberger is scheduled to speak at a reception at the museum on June 11 after the plane has arrived.

Other flight crew members also are expected to attend. Mr.  Dorsch said he expects many passengers to visit the plane over the next several months.

In a tour of the plane's cabin in March, food trays could still be seen in their slots in the plane's rear galley. Those have since been removed, but the cabin has been preserved largely as it was on the day of its final flight.

Famous Auschwitz Sign Headed to Exhibition Center

The Guardian: The council that oversees the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp has ruled that the Auschwitz sign will not return to its original spot.

It was taken for repairs following a 2009 theft. Pawel Sawicki, a spokesman for the memorial site in southern Poland, said the sign bearing the Nazi slogan "Arbeit macht frei" (Work sets you free) will be housed in an exhibition centre.

Sawicki added that the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and museum, Piotr Cywinski, proposed to keep the sign in a secure indoor centre. This was accepted by the International Auschwitz Council at a two-day meeting that ended on Thursday. The council is made up of Holocaust survivors, historians and others.

Robert E. Lee's Sword Returning to Appomattox

General Robert E. Lee's Sword

Gather.com: Robert E. Lee's Civil War sword is a tale of two stories, or one truth and a myth. The myth is that Lee surrendered his sword to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia in a gesture of surrender. The myth also says that Grant turned down the sword. However, "Lee never offered it, and Grant never asked for it," said Patrick Schroeder, historian at Appomattox Courthouse National Historical Park.

History does have a way of rewriting itself, you have probably witnessed that yourself. Stories, myths and facts get twisted and turned until they come out totally different. Ask two eyewitnesses to the same accident to give the details of the event, and you will get two different stories.

When it comes to Robert E. Lee's Civil War sword, however, although Grant didn't want it or ask for it, Appomattox is getting it now, some 146 years later. The sword is leaving its current home in the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia and will be housed in a new museum. The sword, in a way, is returning to where it was originally supposedly offered to Grant.

The museum will be built about one mile from the spot where Lee and Grant met to sign the surrender documents on April 9, 1865. The Civil War, aka the War Between the States, pitched state against state and in many cases, brother against brother. That war took 630,000 lives before it was all said and done.

To read more about this ceremonial sword, check the Tennessean for details. It is interesting to note what is engraved on the sides of the sword. One side of the blade, in raised letters, reads: "Gen. Robert E. Lee CSA from a Marylander 1863." The other side of the blade reads: "Aide toi dieu l'aidera." Translated it means, "Help yourself and God will help you."

The new museum will open next spring, and it sounds like a fine place to visit and an educational experience for one and all. You will also see his Confederate uniform along with Robert E. Lee's Civil War sword, the one he didn't offer to Grant!

Souvenirs Flying Off Shelves at SEAL Museum

SEAL Poster

TCPalm: Since the successful mission against Osama bin Laden, SEAL souvenirs and memorabilia are flying off the shelves of the National Navy UDT/SEAL Museum (Fort Pierce, Florida), said Capt. Michael Howard, SEAL, U.S. Navy (Retired).

"One man came in and bought 10 shirts, all alike," said Howard. Other items such as pins, hats, posters and post cards have also been in high demand.

And, on the flip side, the museum is being inundated with telephone calls, letters and post cards from all over the world. "They all are thanking the SEAL Community for the bin Laden mission," Howard said.

The increased interest has been brought about by President Barack Obama's announcement that Navy SEALs killed bin Laden in a daring mission into Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2.

Howard said he expects the heightened image of the SEALs, will increase the number of people coming to attend the Second Annual Memorial Day Service at 10 a.m., Monday, May 30, at the SEAL Memorial. "This is only our second service, so we don't really have a way to estimate what might happen," said Howard, "but there is a lot of interest."

The National Navy UDT/SEAL Museum is the only such facility dedicated to the Navy SEALs and their predecessors, the UDT or "frogmen" of World War II. It stands on a portion of what was the U.S. Naval Amphibious Training Station, Fort Pierce, where thousands of sailors, soldiers and Marines were trained in amphibious strategy and tactics that paved the way for every amphibious operation during World War II.

SEALs stands for "Sea, Air and Land," the environment in which the highly trained, secretive and elite fighting force may operate. SEALs have been used in a number of high-profile missions, such as the rescue from Somali pirates of the captain of the Maersk Alabama cargo ship. as well as secret missions in many theaters of operation.

Howard said the museum is hopeful that some of the paraphernalia used in the raid on bin Laden's hideaway will be loaned or donated to the museum for public display. "We are trying to make arrengments to make that happen," said Howard.

SEALs Memorial Day Ceremony

WHAT: Memorial Day at the National Navy UDT/SEAL Museum, wreath-laying ceremony at only national memorial to fallen SEALs.

WHEN: Monday, May 30, at 10 a.m.

WHERE: 3300 N. A1A, North Hutchinson Island, Fort Pierce

ADMISSION, SEATING: Museum will be open free of charge all day. Large tent will be provided with seating.

MASTER OF CEREMONIES: Retired Navy Chaplain, Dr. Robert Bedingfield

GUEST SPEAKERS: Rear Admiral Thomas Brown, a SEAL who commands Special Operations Command, South, in Homestead, and Arnie Schwichtenberg, 90, of Sebastian, Navy veteran of attack on Pearl Harbor.

OTHER PARTICIPANTS: U.S. Coast Guard Station, Fort Pierce; Treasure Coast High School Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, bag pipers.

Panel Calls for Latino Museum on National Mall

Terra Networks: A federal commission is calling for a national museum devoted to American Latino history and culture to be built on a grassy site next to the Capitol as part of the Smithsonian Institution.

A copy of the commission's report obtained by The Associated Press says the museum would represent Latinos on the National Mall where their heritage has been absent.

"The mall, more than any other public space in our country does indeed tell the story of America, and yet that story is not complete," wrote commission chairman Henry R. Munoz III. "There must also be a living monument that recognizes that Latinos were here well before 1776 and that in this new century, the future is increasingly Latino, more than 50 million people and growing."

The commission recommends Congress provide half the cost of a $600 million museum. Private donations would cover the remainder. Still, the bipartisan commission's proposal comes at a time of federal budget constraints and as many groups want to add museums on the National Mall, including sites devoted to the histories of women, immigration, American Indians, African American and gays.

"Some might ask in these very difficult economic times how we can afford such an endeavor," Munoz wrote. "The real question is how can we afford not to."

Former President George W. Bush signed legislation establishing the Latino museum commission in 2008, and President Barack Obama, along with congressional leaders, appointed a 23-member commission. It includes Eva Longoria from TV's "Desperate Housewives," producer Emilio Estefan and others for their expertise in museums, fundraising and Latino culture.

Madame Tussauds Celebrates Founder's 250th Birthday

eTravelBlackboard: Madame Tussauds is celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of its founder, Marie Tussaud, this year and to mark the occasion has released a comparison of the most popular celebrities in the original 1802 exhibition and its worldwide attractions. The kind of names that drew crowds then and now are remarkably different.

In 2011 teenage girls clamour to have their pictures taken with heart throb Robert Pattinson or step on stage with Lady Gaga, whereas back at the turn of the 19th Century visitors went wild for politicians, philosophers, revolutionaries and Royals. Napoleon and Marie Antoinette, George III and Benjamin Franklin were amongst the most talked about figures with not an entertainer in sight.

The difference in the ‘headline acts’ provides a fascinating insight into how celebrity has changed, says Madame Tussauds archivist Kieran Lancini. He explains, “Back in 1802 extremely few people had access to newspapers, there were no photographs, and the public got its news through word of mouth. Madame Tussauds connected ordinary people to the big global stories of the day. The mass media has changed the fame game beyond recognition.”

Madame Tussauds Hong Kong General Manager, Kelly Mak added, “While today’s top 10 is mainly filled with the big names in entertainment, The Queen, Barack Obama, Spider-Man and David Beckham are still incredibly popular. Clearly what hasn’t changed is public curiosity about the famous and those in the public eye; it remains insatiable - and that’s why Madame Tussauds remains as popular today as it was over 200 years ago.”

Lady Gaga fans can now rock the stage with the pop princess at Madame Tussauds Hong Kong, but the good news does not stop there. This June Madame Tussauds Hong Kong will unveil the Robert Pattinson wax figure. Fans will be invited to "tie the knot" with the Hollywood heart-throb in a romantic wedding-themed interactive area called “Marry Me”.

From now until May 31, fans can vote on their favourite styling for the Robert Pattinson wax figure – be it his signature edgy Twilight look or that of a red carpet affair.