Museum of World Treasures
Wichita, Kansas
The Museum of World Treasures is called "the Smithsonian of the Midwest" according to museum employee Lon Smith, who was our guide. We don't know if we'd go that far, but the museum does have a lot crammed into what was an old warehouse, including a couple of Egyptian mummies, a shrunken head, some big dinosaur skeletons, a please-touch-me slab of the Berlin Wall, and lots of things signed by famous people. We were especially mesmerized by a human scalp, taken (some claim) from Harry Armstrong Reed, Custer's 18-year-old nephew, who was killed along with his uncle at the battle of Little Big Horn. Harry's job was to hold the 7th Calvary flagpole, which he reportedly did until the end.
The Museum states honestly in its display that the scalp's history is in dispute; it may not have belonged to Custer's nephew at all, or to anyone even remotely famous. Still, it's not something you see every day, and indicative of the wow-factor artifacts that this museum offers. The place radiates a certain cheeriness, making its selective survey of Civilization seem just about right.