Austin, Texas: LBJ Museum and Library, With Robot

12-story cement block houses the history of Lyndon Johnson's presidency. Best of all: a life-size LBJ robot that tells G-rated versions of LBJ jokes.

Strange gap in the timeline during the WWII years, yet he received a silver star medal, with no explanation given. LBJ liked to give people electric razors and electric toothbrushes, he said because they would start and end their days thinking of him. Examples are on display.

The LBJ Presidential Library and Museum spent the year 2011-2012 updating its exhibits. When it re-opened to the public on December 22, one of its most visible changes involved its animatronic, joke-cracking LBJ robot.

The robot had been part of the museum since 1997, when it was donated by the Dallas department store Neiman Marcus, which apparently no longer wanted it. The robot leaned on a fence, dressed in ranch clothes and Stetson hat, and told five cleaned-up versions of LBJ jokes, apparently recorded at official dinners (You can hear the laughter). Visitors constantly mentioned the robot as one of their favorite parts of the museum. But, according to spokeswoman Anne Wheeler, the museum felt that the dinner-table laughter meant that "the ranch setting didn't fit." So it has stripped LBJ of his cowboy duds, ditched the fence, and dressed him in a suit, standing at a lectern in front of LBJ political cartoons.

Anne assured us that he still tells the same five jokes.