One big thing in history I LOVE is the Titanic. This year on the 100th anniversary of her sinking, we visited the Titanic Museum in Gatlinburg, TN. (We went on Friday, April 13 and she sunk on April 15th.)
It was so FASCINATING!
You go in and get the name of a passenger. That's "who you are" on your journey through the museum. I was a third class passenger, a mother, with three kids whose husband was waiting for us in America because he had taken a voyage before us. The museum takes you through "the ship" and gives facts about the ship, people on board, the voyage, and the sinking.
You travel through all the rooms and learn about different parts of the ship like the dining room and third class. You even get to climb the grand stair case (exactly like the one we all know from the movie).
You get to interact with the museum in various parts such as sticking your hand in freezing water to feel how cold the water actually was the night the ship sank. They also have real artifacts and stories. They have a part in the museum where they have the front of the ship at various different steepness so you can try and climb up it and see how hard it was to walk while the ship was being sucked down.
You might even find a display about your person and get to read facts about them. Your person may even have artifacts on the ship! Your "boarding pass" has stories about them so you learn a little about who they were. But it is even cooler when you find extra information and artifacts somewhere on the ship that belong to "you."
At the end of the museum you get to check the HUGE list of names and see if you survived. Surprisingly, everyone in my family did. And there were seven of us! We also got to sign a guest book cause it was the 100th anniversary, so we got to sign the special book. How fun!
I think my favorite part was trying to climb the various angled "ship bows" cause they kept getting steeper and steeper and harder and harder to climb. I was wearing TOMS so it was nearly impossible for me to climb the last one! Those also had listed the times at which the ship would have been at that angle. It was pretty neat! I also found the cold water interesting. I wouldn't have lasted two minutes before dying cause it was so cold!
We weren't allowed to take pictures inside unfortunately. We did, however, have fun taking them outside!
