美国国家历史博物馆 North side of the Mall ， 14th St NW and Constitution Ave; closest Metro Smithsonian. If you like kitsch ， you wont want to miss the bizarre melange of cultural artefacts at the National Museum of American History. George Washingtons wooden teeth ， Muhammad Alis boxing gloves ， and the ruby slippers Judy Garland wore in the Wizard of Oz are set among didactic displays tracing the countrys development. Its not so much a center for scholarly study as a sanctuary for vanishing Americana ， incorporating Model T Fords， old post offices and even a restored， turnofthecentury icecream parlor， which still serves up banana splits. As you enter from the Mall ， directly on to the second floor ， a soundandlight display showcases the battered red， white and blue flag that inspired the US national anthem the StarSpangled Banner itself， which survived the British bombing of Baltimore harbor during the War of 1812. The worthier exhibits are also on this floor ： an account of the rural farmbased society of the early US stands across from an examination of the mass movement of AfricanAmericans from Southern farms to the wartime industries of northern cities. A lunch counter from Woolworths in Greensboro ， North Carolina ， evokes the sitin of 1960 ， while American Encounters focuses on New Mexico ， looking at how tourism has affected communities such as the pueblo of Santa Clara and Hispanic Chimayo. On the first floor， the Information Age gallery traces communications from Morses first telegraph to Apple Macintoshes ， while separate galleries display in glorious profusion the artefacts and machines that have shaped modern America from lightbulbs and motorbikes to trains and atomic clocks. The top floor holds political memorabilia (much of it over a century old) ， stamp and coin collections， old TV sets and typewriters， though two final outstanding exhibits inject a serious tone Personal Legacy ： the Healing of a Nation brings together some of the 25，000 items left by relatives at the Vietnam Memorial in DC， while A More Perfect Union deals candidly with the shameful internment of JapaneseAmerican citizens during World War II.
