One of the biggest hits at the 'Man in the Moon' event last year was the Mercury One Museum. Attendees got to see some incredible pieces, including several Bibles from important moments in American history, Joseph Smith's pocket watch, The Disneyland Prospectus, and more. This year, Glenn (of course) is planning to go even bigger as the 'Miracles and Massacres Museum' comes to Mercury One's Gods, Guns, and Giving 2014 event on October 10th and 11th. A the event, Glenn plans to debut the Normandy flag he purchased at auction earlier this year as part of the museum. On his TV show Monday night, Glenn spoke to historians and curators helping with the museum, and gave a preview of what attendees could expect.
Glenn: Coming out of Studio 19 to our backstage area. Reid Moon, how are you sir?
Reid: Great.
Glenn: Good to see you. This is Jeremy Boyd. He is in charge of my library. This guy has one of the best collections of amazing stuff you’ve ever seen. We are going to put together for the first time in I think in 18 months another $50 million worth of rare artifacts, and it’s going to happen here at our studios in Las Colinas. It’s happening on October.
Jeremy: Tenth and 11th.
Glenn: Tenth and 11th. We want you to come. Bring your family. Bring your class. Bring your school. Bring your church. Bring whoever. But you’re going to see the history of the world like you’ve never seen before. I want to get to this last, but show me some of the stuff that you have.
Reid: Sure. Right here, in 1832, Samuel Francis Smith wrote 'My Country, ‘Tis of Thee', or America as it’s known. When he is 84 years old, somebody came up to him and said, “Can you write that out for me?” And when he is 84 years old, he wrote it out, 60 years later, and this is a handwritten copy.
Glenn: This one is so amazing.
Reid: Okay, in the early 1960s, we don’t have the social media like we—
Glenn: Right, we don’t have Facebook.
Reid: So this, a little old lady in Chicago sees Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV. Two hours later, she goes down to Western Union, says, “Can you send a telegram to Jack Ruby?”
Glenn: This is the telegram. Look at this. Dallas, Texas, courthouse basement, Dallas. “Congratulations—you had the courage to do what the rest of the world would like to have done. Mrs. G F Gage…East 68th Street.” That’s a little dark. Real quick, this?
Reid: Okay, many people have seen the movie The King’s Speech. This is the King’s speech. You open it up, for his coronation, here’s all the wording. This is an invitation to the coronation. This is what the king said.
Glenn: This was what the movie…this is what he was…so this was actually done?
Reid: Yes.
Glenn: Let’s see, we’ve got to do a couple of other things. I mean, this is a ticket for the Zeppelin, the Hindenburg. This is a hand-marked script from Orson Welles. This is unbelievable, Mother Teresa. She went to the UN. This is UN week in New York. I love this. She said—this is the first time Mother Teresa goes to the UN—“I felt like fish out of water in that crowd of businessmen and leaders. I never feel like that with crowds much greater—but closer—of our kind—the lepers, the dying, the unwanted, the helpless, the unloved, the lonely.” I just think that’s amazing. Real quick, explain what this is if we have time.
Reid: Well, if you come to the museum, you will learn the full story, but this is actually a purchase order for 8,000 cubic yards of stone to put the Statue of Liberty on.
Glenn: But when you hear the full story, it will blow you away, blow you away—a piece of American history you’ve never heard before and true heroism. I mean, the guy is amazing. Now, let me show you this. So Reid comes in. I say, “What do you have?” There’s like $1 million worth of stuff on this table right now. I say, “What do you have?” And he said, “Oh, it’s just a simple book, right? It’s the New Testament.
But sometimes it’s who wrote in the Old Testament or who it belongs to. You’ll see that there’s writing, very faded, but there’s writing all the way through this New Testament. And the guy who had it was a linguist, and so he’s correcting this version of the New Testament, the Greek in it. It was owned…J.R.R. Tolkien. How amazing is that? Reid, I can’t wait to show more of this stuff and thank you. We’ll see you in a couple weeks.
I want to show you what else we’re working on now. We’re going to take you down to Stage 33. Sorry, this is very messy. I don’t like it this messy, but we’re busy, okay? Get off me. Okay, so going into Stage 33. Let me just get ahead of you here. And here on Stage 33—hey, Justin—this is…right now, we have just kind of made this into…we just cleared out this set, and some of the stuff is kind of out in the hallway.
This is going to be our first 4-D experiment. I someday want to build a museum, an American history museum, but I want to build it in a way that kids will never, ever forget. So we are doing something in this studio. It will be our first history museum exhibit that will hopefully come to life for you. This is going to be the beaches of Normandy and you’re going to come in. In fact, these will be risers right basically where you are now, risers, and these walls are going to come to life in several different layers so you will feel like you are landing on the beaches of Normandy.
In fact, the designers have told us that they think that it might be a little too intense for small children and some combat veterans, if you have issues at all, that this might be a little too intense, because we want you to feel like you are in war. My Uncle Leo landed on the beaches of Normandy, and what he described to me, I want to bring to life, and I want you to feel it.
And this room, the only exhibit in this room will be the Normandy flag, the flag that actually landed on all of the beaches on D-Day. We want you to see it. And then you’ll go out, and you will see $50 million worth of artifacts. They have many of them not been seen. All of them haven’t been seen for at least 18 months, including the pilgrims’ Bible, the one that was brought over on the Mayflower.
Last time we brought some of these things out of the vaults, people actually stood there and wept because they are so moving just to see them. Bring them to life, and it hopefully will be an experience you and your family will never forget. Get your tickets now. They’re going fast. Grab them online. Come down to our studios and meet us.
Some of them are going to be hosted…some of the tours will be hosted by Reid. Some will be by Brent Ashworth or myself or some of the other people that we have, lots of volunteers to help walk you through history, but we want you to come to our studios in Las Colinas just outside of Dallas, Texas, the Mercury Studios.
Go to MercuryOne.org. All of the proceeds go to help fund Mercury One so they don’t have to worry about, you know, paying any of the salary for anybody. This is what takes care of it every year. Go see our museum. Find your tickets now, MercuryOne.org.
