Last Looks At Some National Treasures

10. The Skeksis, from puppeteer Jim Henson's "The Dark Crystal," which took five people to maneuver, and whose hand was manufactured by harpsichord-makers.

11. The absurdly floral horse-drawn carriage with firehose reel made about 1850 in Philadelphia for a Bethlehem fire department.

12: The ornate etched glass and carved wood 1902 Automat, originally installed in Philadelphia (and housing replica sandwiches) behind the counter in the ice cream parlor.

13. An old-fashioned chemistry set like the ones that were holiday gift traditions in the 1950s and '60s.

14. The giant copper pot, rather like a small bathosphere, in which Gail Borden first condensed milk. (Among Borden's less successful concepts: A refrigerator large enough to house the population of Galveston, Texas, in the heat of summer.)

15. Almost any of the several dozen lovely model ships.

16. The streetcar placed at the intersection of Washington's Pennsylvania Avenue and Seventh Street NW, with the knife-grinder's cart, horse-drawn cab and green market vendor alongside (and the map of the long-destroyed trolley lines that crisscrossed the city).

17. A 1941 cherry-red Indian motorcycle.

18. A 1934 wooden-frame Trav-L Coach camper.

19. Horatio Greenough's monumental 1814 statue of Washington as Zeus (which was deemed too adulatory for the new republic and moved from the Capitol to the grounds to the Smithsonian).

20. Washington's impressively long (even today) and characteristically modest blue wool uniform coat.

21. Mary Gasperik's 1930s quilt of Colonial women quilting flags.

22. The "bullet-shaped" lipstick and rubber-free brassiere from patriotic women's fashions in World War I (and a nearby propaganda poster of a German in helmet looking exactly like Darth Vader).

Miles Davis's multihued jacket at the museum.

23. The huge "beehive prism" bulb from the Bolivar Lighthouse, which shone out over Galveston through the great hurricane of 1900, thanks to the keeper who cranked it by hand.

24. Miles Davis's Versace coat of many colors, a cross between "Fantasia" and a Matisse "Jazz" collage, with sleeves.

25. Henry Horenstein's photos of the back room at Tootsies Orchid Lounge in Nashville, where all the would-be stars who borrowed money wrote their IOU's on the wall (and where Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock were just married. Again).

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY Constitution Avenue and 14th Street NW. 202-633-1000 (TDD: 202-357-1729). http://americanhistory.si.edu. Metro: Smithsonian or Federal Triangle. Open daily 10-6:30 through Sept. 4.