Mysterious museum objects

A thumb that may or may not have once belonged to bandit John Murrell is displayed every Halloween at the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville.

For more than a century, the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va., had a secret message in a bottle. Finally in 2008, the bottle was opened and the contents sent to a code breaker.

A Chinese music box displayed at the Morris Museum in Morristown, N.J., may have inspired Puccini's work on the operas "Madame Butterfly" and "Turandot."

Many visitors seek out the Harvard Museum of Natural History Cambridge, Mass., just to see the 3,200 glass flowers crafted by a father and son, Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka. But few know that the German artisans also dabbled in marine animals.

A shrunken head from the Jivaro Indians of Ecuador from the early 20th century is displayed at the Lightner Museum in St. Augustine, Fla.

Two quilts at the Yakima Valley Museum, Wash., grab visitors's attention. One was constructed in 1928 from robes and masks worn by local members of the Ku Klux Klan. Another, made years before Hitler's rise to power, is emblazoned with swastikas, once a symbol of good luck and hospitality.

Astronauts were instructed to leave their boots on the lunar surface to lighten the load on their return flight. But the last two men to walk on the moon made an executive decision to bring them back anyway. The footwear is now at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Katharine Wright supported her brothers while they invented the airplane. The dress she wore is shown at the International Women's Air & Space Museum in Cleveland. While the museum also has the knickers she wore under the dress, it doesn't display those.