Maybe they were going for the same effect as L.A.’s Museum of Jurassic Technology.
(which assuredly does not belong in this thread.)
So does every freakin’ church in Latin America…just a hop, skip, and a jump from Golgotha.
I’m not sure if I made this up or I heard it somewhere else, but there are enough pieces of the True Cross out there to build the log cabin Abe Lincoln was born in. 
I’m just picturing the ancient conman who sold the king these things. “Oh yes, i assure you they are real! Would I lie?” Long dead and forgotten, but his legacy lives on!
Of course those are all fake, I have the ENTIRE True Cross. I got it from a guy. He swore it was gen-u-ine. And he wouldn’t lie!
Most “unicorn horns” sold in the middle ages and Renaissance actually were tusks of narwhals. Still exotic and hard to get your hands on in central Europe, but not exactly the real thing or critter.
ETA: and regarding pieces of the True Cross: I hadn’t heard the saying about Lincoln’s log cabin @Smapti posted, but that putting together all those pieces kept in Catholic churches around the world, you could build a whole forest of True Crosses.
It’s like the loaves and fishes!
Hm, I just checked the museum website and it does say that, not even throwing in a “reputed to be” clause. But apparently this particular splinter was given to Ambassador Clare Booth Luce by the Pope, so it must be…well, total bullshit anyway.
I was just in Grants earlier this month. Kind of sad now that I missed out…. That’s what I get for being a shut-in.
(I was there visiting the coal mines.)
I can’t get on my computer. Is this about the Miami Serpentarium?
I was at the Miami Serpentarium in its heyday, back in the 1960s. It was pretty good museum at the time – filled with poisonous snakes and run by Dr. William Haast. It closed in 1984, after which he opened a non-tourist center in Punta Gorda, Florida to continue production of venom and antivenin.
Haast put on a heluva show. He’d take a king cobra our of its tank and put it in grass circle, surrounded by tourists (with absolutely no protective walls between the tourists and this live, venomous snake), then he would “charm” the cobra, quickly grab it by the neck, and plunge its fangs through a rubber sheet stretched over a flask and “milk” out the venom. Hard to believe that he could get away with a show like that. I’m sure you couldn’t today.
Haast was a “mithridatist” – he injected himself with small doses of snake venom to make himself immune to its effects. His blood was used as a cure for snakebite victims (presumably those with compatible blood types).
I was fascinated, and wrote to him asking advice on keeping snakes (I kept non-poisonous garter snakes.) He actually replied.
Nope–it’s the one that was in Wilmington, NC. Dark, stinky, tiny cages, miserable reptiles, and a lobby full of Dr. Bronner-level free-association rants covering all the walls, except they were about chemtrails and the gummint.
Free-range wackos. The reechest kind!