Saturday 8th May 2010 Hershey Pennsylvania

Hi its Olivia here. Today we went to the Hershey Car Museum and the National Civil War Museum. The American Civil war is about the South fighting North they were fighting about the slaves. All the slaves were black. The people from the South wanted the slaves, the North did not think it was right, and the North won. Bye Bye.
This is the biggest civil war museum in the US and takes you through every step of this unbelievably nasty event in the history of this country. Had the south had WON, then I think the USA would be a very different place today. The first shot of the war was by the Southern forces at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor in 1861, and the last shots were fired in 1865, in Texas near Palo Alto. The biggest most fatal battle was in Gettysburg. They calculated that at one phase of the battle someone would have died every second for six hours. During the Civil War, the loss on both sides was huge, with over one million dying. They state that the total cost of the four-year conflict would have been estimated the equivalent of over eight billion dollars in today’s currency. The entire south was crippled. The museum had too much information to fully take in, but was very interesting, and Abraham Lincoln plays a big part in this story and we can now understand why he is such a prominent figure in US history.
Hershey Car Museum … wow this guy is my hero. He has been bankrupt twice and then gave his complete fortune away twice and started again. He put every cent of profit back into the town named after himself, the Theme Park is the highest profile but he and his wife couldn’t have kids so he poured millions into an orphanage with 5000 kids who now live a privileged life (or at least as privileged as you can be without a Mom and Dad). He also built a huge Football stadium and a big Musical Auditorium but wait there’s more, he was also a “Car Guy” and has a cool car museum. Highlights were a prototype Cadillac from 1958 the car is one of 5 ever made, and also a very cool 56 Packard Prototype future car (at least future for the time) complete with Gold seats and Ostrich leather throughout. There was also a big selection of mint muscle cars, really vintage vintage cars and a collection of busses. One was used in the making of forest Gump opening scene, where he sits on the bus seat telling his story. All in all Hershey has been a great little surprise find.

This is the Forest Gump Bus?