The South Carolina State Museum has four floors of permanent and changing exhibits, a digital dome planetarium, 4D interactive theater and an observatory. The State Museum, is located along the banks of the Congaree River in downtown Columbia, South Carolina. It is the largest museum in the state, and is a Smithsonian Affiliate and part of the American Alliance of Museums. Positioned on an old shipping canal that dates back to pre-Civil War times, the museum is widely recognized as a resource for South Carolina history and lifestyle. The museum opened on October 29, 1988 and is housed in what it calls its largest artifact, the former Columbia Mills Building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. When the mill opened in 1894, manufacturing cotton duck cloth, it was the first totally electric textile mill in the world. It was also the first major industrial installation for the General Electric corporation. On certain levels of the museum, the original flooring has been kept intact, distinguishable by hundreds of textile brads and rings that became embedded in the floor while it was still being used as a mill. The South Carolina Confederate Relic Room & Military Museum is located within the Columbia Mills Building, and is the oldest museum exhibit in Columbia. The museum represents four disciplines: art, cultural history, science and technology, and natural history. Exhibits include life-size replicas of the Best Friend of Charleston- the first American-built locomotive in 1830; and the Civil War's H.L. Hunley, the first submarine to sink an enemy ship in combat. The second floor on natural history is notable for its recreation of a 3.6 million-year-old Megalodon, named Finn, suspended mid-air just around a corner, which has scared countless groups of young children, and for a life-size Columbian mammoth. There is also the Lipscomb art gallery on the first floor, which features an iron gate made by Charleston's Philip Simmons. And there is the Cotton Mill Exchange gift shop with South Carolina souvenirs and books. The museum has the Crescent Café with sandwiches. The museum has a 1989 mural of the nearby Gervais Street Bridge by Columbia's Blue Sky in a room next to the Café. It has topiary sculpted by Bishopville's Pearl Fryar in the parking lot. The Stringer Discovery Center for small children opened in 1997. The museum has an "Official" Story Chair designed and donated by Storyteller Mike Miller for the benefit of children and storytellers. Travelling exhibitions at the State Museum have included Body Worlds Vital in 2012, Titanic: the Artifact Exhibition in '12, Secrets of the Maya in '12, King Tut in '13 and '03, Dinosaurs: A Bite Out of Time in '14, Julius Caesar: Roman Military Might in '15, "RACE: Are We So Different?" in '16, Savage Ancient Seas in '17, the 2017 Solar Eclipse in Columbia in the observatory, The Wizard of Oz in '17 for Halloweeen, Hall of Heroes in '19, 50 Years of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing in '19, Sherlock Holmes: the International Exhibition in '20, "Spanish Explorations in the Caribbean and the US, 1492-1570" in '90, WWII and SC in '91, "Rock, Roll, and Remember: Hootie & the Blowfish and Other SC Greats" in '97, The World of Insects in '98, in '99, The Magic School Bus in '99, Inside Africa in '04, Prehistoric Predators in '04, Napoleon Bonaparte in '06, Aliens: Worlds of Possibilities in '07, Leonardo da Vinci in '08, an '08 exhibit on several of the movies filmed in SC, "Football in the Palmetto State, 1889-2000" in '08, Pirates in 2010, and 150 years of the Civil War in SC in 2011.
