Barnum filled the American Museum with dioramas, panoramas, "cosmoramas", scientific instruments, modern appliances, a flea circus, a loom powered by a dog, the trunk of a tree under which Jesus' disciples supposedly sat, an oyster bar, a rifle range, waxworks, glass blowers, taxidermists, phrenologists, pretty baby contests, Ned the learned seal, the Fiji Mermaid (a mummified monkey's torso with a fish's tail), midgets, Chang and Eng the Siamese twins, a menagerie of exotic animals that included beluga whales in an aquarium, giants, Native Americans who performed traditional songs and dances, Grizzly Adams's trained bears and performances ranging from magicians, ventriloquists and blackface minstrels to adaptations of biblical tales and Uncle Tom's Cabin.

[9] It was allegedly during this fire that a fireman by the name of Johnny Denham killed an escaped tiger with his ax before rushing into the burning building and carrying out a 400-pound woman on his shoulders.

[13] In July 2000, a virtual museum version opened on the Internet, supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

[6] Barnum capitalized on the draw of some of his most famous attractions, often publishing articles in newspapers claiming that his exhibits were fake, which caused audiences to return to see them for themselves.

[16]: 84 Thumb wasn't the only physical oddity; there was also the Fiji Mermaid and Josephine Boisdechene, who had a large beard, which had grown to the length of two inches when she was only eight years old.

As if to supplement Tom Thumb, the museum also had William Henry Johnson (Zip the Pinhead), who was one of Barnum's longest-running attractions.

The museum also boasted an elegant theatre, called the "Lecture Room," and characterized in the popular Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion of 1853, "one of the most elegant and recherche halls of its class to be found anywhere," which would offer "every species of entertainment ... 'from grave to gay, from lively to severe,' ... [and] judiciously purged of every semblance of immorality.

"[6] This was possible because: 1) these performances occurred in a space labeled a lecture hall, helping to distinguish them for those who would never have been near a theatre, and 2) "[Barnum] made the theatre into something it had rarely been before: a place of family entertainment, where men and women, adults and children, could intermingle safe in the knowledge that no indecencies would assault their senses either on stage or off.

[7] It was the American Museum that began the modern-day trend of exploiting the human body for the sake of mass entertainment.

[3] One of Barnum's most successful attractions was his large selection of living animals, which were a highlight for the visitors who had never seen exotic creatures.

The whales lived in a small 576 square foot tank, and when they frequently died, Barnum "promptly set about procuring additional specimens.