These museums are far from average.

The Museum of Bad Art: "[O]ur mission: to bring the worst of art to the widest of audiences."

• The caption for the picture above is: "The flesh tones bring to mind the top shelf liqueurs of a border bistro. With an astonishing emphasis on facial bone structure, the artist flirts with caricature and captures features of Mamma's face which remind us of a Presidential candidate. The upright marionettish pose of the babe hints that the early bond between mother and child is as formal as it is familiar. Good old fashioned parental respect is at the center of this celebration of color and contour."

The Cockroach Hall of Fame Museum in Texas: "A museum of cockroaches that everyone can love."

• The museum has life Madagascar hissing cockroaches and "cockroaches that have been dressed in costumes to portray various themes." Below is Liberoachi.

You may not want to read on if you are squeamish.


The Mutter Museum by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia: "Disturbingly Informative"

• Grover Cleavland's secret tumor
• John Wilkes Booth's thorax
• The "Soap Lady" who died of Yellow fever in the 19th century and whose body has turned into soap.
• The nine-foot colon of a man who only had a bowel movement once a month. A picture can be seen here.
  
• A collection of 2,000 objects that were swallowed and removed without surgery by Dr, Jackson.

The Icelandic Phallological Museum

• "[P]robably the only museum in the world to contain a collection of phallic specimens belonging to all the various types of mammal found in a single country."

The Vrolik Museum in Amsterdam: "over two thousand specimens of humans, mammals, and other vertebrates"

• "Since 1994, 150 specimens of congenital malformations have also been on display."
• congenital malformation: "physical defect present in a baby at birth[.]"
• From what I understand, the babies are in formaldehyde jars.

I never knew that!

• In 1939 President Roosevelt changed the date of Thanksgiving. By moving the holiday a week earlier, he hoped to lengthen the Christmas shopping season and boost sales. He announced this in August and created a controversy especially among calender makers and football coaches. Twenty three states celebrated Thanksgiving on the old date, twenty three celebrated on the new date, and Texas and Colorado celebrated both. In 1940, Roosevelt returned Thanksgiving to its original date and Congress passed a law banning any future president from changing the date of Thanksgiving. Source
• September 1914, German troops were close to taking Paris prompting French military officials to send 6,000 troops to the front. To transport the troops, they called on taxis. Six hundred cab drivers left their passengers and lined up for inspection, transporting the troops and saving Paris. Click here to see footage of the taxis in Windows Media Player. Source
• In May 1902 on the island of Martinique, a nearby volcano started to act up near the city of Saint-Pierre. Worried about his party losing power in the upcoming election, the governor of Martinique set up roadblocks to contain the citizens and instructed the newspapers to minimize the danger. Pelee erupted anyway, killing the governor and 30,000 people in less than two minutes. One of the only two survivors was scheduled for execution the next day, and was protected in his underground cell. He later toured with Barnum & Bailey Circus in a copy of the cell. Source: The Greatest Stories Never Told: 100 tales from history to astonish, bewilder, and stupefy by Rick Beyer
• While everyone knows about the Great Chicago Fire, hardly anyone knows about the deadliest fire in US history: the Great Peshtigo Fire. Killing between 1,200 to 2,400 people in northern Wisconsin, it had the misfortune of occurring the same night as the Great Chicago Fire. Source.

Molasses

On January 15, 1919, the North End of Boston was flooded by 2 million gallons of molasses when a tank burst open. The 35 mph wave of molasses was two stories high, killing 21 and injuring 150. There were 3,000 witnesses who testified in the 6-year lawsuit against Boston. The smell of molasses remained for decades. It took over 87,000 man hours to clean up the aftermath (picture above).
"Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage. Here and there struggled a form — whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was.... Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings — men and women — suffered likewise."

Source: article by Edwards Park from Nov 1983 Smithsonian, "Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919," and here.

• Readers of my early blog may recognize this post from Oct 2007. I have re-posted this after being asked (and complying) to remove a source-link and remove a picture by two unrelated people. They said that I was "stealing bandwidth" and "playing havock with [their] visitor stats." Can someone please explain this to me?

odds and ends on death

A few contemporary odds and ends on death:

• This website is offering a PS3 and a title of "Mr./Mrs. Death" to the person who can accurately predict when Britney Spears is going to die.
  
• A Texas man was shot in the leg and died from loss of blood when his chocolate Labrador retriever stepped on, and fired, his shotgun. Source
• A criminal in Michigan hid $300 worth of hunting knives in the waistband of his pants. When confronted by employees, he fled and tripped, stabbing himself in the stomach. Source

Your vote, Sir?

When Jeremy Bentham, the "Father of Utilitarianism," died, in 1832, he willed his body to the University College Hospital in London. However, it was willed on the condition that his "dear friend Doctor Southwood Smith" would preserve his body in the manner shown in the picture above. In Bentham's own words: "The skeleton he will cause to be put together in such a manner as that the whole figure may be seated in a chair usually occupied by me when living, in the attitude in which I am sitting when engaged in thought in the course of time employed in writing."
For years, Bentham carried around the glass eyes he hoped would go inside his mummified head. While Bentham's head was mummified, it deteriorated rapidly and a wax head was put on his skeleton instead. However, in 1975, student kidnapped Bentham's real head, demanding a £100 ransom for charity. The college eventually paid £10 and Bentham's head was placed at his feet (see picture above).
Bentham also wished for his body to be present at all board meetings, and tradition has it, that when there is a tied vote, Bentham votes favorably for the motion.
Source. Source.

Gravestone tour

In Natchez City, they have a colorful cemetery that you can tour. Here are two highlights:

• Florence Irene Ford died when she was 10. Because she had always run frightened to her mother during thunderstorms, her mother made a storm shelter with stairs leading down to a place where she could view her daughter's body through a glass window. Picture above.
• Ruphus E. Case wanted to be buried in his rocking chair. To accommodate, the cemetery built a brick structure around him and his rocking chair. Unfortunately, as the bricks started to crumble, anyone with a flashlight could peek in and see him.
  

http://www.natchezcemetery.com/custom/webpage.cfm?content=content&id=2

Living Dead

In Germany, a drunken 24 year old man fell asleep on the train while dressed as a zombie for Halloween. His fellow passengers, who believed him to be murdered and smeared in blood, called the police. The police made him remove his bloody makeup before continuing. The police spokesman is quoted as saying: "Bad Segeberg is in a rural area, and Halloween isn't very well known there. So people weren't expecting anyone to be dressed up in the train."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,306216,00.html

(P.S. The above picture is obviously not of him.)