Weird things I learned about the state of Rhode Island: It is considered an offense to throw pickle juice on a trolley, one cannot sell toothpaste and a toothbrush to the same customer on a Sunday and, last but not least, one is breaking the law if he or she...
The only way to recognize Presidents Day is with a bad wax museum picture. And yes, I know…Benjamin Franklin was never President. But some people think he was. So whatever.
This life-sized wax effigy of King Charles II was made soon after his death in February 1685. It stood over the king’s grave in Westminster Abbey for 150 years before being moved to the Jesus Chapel/Islip’s Chantry, where it was photographed by Sir Benjamin Stone in 1896. Now on...
Better late than never! As I promised earlier, here is my other post about James Dean, on the sixtieth anniversary of his death. I’ve told you more than a few times about when I went to his hometown of Fairmount, Indiana. There was a visit to the local museum, where...
On this date in 1963 U.S. President John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Texas. Millions of people have visited the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, which is located on the sixth and seventh floors of the Texas School Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald worked and fired the...
This next one’s not a museum, but an appropriate random attraction now that Hillary Clinton is officially running for U.S. President. Her husband Bill (I don’t know, you might have heard of him) was born in Hope, Arkansas (so was Mike Huckabee, by the way). Well, next to the town’s...
Although it’s nice to know that Petitcollin, the last French traditional doll factory, is still active, their museum (aka Musée de la poupée Petitcollin d’Étain) is a bit on the creepy side. Founded in 1860 by Nicolas Tin Petitcollin, this iconic brand has specialised in the manufacturing of plastic toys...
It’s become a tradition here on the blog to recognise the week of July 4th, you know, that time of year when Americans celebrate their Americanness with fireworks (invented by the Chinese) and ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ t-shirts (most likely made in China). In past years I’ve you told you...
On this day exactly one hundred years ago, Orson Welles was born, so it seems appropriate to write about the 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast, in which Welles’ Mercury Theatre on the Air enacted a Martian invasion of Earth that was based on H. G. Wells’s 19th century...
Even though I’ve been to Whitby, I’m sad to say I have never seen the “Hand of Glory”. On display at the Whitby Museum (it’s even on the freakin’ entrance sign), this mummified severed human hand was discovered hidden in the wall of a nearby thatched cottage over a hundred...
