This evening Jews will light their menorahs for the first night of Hanukkah. Also known as the Festival of Lights, the Jewish holiday begins at sundown on the 16th of December and ends eight days later on the evening of the 24th. Even though my half-Jewish mother is not religious...
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Eastland Disaster, the largest loss of life from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes. Western Electric employees, families, and friends were to cross Lake Michigan from Chicago to Michigan City, Indiana, for a picnic. But the SS Eastland, docked at the Clark...
Two posts in one day? Ohmigod something must be going on! Why yes, it’s Presidents Day, a U.S. federal holiday that is celebrated on the third Monday of February to recognize the country’s first President George Washington (I don’t know, you might have heard of him). Earlier I told you...
The Bread and Puppet Museum has absolutely nothing to do with bread and everything to do with creepy, traumatizing puppets. Like the nightmarish kind. Now located in a 150-year-old barn in Glover, Vermont, this giant mask and puppet collection originally breathed its first breath in New York City during the...
Every 18th of May since 1977, ICOM has organised International Museum Day, which represents a unique moment for the international museum community. The organisation chooses a different theme for the day and coordinates every year. This year’s theme “Museums as Cultural Hubs: The future of tradition”. There is no better...
The city of Guanajuato in central Mexico has a remarkable attraction: a mummy museum(not recommended for visitors who are faint of heart) featuring over one hundred mummies that were formed naturally in the local cemetery. The Guanajuato mummies were exhumed between 1865 and 1989. The mummies here formed naturally. The...
On this date in 1902 James C. Penney (aka J.C. Penney) opened his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming. Today “The Mother Store” of the 1,106 department store chain is a national historic landmark along with Penney’s small house, where he lived from 1902-1909. Today these buildings are open for tours...
If you appreciate the fact you can actually see shit, especially at night, then do I have a museum for you. The Lumina Domestica in Bruges tells the 400,000-year history of domestic illumination. Yes, believe it or not, people have been trying to see things for that long. Located in...
Cesare Lombroso founded the Italian school of criminology, which believed criminality was inherited, and that someone “born criminal” could be identified by physical defects. This theory was rejected throughout most of Europe but accepted in the United States during the 19th century. Even though Lombroso’s ideas are now viewed as...
Do you have a drawer full of barely used utensils? Well, I know I do. Unlike Surendrabhai Patel, I probably won’t display my utensils in a mud hut. But you can’t compare my old, crusty spoons to those from India. We’re talking about real craftsmanship here. Utensil is defined as...
