Let me preface this next post by saying smoking kills. I mean, there’s a 100% chance you’ll still die even if you don’t light up a cigarette now and again, but don’t cough up a lung while doing it. But I guess I shouldn’t tell that to our next crazy...
The Circus Circus Casino isn’t the only place in Nevada with a creepy clown sign. Halfway between Las Vegas and Reno is the “ghost town” of Tonopah, which although isn’t completely abandoned, is pretty close to it. Even the local cemetery has been closed for a hundred years, made up...
Every detail of the central London top-floor flat at 23 Brook Street, where musician Jimi Hendrix and his girlfriend, Kathy Etchingham, lived between 1968-69 has been recreated. There are Persian rugs on the floor, a Victorian shawl above the bed, and newspapers and a clamshell ashtray on top of the...
125 years ago today David Kalakaua, the last king of Hawaii, was forced at gunpoint by the Americans to sign the Bayonet Constitution giving America more power in Hawaii while stripping Hawaiian citizens of their rights. God, those Americans really hate the monarchy, don’t they? So because of this historical...
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...
My great-grandfather had a cigar in his mouth from when he was a young man in his twenties until his death at the age of eighty. Something tells me he would’ve liked this next museum in the Netherlands, where you can find a house made entirely of cigar bands. Sixty-five...
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...
I just learned that today, the 19th of June, is Museum Cake Day. Uh…don’t ask me why this shit exists…who associates cake with museums? I know I don’t. Cheap wine, maybe but not cake. Anyway, this seems like the perfect time to remember the Frances Kuyper’s Mini Cake Museum, unfortunately...
Only a few days after I told you about the Museum of Animated Carvings, we’re already back in Kansas. In the town of Lawrence, wanna-be blues musician “Honey Boy” (more like “White Boy”) Walker has filled the first floor of his home with such weird collections, including over 500 sock...
In the hills of southern Austria is a farmhouse outbuilding that is home to the Weltmaschine (the World Machine). What is this, you ask? The creator of the machine, Franz Gsellmann, grew up hoping to become an engineer, which never happened because everybody knows dreams don’t come true. But after...
