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 jumps off a bridge. Damn! That last one should be true in Illinois because I’ve seen several people do that here and the rivers are plain stinky.
Compared to the rest of the United States, Rhode Island seems to be lacking in weird museums and attractions. Maybe because it’s too small. The only things that are truly strange are the books found at the John Hay Library at Brown University. There you will find a collection of anatomy books, including the well known On the Structure of the Human Body, bound in human skin. Known as anthropodermic bibliopegy, it was quite rare to bind a book in such a way. Historically, these books could be bound with the skin of a cadaver, copies of judicial proceedings were sometimes bound with the skin of the murderer, like in the Red Barn Case, or in a few cases, eccentrics requested that upon their deaths their skin be used to bind their favorite books. Don’t think I’ll be doing that. I like books, but not that much.
John Hay Library at Brown University
