Museums To Visit

 

We be well into summer and have you any travel plans? Why not visit a museum...... especially a weird museum. Guarantee you (and your kiddos) will enjoy such a visit. Except for the one in Iceland. 

*Mutter Museum in Philadelphia features anatomical specimens, including Einstein's brain and a cast of Chang and Eng, the famous Siamese Twins joined at the abdomen.

** International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, NM, focuses on the 1947 Roswell UFO incident and alien lore. 

** SPAM museum in Austin, MN is dedicated entirely to the history and culture of the canned meat product. Great gift shop.

** National Mustard Museum in Middleton, WI, displays over 5000 types of mustard from around the world.

** Pizza Brain Museum in Philadelphia showcases the world's pizza culture and pizzeria.

** Devil's Rope Museum in McLean, TV, explores the history of barbed wire. 

** Museum of Salt & Pepper Shakers in Gatlinburg, TN, features thousands of sets of these.

** Lunchbox Museum in Columbus, GA, is the world's largest collected of lunchboxes featuring over 5000 vintage metal and plastic lunchboxes.

** Hammer Museum in Haines, AL, is dedicated to hammers; founded in 2002 it contains over 1400 hammers and related tools ranging from ancient times, through colonial days to the industrial age.

** Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles is a surreal institution blending fact and fiction.

** Probably not for children, the Penis Museum in Reykjavik, Iceland features "more than 200 penises and penile parts representing almost all Icelandic land and sea mammals."  (Yes, hubby and I visited this museum  in 2019 and it wasn't so bad.) 

Museums of the World

 I'd bet a nickel that there is a museum to just about anything you can name. I'd also bet that you've visited a good many museums for that's a "genealogy thing." But I'd bet that you've never heard of these three museums that I just discovered.

Wikipedia tells us that there are some 4500 species of crab scattered in the world's oceans. In Margate, England, is the Crab Museum where inside is a diorama featuring all things "crab," real and fanciful. The museum aims to teach visitors about crab anatomy, mating habits and their importance to marine ecosystems, including environmental threats. Their website is both fun and informative and you can sign up for their newsletter for free. 

The Museum of Failure first began in Sweden as a traveling exhibit and now is located in Malaga, Spain. This museum highlights digital disasters, medical mishaps, bad taste things, Failure in Motion, Failure to Innovate, "What WERE they thinking," and "So Close But Yet So Far...."  The museum has over 200 new items and artifacts added every year because "innovation needs failure. All progress, not only technological progress, is built on learning from past failures and mistakes." 

Last of all, a museum in Reykjavik, Iceland: The Iceland Phallogical Museum. This eclectic museum purposes to "collect, study and preserve some 200 phalluses of land and sea mammals (including man)." I visited this most unusual museum and to be honest found it to be most interesting. The gift shop offerings were definitely "something else."