For every Louvre in France or Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City that showcases the artwork of masters, there is a museum displaying the most unusual things. Most museums around the world are about art, culture, and history, but that doesn’t mean you can’t visit museums so uncanny or even weird that you have no idea waht to think! Here are ten peculiar museums you have to see to believe.
Do you know where most condoms are manufactured? If you have ever wondered, look no further than Thailand’s Condom Museum. This small museum is located in Nonthaburi, outside of Bangkok, within the Ministry of Health.
It’s not easy to find, but once you do, you will gain knowledge on almost anything and everything there is to learn about condoms. However, you have to obtain permission from the department supervisor to gain admittance. After you have been admitted, you will see a massive collection of the prophylactics as well as demonstrations on how they test the condoms for strength and endurance.
The museum was established partly because of Thailand’s huge growth in the condom industry. It also promotes awareness about condoms and their effectiveness in the prevention of unwanted pregnancies and STDs (sexually transmitted diseases). You will see displays of items from all over the world, such as various penis pumps, phallic devices, and condoms.
The largest collection of human hair on the planet, specifically female hair, is found on the walls of a cave in Avanos, Turkey. The museum began with a rather kindly story. The museum curator owned a pottery shop/guest house and, one time, he asked a departing female visitor for something to remember her by. She left a lock of her hair and since then, so have thousands of other women.
The museum began with a rather kindly story. The museum curator owned a pottery shop/guest house and, one time, he asked a departing female visitor for something to remember her by. She left a lock of her hair and since then, so have thousands of other women.
He opened the museum in 1979, and it is included in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world’s largest collection of human hair. Along the walls of this subterranean cave you can see 16,000 different samples of women’s hair.
But there’s a reason for women leaving their locks behind. Every year, a winning lock of hair is chosen, and the winning lady is invited to come back to the guesthouse and take a free pottery making workshop with the master potter.
If it exists, there is a pretty sure possibility that somebody has collected it and maybe even placed it in a museum. This is true for baseball cards, ventriloquist dummies, and for this museum, even penises. The Icelandic Phallological Museum claims the largest collection in the world of penises and penis parts.
The museum collection contains 280 varieties of penises from 93 different species. Many of the specific items on display are from marine mammals such as seals and whales. You may be wondering if the museum has any human penises on display, and sure enough, it does.
One of the donated penises rests in a jar of formaldehyde as a shriveled grayish-brown essence. This was because of an unfortunate detachment procedure that left the penis shriveled to a certain degree. The museum is on a quest for ‘a younger, bigger, and better one’ to round out their collection.
This museum is not a joke or an oddity. It may be peculiar, but they are wholly devoted to the scientific study of the penis.
The Museum of Vampires in Lilas, just outside Paris, can only be visited by appointment. It has a collection dedicated to anything and everything vampire. Books, props, posters, and even the autographs of every actor who has played Dracula on the big and small screen can be found in this spooky museum. No trip to France is complete without visiting it.
A trip to the museum includes a visit with the curator, Jacques Sirgent, who provides an in-depth and lengthy discussion about the general history of vampires. He also talks about vampire traditions in France, the origins in folklore, and the location of vampires in pop culture.
It’s not shocking to find out that the location of the murders of Abby and Andrew Borden has become a museum. What does come as a bit of a shock to most is that it is quite a lovely bed and breakfast – famous for Lizzie Borden Bobbleheads, games, and ghost hunting.
Touring the museum wouldn’t be the same without spending the night in the same house in which the brutal murders took place in 1892. You will be invited by ‘professional’ ghost hunters to tour the house while they demonstrate the use of their equipment in the quest for the supernatural. Complimentary light snacks and coffee will be provided while you are touring the home.
If you want to see nearly everything related to the history of medicine, the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia is the one place to stop. Depending on your nature, they have some interesting items on display, which either could turn your stomach or interest you greatly.
Their collection includes more than 3,000 individual bone samples; bones of various illnesses, individual traumas, and in some rare cases, normal bone structure.
Practically all of the bones being displayed were prepared more than 150 years ago to be used as teaching aids or for educational study. You will also see approximately 1,300 ‘wet specimens’ of biological tissue preserved in fluid in the museum. One of these tissue displays contains one such oddity: a portion of Professor Albert Einstein’s brain that you will be able to see in a slide presentation.
The next time you are traveling through Gatlinburg, Tennessee, make sure to stop by the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum to see the world’s largest collection of. . . Well, you guessed it, salt and pepper shakers. The museum boasts a collection of 20,000 pairs of shakers collected over 25 years by the owners and curators of this charming, peculiar museum.
You can also see nearly 1,500 pepper mills and learn the complete history of salt and pepper shakers while viewing specimens that date back as far as the 16th century. The entry fee to the museum for 2016 will cost $3. But don’t worry, if you think you have seen everything, there is another Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum across the pond in Guadalest, Spain, with a collection nearly as large and correspondingly diverse.
There is a torture museum in Ruedesheim, Germany: a creepy old house off the main road. There are many torture museums around the world, but very few in a location like this. The museum possesses 144 different instruments of torture, most used throughout the Middle Ages. You will be able to see displays of various methods of execution spread all through the museum.
Among the torture and execution items included in their collection, you will find chastity belts, knee screws, gallows, heretic forks, humiliation masks, breast talons, head presses, an executioner’s axe, and much more. One of their most impressive and interesting pieces is an item that was used during the Spanish Inquisition; the interrogation chair.
Throughout history, there have been many recorded witch hunts, and here you can see a section dedicated to these hunts. You can also check out the methods that were used in determining whether a person was a practitioner of the dark arts.
This museum was created with the purpose of keeping people away from the natural coral reef sites around Cancun. The delicate ecosystem of the reefs has been damaged by the influx of human traffic, so the museum was created to help mitigate the damage. Trips to this museum take a little more effort to get to than most museums, due to its location several meters below the surface of the ocean.
Visitors can choose a three-hour tour, which includes a snorkeling trip for 45-minutes to see coral growth, statues, natural wildlife, and sculptures. Each statue under the water is made of a material safe for marine life, and some of them have already begun to show coral growth.
In Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, you could visit a museum containing hundreds of creepy little dolls. You may think that there aren’t many people who would even consider visiting this, but then you’d have to come up with an explanation for the Vent Haven Museum. The museum boasts the largest collection of ventriloquist dolls in the world, even the ones that are sometimes in your nightmares.
Here you can pick up some knowledge about the art of ventriloquism and see some of the various dolls/’dummies’ used by ventriloquists throughout history. There is no other museum like this found anywhere in the world.
The museum began as the personal collection of Mr. William Shakespeare Berger. Mr. Berger became concerned that his huge collection would be broken up upon his death. To avoid this, he founded a nonprofit company dedicated to the art of ventriloquism and since his death, the collection has only become larger.
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