B.B. King Museum Opens

B.B. King’s hometown of Indianola, Mississippi has created and dedicated a museum in honor of the legendary blues musician and his career.

The B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center opened on September 13, just days before King’s 83rd birthday.

The 20,000 square foot museum cost $14.2 million to build. The people of Indianola came up with the idea for the museum and raised $1.7 million for it, with the rest of the cost coming from private donations.

The exhibits chronicle B.B. King’s life and career, as well as American history. The museum is housed partly in the restored brick cotton gin where King worked when he was a teenager. Read more

Museums: The Strange and Weird

Museums can be educational, informative, fascinating, and occasionally very weird. Below are some that range from completely bizarre to flat-out grotesque, so you might not want to read on if you are squeamish or sitting down for lunch.

The Mutter Museum

The secret tumor of Grover Cleveland, the thorax of John Wilkes Booth and a really big 9-foot colon are just a few of the wonders that you can expect to encounter at Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum, a museum of historical pathology containing about 20,000 fluid-preserved anatomical and pathological specimens, models, medical instruments, and memorabilia of famous scientists and physicians.

See the “Soap Lady”—the body of a woman who died of Yellow Fever during the 19th century that turned into soap due to the chemical properties of the soil she was buried in.

Then there’s the huge 9-foot colon of a man who took a dump only once a month for his whole life until he died. It is perhaps no great surprise that he only lived into his late 20s.

If that wasn’t enough for you, there are skeletons of a giant and a midget, various skull collections, the brains of epileptics and a murderer, and drawers filled with objects removed from the windpipes of choking people.

Feast your eyes on a plaster cast of the conjoined twins Chang and Eng, various baby deformities and many more displays that will fascinate you and make you feel totally creeped-out.
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