ArticleOdditoriums

While groundbreaking technical innovations and simply great ideas often succumb to Time, there is one particular category of things that manages to slip under Time's radar. Some of those things make people curious - that's why they are called "curiosities". Others are odd enough to unsettle or even repulse those who come in contact with them - hence the more telling name, "oddities". As human nature never changes, neither does human attitude towards those things - so they remain popular enough to find a permanent niche in human culture. A big enough niche to justify creating a special kind of museum for hosting and exhibiting such oddities/curiosities. Quite fittingly, such museums had become known as “odditoriums”.

At least, three things are certain in life: death, taxes and a whole range of various and, sometimes, clashing thoughts and impressions if you happen to visit an odditorium like the Ripley Museum in Copenhagen. It's rather amusing to see a whole Bible squeezed onto a credit card. It's thought-provoking to find out that the size of Napoleon's signature was inversely proportional to his fame. It's interesting and, in a way, gratifying to find out that the first metallic coins were produced in China. It's outright awe-inspiring to see an exact copy of Taj-Mahal and a fully operational violin - both made of matches! It's rather weird to see a genuine one-cent cheque, and it's absolutely mind-boggling to hear about an aircraft staying airborne for several hours and then landing on the same airfield it took off from - all that with its crew as dead as a Pharaoh!

There are quite a few educational exhibits, too. One can learn about various cultural traditions (for instance, by seeing copies of animals offered as lucky charm gifts to Chinese newborn babies who were supposed to emulate their animal's best traits) or, say, natural phenomena (there is a fish on display one of whose bones looks like an exact copy of a crucifix)...