history | The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things

17th century memento mori ring showing a skull

Two-faced death ring

19 August 2013 by Chelsea Nichols

Categories: Curiosities, history, Museums • Tags: 17th century, death, face, gold, history, jewelry, memento mori, museum, ring, skull, unsettling

Detail view of Tipus Tiger automaton, showing man arm raised to fend off the tiger

Tipu’s (or Tippoo’s) Tiger is a life-sized wooden mechanical organ made around 1793, depicting a tiger mauling a man in European clothing. When the crank is turned, a hidden mechanism causes the man’s arm to goes up and down, and plays his wails of agony along the growls of the tiger. Under a flap on the tiger’s body there is also a small pipe organ, which can play 18 notes.

Categories: Curiosities, history, Museums • Tags: animal, art, automaton, colonialism, figurine, grotesque, history, india, music, sculpture, tiger

Photograph of a preserved circular loaf of bread discovered at Pompeii

Preserved bread from Pompeii

22 July 2013 by Chelsea Nichols

This is the ultimate piece of toast: a loaf of bread made in the first century AD, which was discovered at Pompeii, preserved for centuries in the volcanic ashes of Mount Vesuvius.

Categories: Curiosities, history • Tags: archaeology, bread, history, pompeii, preserved, toast

Illustration of a cat organ from La Nature, 1883

Katzenklavier: The Cat-Piano

12 February 2013 by Chelsea Nichols

When I was a kid, my weird and wonderful mother used to amuse us by picking up the cat and pretending to play it like a bagpipe, using its tail as a mouthpiece. Her improvised feline instrument has, sadly, been upstaged by my discovery of the Katzenklavier, a Cat-Piano (also known as a cat organ) dreamed up in the 16th century.

Categories: Curiosities, history, Ideas • Tags: animal, cat, curiosities, history, instrument, music, piano, psychiatry, unsettling