Let's Take A Trip to the Museum: Bizarre 19th Century and Turn of the Century History Resource!

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I found this awesome website called The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things. It's not all Turn of the Century but it's got a lot of that stuff and it's all so creepy and twisted, I've got to share.

• Hidden Mothers in Victorian Photography -  I never knew this until I visited this sight. There are hundreds of photos out there of children at the turn of the century with their mother's hidden in the background. Yeah, seriously! The still photography at the time required people to sit still for long periods of time so you can imagine, photographing children was hard! So mother's would disguise themselves as furniture or something else so they could sit with the child and keep them from moving.

• Hidden Mothers and Postmortem Photography or Not?- Now here is where things get really creepy. Are any of the hidden mother photos actually postmortem photography? Victorians were known for taking photos of the dead and after the original hidden mother's post, a debate arose whether or not the children in those photos were alive.

• Those Backward Victorians  Photographs of women . . . but from behind? Got to click to find out why.

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• The Bone Mother: Arresting Images from Russian Folklore A guest post by about historian and writer Claire Atwater about Ivan Bilibin, a late 19th and early 20th century illustrator and stage designer who created some very disturbing and interesting art inspired from early Russian architecture and Japanese prints.

• A Strange Humanoid creature: Charles Waterton's "Nondescript" - This has got to be my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE! It's the Victorian Big Foot!

• Rare 19th Century Eight-Legged Walking Doll - What? This is literal.

• 19th Century Paper-Mache Anatomical Bee and Beetle Models

• 19th Century Mug Shots from New Zealand

• Hoaks Medieval Torture Device Used By Robbers in the 19th Century  I was so happy when I read this torture device was never used, but then I read it was . . . by the Victorians!!!!

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This Ridiculously Interesting Website is written by "Chelsea Nichols, Head Curator of Ridiculously Interesting Things. Chelsea is a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford, where she is writing a thesis on human curiosities in contemporary art and their relationship with the history of exhibiting monstrous bodies . . . " - Taken from her About Page.

I highly recommend you guys take a trip to the Ridiculously Interesting Things Museum and stay a while!

Has anyone else seen any ridiculously interesting history out there that you can share in the comments?