Museum opens history of weird show

An Ohio museum has opened an exhibition of bizarre historical artefacts in a bid to boost attendances.

The exhibits include tattered leather shoe blown off a woman's foot after she was struck by lightning, a light bulb still filled with water from the 1913 flood and a gas meter speared by a stick of wood from a tornado in 1974.

Curious? The Boonshoft Museum of Discovery is counting on it.

The executive director of the Montgomery County Historical Society and some graduate students in a public history class he teaches hit the storerooms of historical societies and museums in search of the bizarre.

"The fact is people just like seeing strange and interesting stuff," said Brian Hackett, who teaches at Wright State University. "We're competing with television. We're competing with Disney World. Don't lose your education leanings, but you still need to make it fun for people to come."

The Boonshoft added John Dillinger's Colt .38, in its first public viewing, for "Curious Collections: An Exhibit Beyond Bizarre." The 70-plus display draws from 10 historical societies and museums around Ohio and Indiana.

Among the other finds of Hackett's 13 students are a photograph taken inside the Marietta Library about 1900 that appears to show a ghost standing between two windows.

Other exhibits include the trap door of a gallows dubbed "the door of no return," which was used to hang people in downtown Dayton in 1876 and 1877.