Dayton museum counts on interest in bizarre items

DAYTON, Ohio -- A 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. A gas meter speared by a stick of wood from a tornado in 1974.

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

For an exhibition that has helped boost museum attendance, 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 in Ohio and Indiana.

Among the other finds of Hackett's 13 students:

The pants of John Van Cleve, a founding father of Dayton who weighed 300 pounds and had a 77-inch waist.

Blown-up photos from NCR Corp. showing a chimpanzee and a horse operating the company's cash registers to show how simple they were to use.

Hackett's students found the artifacts over five weeks and built the displays for the museum.

The exhibit is to run through the end of the year and attendance was up, said the museum's curator of anthropology, Lynn Simonelli.

"It certainly has had some effect," she said.

Hackett said a few historical societies chose not to participate because they did not want to be ridiculed.