Amsterdam is a city of museums – there are more than 400 museums and art galleries within the city. It is said that no other city in the world has more museums than Amsterdam. Obviously, museums are among the main tourist attractions. The Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum, Anne Frank House and the Stedelijk Museum are the most popular choices, but there are many interesting smaller museums. There are museums on coffee, spectacles, pianos, diamonds, cheese, beers, bags and purses that we featured earlier, and many more. Here are the most bizarre ones.

Museum Vrolik

Museum Vrolik houses a tremendous collection of pathological specimens, anomalous embryos, odd skulls and bones, and other anatomical abnormalities, put together by the Gerardus Vrolik (1755-1859), one of the most important Dutch scientist of its times. Willem Vrolik was a pioneer in the field of teratology - the study of deformities - a popular subject for anatomists in the 18th and 19th centuries. Willem published several monographs on teratological subjects and amassed thousands of specimen.

After the death of Willem Vrolik, the collection was purchased by a group of Dutch citizens and offered to the municipality of Amsterdam to be placed in an institution called Athenaeum Illustre, which became later University of Amsterdam. Today, the Museum Vrolik includes specimens from other collections, added through more than a century of its existence.

Torture Museum

The Torture Museum endeavors to document the history of the human cruelty. The museum artifacts are laid out in a maze of small, dark rooms, creating a somber atmosphere. The museum features a variety of interesting devices, from well known objects like the Guillotine, the rack and the stocks, to lesser know objects like thumb screws and the flute of shame. Other objects housed in the museum include the iron maiden, skull crusher, judas chair, Catherine Wheels and Scold's bridle. Some of the devices are genuine and antique, but many are modern reconstructions from old texts or books. Some displays are behind glass but many are situated in the open and can be touched.

Sex Museum

Situated near Amsterdam Central Station the Sex Museum attracts over 500.000 visitors each year. The museum houses a rich and interesting collection of objects about human sexuality: art as well as photographs, china figures, plates, and many other items, sometimes composed in a bit old-fashioned presentation. You will see the plaster figure of Venus at the entry and the full size wax figures of Mata Hari with her male partners and Marilyn Monroe. Hidden speakers emit different muffled noises including repetitive sounds of the steam machine, mixed with woman’s screams of joy.

Hash, Marihuana and Hemp Museum

The Hash, Marihuana and Hemp Museum is dedicated to cannabis and its many uses, offering visitors information about the historical and modern uses of cannabis for medicinal, religious and cultural purposes. The museum also focuses on how hemp can be used for agricultural and industrial purposes, even including clothing accessories and cosmetic products made from hemp fiber in their gift shop.

The museum includes a live cannabis garden in various stages of growth, pipe and roach clip collections, an 1836 Dutch Bible made of hemp, and many other accessories made from the industrial crop. The museum also contains artwork, including David Teniers the Younger's painting, Hemp-Smoking Peasants in a Smoke House (1660), and one of the fake I.D's of the famous cannabis smuggler Howard Marks.

Tattoo Museum

Opened in November of 2011, the Amsterdam Tattoo Museum is one of the newest museums. The museum covers the entire history of skin art and has artifacts from all over the world, including needles, old shop signs, photographs, flashes (ready-made designs), and freak show posters. Other items include macabre flesh exhibits in pickling jars. Some are pig skin, others, human – like the skin taken from the under-arm of a 19th-century whaler daubed with crude images of his sweetheart and Christ.

The museum has more than 40 thousands objects in its collection, started originally by Henk Schiffmacher, who is still a driving force behind the exhibit. The show is divided geographically - Africa, America, Oceania, Asia. In addition, the museum shows history of tattooing and the tattooing traditions in different social subcultures – in prisons, in the army, among sailors, among sex workers and more. Famous tattooists have been also celebrated. Several interiors important for the tattoo history, as workshops and tattoo clubs, have been reconstructed inside the museum.

KattenKabinet

The KattenKabinet or "Cat Cabinet" is entirely devoted to cats. Founded in 1990 by William Meijer, a wealthy Dutchman who in this way wanted to preserve the memory of his cat Tom also called after the American financier of the past - John Pierpont Morgan. The museum collection includes paintings, drawings, sculptures and other works of art by Pablo Picasso, Rembrandt, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Corneille, Sal Meijer, Théophile Steinlen, and Jože Ciuha, among others. Five exquisite cats also live at the museum premises

Dutch Funeral Museum

Established in 2007, the Dutch Funeral Museum focuses on funeral culture in the Netherlands, honoring the deceased and processions throughout history and in today’s current multicultural climate. The collection includes a variety of funeral coaches, including a nineteenth century ceremonial carriage. Exhibits range from hearses to obituaries, mourning attire and services. They also look at historical customs, from royal processions to rural ceremonies which have remained unchanged for centuries.

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If these mummies weren't already dead, they'd be dressed to kill.

That's because they've been dug up as part of a bizarre local ritual in a village in Indonesia that involves giving decomposed corpses a new look.

Family members of the deceased exhuming their ancestors' bodies and change their clothes as a way of remembering them. They then walk the dead around the village, almost like zombies.

The ritual, called Ma'nene, happens every three years to honour the villagers' love for the deceased. It is carried out in the Toraja district of Indonesia's South Sulawesi Province.

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With the Eiffel Tower standing proudly above decorative European buildings, this looks like a magnificent view of the famous French capital.

However, not all is at it seems. Incredibly, this Parisian scene is actually in the middle of China.

The Tianducheng development in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, is filled with grand European buildings and wide walkways.

Ornate fountains and statues also line the streets of the town.

With China's love of all things French, the developers no doubt expected the town to be a huge success.

But things haven't quite worked out as they would have hoped.

Despite being designed to accommodate at least ten thousand people, the town remains sparsely populated.

Local media have now started labelling it as a 'ghost town', with pictures showing the large streets remaining virtually empty.

Images from the town show how China's aspirations and its traditional culture collide.

Surrounded by farmland and wide roads, farmers can be seen working in fields with the mock Eiffel Tower looming over them.

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5 million ounces of annual silver supply and 500,000 ounces of annual gold supply have just been vaporized landslided.

Rio Tinto’s Kennecott mine in Utah- the US’ 2nd largest silver mine and world’s largest copper mine has just suffered a massive landslide which will likely shut down production at the mine for years as upwards of 1 billion tons of dirt and ore have collapsed into the basin.

16% of US annual silver production just vanished !

as for now Kennecott has suspended mining inside one of the world's deepest open pits as geologists assess a landslide the company says it anticipated for months .

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These pictures of a menacing alligator with glowing red eyes were taken as it lurked in a shallow river just after sunset.
The intrepid photographer, Larry Lynch, was only seven metres away when he snapped the creature waiting to pounce at Myakka River State Park in Florida.

Larry won the Natural History Museum's animal portrait of the year for the picture above, entitled Warning Night Light .



Larry said: 'I knew the alligators were hanging out in a certain area, all I had to do was find one that would co-operate.'
By setting his flash to the lowest setting, Larry caught the fearsome glint in the alligator’s eyes.

The distinctive red glow is a good way to be alert that there is an alligator nearby at night.

Like cats, alligators' eyes make the most of low light with special photoreceptor cells. Unlike cats, in alligators the reflection is red.

Larry recalled the tense moment he took his award-winning pictures: 'Between kneeling in several inches of black mud, the heat, humidity, and blood thirsty mosquitos my thoughts were, get the best picture I can and get the hell out.'

Female alligators rarely grow beyond nine feet long, but males can grow much larger & The greater the distance between its eyes, the longer the reptile.

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Once upon a time, building a hotel meant bulldozing the planet's precious trees. However, many of the world's accommodation providers now prefer a greener solution. Read on to learn about four of the most amazing hotels built into the trees.

Ariau Amazon Towers, Brazil

Ariau Amazon Towers, northwest of the Brazilian city of Manaus, sets the standard for treetop hotels. With 288 suites located in seven towers over the Rio Negro, it's the largest commercial treetop hotel in the world. The late explorer Jacques Cousteau came up with the idea of creating a hotel in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, in the style of the native Brazilians. He shared it with a local hotelier, who decided to make Cousteau's dream a reality. Ariau Amazon Towers' tallest unit, known as the Tarzan House, is perched atop a living Mmahogany tree. It stands more than 72 feet above the grand to capitalize on its views of the surrounding Amazon Rainforest. But this vista pales in comparison to the sights you'll enjoy from the hotel's 150-foot observation towers.

Cedar Creek Treehouse

Nestled between the evergreens of Mount Rainier National Park and the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, the Cedar Creek Treehouse offers a bird's-eye view from its 50-foot-high perch in a 200-year-old cedar tree. A flight of five stairs takes visitors to their accommodations, which include a sunroom and a sleeping loft complete with a skylight. For more vistas, you can take a walk on the rainbow bridge to the 100-foot-high observatory.

Kadir's Tree Houses, Turkey

The novelty value of most treetop accommodation sends the tariffs sky high. But that's not the case at Kadir's Tree Houses, a village of 300 tree houses located at the former ancient Turkish city of Olympos. It ranks among the cheapest hotels in these parts, so it attracts plenty of backpackers searching for a bargain. Kadir's Tree Houses channel the rustic charm of the clubhouses we created as kids. However the site is surprisingly well appointed, with satellite television, ping pong tables, laundry facilities, and a seafood restaurant. Breakfast and dinner is also included in the price of your stay, although with few meat dishes you'll need a taste for vegetarian cuisine. Kadir's Tree Houses are a great option if you want the experience of staying amongst the treetops without the exorbitant price tag.

Unusual Treehouses at Treehotel, Sweden

Treehotel, located in the small Swedish village of Harads, offers some of the strangest tree houses you'll ever see. Local architects were commissioned to create the hotel's unusual lodgings. Each one has its own distinct personality, from the rustic bird's nest to the futuristic looking Mirrorcube. The rooms are on the small side at 15 to 30 meters squared, but those petite dimensions do nothing to deter travelers seeking a unique vacation experience. Each room at the Treehotel was created carefully to minimize damage to the trees of the Swedish Lapland. Further ecological measures include the use of hydroelectric power and sustainable waste solutions, like the Mirrorcube's unusual freezing toilet. These striking hotels prove that progress and the natural world can truly work in harmony.

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