Top 10 Unusual Museums in the USA

The first museum on the list is the The International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico. This museum is dangerously close to mainstream. Here visitors will find explorations of UFO sightings and cover-ups. It is the premier UFO museum on the planet. An interesting note is that visitors to this museum are often a greater oddity than the exhibits themselves.

The Museum of the Weird in Austin, Texas, is near the top of the list. Known worldwide for its outstanding presentations of the all things weird and wacky, the museum goes over the top in presenting the weirdest, most unusual things in the world! It has exhibit after exhibit of the crazy, spooky and kooky, including monsters, shrunken heads, freaks of nature, Bigfoot, mummies, giant lizards, the Fiji mermaid, the Lochness Monster, the supernatural, the unexplained and much more. Their website has daily updates on the weird, at MuseumOfTheWierd.com.

Everyone has to see Ripley's Believe it Or Not! Museum in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. This legendary museum in the heart of downtown Gatlinburg makes the perfect addition to every family vacation. The museum has over 500 unusual and astonishing artifacts from all over the world. The exhibits will astonish even the most jaded human and are sure to provide thrills, entertainment, and wonderment for every member of your family. The Ripleys.com wesbite states "Discover the Museum that inspired the hit TV show! Gallery after gallery of the most amazing exhibits...the strange, shocking and unexpected."

The next museum is the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia in Burlingame, CA, just minutes from San Francisco in the Bay Area. Here visitors will see all kinds of exhibits and history about the world's favorite candy from dispensers- the Pez! You can see vintage pez dispensers, the world's largest pez and much more. In 2004, the museum was expanded to include the Classic Toy Museum which features exhibits of the other great toys from our childhood. In 2007, they added a new exhibit - the World's Largest Dispenser of Pez. And it is officially recognized as the World's Largest Dispenser of Pez by Guinness World Records™!

Another museum in San Francisco that is on the list is The Historical Torture Museum. This museum explores the various methods and instruments of torture used throughout man's existence. You can learn all about torture methods such as nail beds, the Iron Maiden, the garotte, Inquisitonal Chairs, Heretic Forks and Branks.

The next museum is The Museum of Bad Art in Dedham Square just outside of Boston. This shrine is a tribute to all things misguided and hacked in the world of art. The bad art is actually not from incompetence. The museum's website states that their collection is "from the work of talented artists that have gone awry to works of exuberant, although crude, execution by artists barely in control of the brush." MOBA is worth the trip.

The Corn Palace is a tribute to corn located in South Dakota. The Corn Palace is covered with murals made from corn that change each year. Here you can learn all about corn- how it is grown, how it used in society and culture. People generally are not aware at all the amazing ways corn is used in society- this museum sets the record straight. There is a free guided tour explaining the process that goes into creating these one-of-a-kind corn murals.

The Mustard Museum is a fitting shrine to all things mustard. This museum created solely for this condiment has more than 5,000 prepared mustards from every state of the US and from more than 60 countries in addition to hundreds of historical items connected to mustard such as vintage mustard advertisements and mustard pots.

The famous Barbed Wire Museum in La Crosse, Kansas is a place you can learn about one of the Midwest's most important contributions to America's history often referred to as the "Devil's Rope." The museum is a fitting tribute to the that device that made possible the movement of the frontier across the wide expanse of the western USA. There are over 2000 barbed wire varieties, including samples manufactured between the years 1870 and 1890 as well as hundreds of the pioneers' antique fencing tools currently on exhibit.