Wizyta w kilku niezwykłych Muzea w Stanach Zjednoczonych

FAITH LAPIDUS: Welcome to American Mosaic in VOA Special English. I'm Faith Lapidus. Today, we tell about some unusual museums in the United States. FAITH LAPIDUS: Americans love museums. We have art museums, history museums, car museums, train museums and space museums. Many are famous. Millions of people from around the world visit them each year. And then we have those other museums. The kind that make you ask, "Did they really build a museum for that?" Mario Ritter tells us about some of these unusual museums. MARIO RITTER: It may be yellow, brown, grey, mild, or hot and spicy. We put it on sandwiches, squirt it on hot dogs and even dip pretzels in it. No American picnic would be complete without mustard. People in the town of Middleton, Wisconsin love it so much, they built a museum in its honor. The National Mustard Museum has over five thousand kinds of mustard from sixty countries. You can even have a taste and buy containers of mustard in the museum. If you visit the Banana Museum in Auburn, Washington you could learn everything you ever wanted to know about bananas. There are almost four thousand objects in honor of this favorite fruit. Another unusual museum is in Independence, Missouri. It has over one hundred fifty wreaths and two thousand pieces of jewelry made with human hair. Leila Cohoon owns the museum and says some of the objects are over one hundred years old. The human hair wreaths were considered pieces of art long ago. If you are ever in Haines, Alaska you might want to visit the Hammer Museum. There you will find over one thousand five hundred different kinds of hammers. Dave Pahl started the museum in two thousand two. He says some of the hammers on display were used thousands of years ago by the ancient Egyptians. And then there is the Twine Ball Museum in Darwin, Minnesota. It has only one object on display - what it calls the largest twine ball in the world. A man named Francis Johnson began winding twine, or thick string, into a ball in March of nineteen fifty. He wound for four hours a day for twenty-three weeks. The ball got so big, he needed a crane to lift it so he could wind some more. Mr. Johnson wound the ball for about thirty years. When he was finished, the twine ball was four meters across and weighed seven thousand nine hundred kilograms. Or you could visit Barney Smith's Toilet Seat Museum in San Antonio, Texas. Yes, it is what you think it is! Mr. Smith says he has painted or decorated about one thousand toilet seats. Many of the seats have personal meaning to him. Some show his travels around the world. Then there is the Museum of Sex in New York City. That museum has ...sorry, we are out of time! Source: Voice of America