From Russia With Pain V

As far as I can tell, there hasn’t been much in the way of crazy Russian news stories recently.  Since my go-to site (MosNews) hasn’t updated their content in a couple of months, I have been searching the news wires on Google and Yahoo! daily for anything remotely amusing and/or outrageous involving our comrades across the pond.  I did manage to come across some photos and information concerning Russia’s first museum, however, and learned that is full of crazy artifacts. Petersburg along the Universitetskaya Embankment.  The Kunstkamera (or Kunstkammer) sits majestically along the Neva Riverfront in St. Petersburg; the idea was commisioned by Tsar Peter the Great, and the building itself was completed in 1727.  This museum is most known for the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, which currently has a collection of almost two million historical items on display.  Many of these items are dedicated to preserving “natural and human curiosities and rarities” – such as Peter’s large assortment of human fetuses with various anatomical deficiencies, and gruesome contraptions that were once used for torture.  After looking through pictures of the more famous exhibits, I can confidently say that Kunstkamera makes Robert Ripley’s place look like the Museum of Wallpaper:

Want to see more?  Check out this post from English Russia.