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SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) - For people who love chocolate and love travel, what could be better than a chocolate museum. The members and editors of VirtualTourist.com (http:\\www.virtualtourist.com) have compiled a list of the World's Top 10 Best Chocolate Museums. Reuters has not endorsed this list. 1. The Cologne Chocolate Museum; Cologne, Germany Located on the Rhine River, this futuristic building gives visitors three floors of chocolate history to ponder, but the real centre of attention here is the famous chocolate fountain. Museum staff dip waffles in the hot liquid for salivating guests. 2. Musee les Secrets du Chocolat; Geispolsheim, France...

AFP - The world's most comprehensive collection of armor, weaponry and art covering 700 years of Japan's fabled Samurai culture goes on exhibit this week at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Art of the Samurai: Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156-1868" will open Wednesday, showcasing "214 masterpieces, including 34 national treasures, 64 important cultural properties, and six important art objects," the museum said in a statement. Open until January 10, the exhibit includes "armor, swords, sword fittings and mountings, archery and equestrian equipment, banners, surcoats... as well as painted screens and scrolls," some of which have never left Japan. "This...

The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History plans to open a hall next year dedicated to the story of human evolution over 6 million years, officials announced Wednesday. The nearly $21 million Hall of Human Origins will follow milestones in history - when humans started walking upright and started speaking, for example - as well as the impact of climate change and extinction of ancient species. It's scheduled to open on March 17, 2010, marking the museum's 100th anniversary on the National Mall. *break* This is the Smithsonian's first permanent exhibit focused solely on human evolution. It will include hundreds...

Egypt wants to borrow the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum after winning a battle with France over ownership of painted rock fragments “stolen” from the Valley of the Kings. The French culture ministry has decided to return the 3,200-year-old frescoes, which disappeared in the 1980s, Egypt said, and were acquired by the Louvre in Paris in 2000 and 2003. Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt’s supreme council of antiquities, had threatened to sever relations with the Louvre unless it handed back the relics. That would have forced the French museum to suspend excavation work in the Pharaonic necropolis of...

Troutville, Va. (AP) - An animal rights group wants to rent a prison building the state plans to close and turn it into the nation's first chicken empathy museum. A People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals official sent a letter Monday to Gov. Tim Kaine asking to rent the Botetourt Correctional Center building in Troutville. Kaine spokeswoman Lynda Tran said the state doesn't lease to private entities except for cases grandfathered in when it purchases buildings.

In 1939 Lilly Cassirer Neubauer was desperate to escape Germany. She was a member of a prominent Jewish family of publishers and gallery owners, and as the Nazi oppression escalated, it was clear they would have to leave or die. Lilly was told there was only one way for her to obtain an exit visa. The family would have to hand over one of their most prized possessions: a Parisian street scene painted by Camille Pissarro. The work, an atmosphere depiction of a rain-soaked Paris boulevard, had hung on the walls of the family's Berlin and Munich homes since the...

'Global Cooling' Exhibit Still on Display at the Smithsonian by Brian Merchant, Brooklyn, New York on 09. 8.09 ... Photo via Yglesias The Smithsonian boasts one of the nation's most respected, most visited, and most famous group of museums. So what's it doing still displaying an exhibit based on 1970s-era science--that the earth is undergoing 'global cooling'--in its Natural History Museum in 2009? You're probably most likely to hear about global cooling these days from climate change deniers who sometimes say something along the lines of: "Well, scientists said that there was global cooling in the '70s. Now it's global...

The casket that held the mutilated body of civil rights martyr Emmett Till for 50 years will go on public display in the nation's newest African-American history museum, officials said. The move comes a month after the casket was found discarded at Burr Oak Cemetery near Alsip. Officials with the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture are expected to announce the casket's donation just before a memorial ceremony Friday to commemorate 54 years since Till's murder. Members of Till's family and museum officials -- including its director, Lonnie Bunch III -- are expected to attend the...

The 1850s American Farm exhibit at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia, features vintage structures including s sheathed log house. The buildings were located originally near Eagle Rock in Botetourt County, Virginia, and were moved to the Museum grounds and reconstructed as one of the original exhibits in 1988.

The Kennedy compound in Hyannis, Mass. will be converted into an educational center and museum as a tribute to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, FOX News learned Thursday. The compound is also known as the Hyannis Port Historic District, which covers six acres of waterfront property along Nantucket Sound. The property includes the homes of family patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy and two of his sons, Robert and John.

AMSTERDAM (AP) -- It's not green cheese, but it might as well be. The Dutch national museum said Thursday that one of its prized possessions, a rock supposedly brought back from the moon by U.S. astronauts, is just a piece of petrified wood. Rijksmuseum spokeswoman Xandra van Gelder, who oversaw the investigation that proved the piece was a fake, said the museum will keep it anyway as a curiosity. "It's a good story, with some questions that are still unanswered," she said. "We can laugh about it." The museum acquired the rock after the death of former Prime Minister Willem...

The 1820s American Farm at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia, features a log house which incorporates an original log cabin built in 1773. The two wings of the house, joined by an enclosed dogtrot, demonstrate the progression in log-structure building techniques from colonial to early American times. This log farm house is a Shenandoah Valley original, moved from northern Rockingham County to the Museum and reconstructed on a hillside site.

The Virginia Frontier Culture Museum's 1740s log cabin is displayed as a work in progress. The cabin is a typical peeled-log, saddle-notched settler's cabin of the kind favored by Scotch-Irish moving into the wilds of the Backcountry. The construction was simple and required few tools. The museum's replica is built with one door and no windows -- a common practice which led to laws requiring homesteader's cabins have at least one window.

SAN ANTONIO -- There's a new battle under way for control of the Alamo -- and just like the Texas legend, neither side shows any sign of surrender. For more than a century, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas -- nearly 7,000 women who trace their pedigrees back to the origins of the Texas Republic -- have had total control of the Alamo, the state's most revered historic site. They maintain what's left of the old mission, manage its historic exhibits and run the gift shop. They don't charge admission, and the site doesn't cost the state government a...

Beginning in the late 17th century, an estimated one million Germans pulled up stakes and went looking for better places - - including more than 120,000 who migrated to the American colonies. The Frontier Culture Museum's German Farm, originally built in the Rhineland-Palatinate, exhibits their way of life and the timber-frame construction of houses and barns.

Aug 14, 2009 From church to mosque: Istanbul’s forgotten Byzantine heritage Is it a church? Is it a mosque? Is it a museum? Aya Sofya (Hagia Sophia, the Church of Divine Wisdom) may be one of İstanbul's most famous buildings, but it's also one that suffers from an acute identity crisis, having started life as the great sixth century church of the Emperor Justinian, before becoming a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and then a museum in 1935 after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk declared the Turkish Republic. Something similar happened to Chora, near Edirnekapı, which also kicked...

The buildings comprising the Staunton, Virginia, Frontier Culture Museum's Irish Farm originally stood in County Tyrone, Ulster (Northern Ireland). The Ulster Plantation was an English-dominated, Protestant colony in Ireland. The Frontier Culture Museum's Irish Farm highlights the production of linen. The farm stood on leased land, of course, the fee title being held by the English planters, and rent was due every three months. To make the rent, the Ulstermen produced linen which they sold at local markets.

The Irish Forge exhibit at Virginia's Frontier Culture Museum is housed in a building originally constructed in County Fermanagh, Ulster (Northern Ireland). The rustic architecture of this blacksmith's shop is typical of buildings constructed in northern and western Ireland at that time: solid stone construction, whitewashed, with a thatch roof. Inside, a Museum guide who knows what he's doing demonstrates how ironwork was made in the 18th century.

The Virginia Frontier Culture Museum's English Farm installation features a yeoman farmer's house that was built in 1692 in Worchestershire, in west-central England, and more recently reconstructed in Virginia. Many yeoman farmers and other English commoners migrated from the western shires to America during colonial times, although their numbers most certainly did not include the builder of this house, who had to have been successful enough to own a small parcel of land on which to built a nice home.

Featuring log buildings presently under re-construction at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia. This provides a good look at how such buildings were made.

...according to Myers and at least one of my other sources that attended, aside from joking to each other about the ridiculous nonsense in the “museum”, no one misbehaved. But that didn’t seem to stop “museum” officials from harassing individuals and eventually kicking a few people out of the “museum” for imaginary infractions. Essentially, it seems the “museum” feels that merely disagreeing with its “science” and mocking it to one’s friends is grounds for having visitors removed from the property. This is absurd. Could you imagine if the American Museum of Natural History ejected visitors for being creationists? Or if...

The Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia, is a window on the past. The museum traces the history of various immigrants who settled the Virginia frontier in colonial and early American times with buildings depicting the architecture and lifestyle of the folk of England, Northern Ireland, West Africa, and Germany who came to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Most of the houses and other buildings are the real thing. The English farmhouse was built in England in the 17th century; the Museum had it disassembled and reconstructed it in Virginia. The 1820s and 1850s American farm houses are likewise the...

Antique Firearms (Colt, Winchester, more) from the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum to be Auctioned by Rock Island Auction Rock Island Auction Company offers an opportunity to own a piece of Hollywood western history at their September premiere auction! Several outstanding firearms once owned and personally used by Roy Rogers will be auctioned September 11, 12 & 13. Anitque Firearms Colts, Winchester and more. Moline, IL. (PRWEB) August 2, 2009 -- As anyone would expect of a true cowboy collection, there are several exceptional Colt single action army revolvers. An engraved and gold-plated Colt single action army revolver from...

WASHINGTON – A federal grand jury has indicted an elderly white supremacist on charges that could earn him the death penalty in the fatal shooting of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Hate crimes charges have been added to the case against James von Brunn, who has been in a hospital since the shooting last month. Officials say the 89-year-old shot and killed museum guard Stephen T. Johns. Von Brunn was shot in the face by other guards in the June 10 shootout, but survived.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — It took more than 30 years for the creators of Pez candy dispensers to give the little plastic figurines feet, and they never did get hands. But now the long arm of the Pez Candy Co. has reached all the way from Linz, Austria, into U.S. District Court, where it has slapped the tiny faces that fill the Museum of Pez Memorabilia with a lawsuit. The legal broadside, which was filed in San Francisco last month, singles out a 7-foot-10 snowman, built especially for the Burlingame, Calif., museum, that has been recognized by the Guinness record...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Heifer International has opened a $7.5 million museum at its Little Rock headquarters to illustrate the work it does around the world to help impoverished people feed themselves. The museum, called Heifer Village, opened in June and will add an important element to Heifer educational programs, which demonstrate the charity's mission to provide animals and training so the world's poor can have sustainable nutrition. Narrative elements run through the museum's exhibits, showing the effects that fair trade, clean water or mosquito netting can have. Under a ceiling of rich, amber-stained wood, natural light falls on the...

Many American presidents have kept prized possessions within reach during their White House years. Franklin D. Roosevelt cherished a 19th century ship model of the U.S.S. Constitution. One of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s favorite gifts was an engraved Steuben glass bowl from his cabinet. And sitting on John F. Kennedy’s desk in the Oval Office was a paperweight made from a coconut shell he had carved with a distress message after his PT-109 was sunk during World War II.

PETERSBURG, Kentucky (AFP) – For a group of paleontologists, a tour of the Creation Museum seemed like a great tongue-in-cheek way to cap off a serious conference. But while there were a few laughs and some clowning for the camera, most left more offended than amused by the frightening way in which evolution -- and their life's work -- was attacked. "It's sort of a monument to scientific illiteracy, isn't it?" said Jerry Lipps, professor of geology, paleontology and evolution at University of California, Berkeley.

> The exhibit includes several full suits of armor, helmets and shields, as well as armor built for horses. The pieces, worn by such figures as Emperor Charles V, Philip the Handsome and Philip II, were sometimes used in battle but mostly were created for parades and pageantry. >

ATHENS, Greece – Greece opens its long-anticipated new Acropolis Museum Saturday, boosting its decades-old campaign for the return of 2,500-year-old sculptures removed from the ancient citadel by a 19th century British diplomat.

RAPID CITY, S.D. - Custer rides again, although he's atop a plastic motorcycle and in a McDonald's Happy Meal box. And that doesn't sit well with some in the Native American community. Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer was killed in 1876 along the Little Big Horn River by Native Americans he aimed to destroy. But Hollywood brought him back to life as a character in the Ben Stiller comedy “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” which opened in theaters May 22. McDonald's included characters from the movie as toys in its kid-sized Happy Meals. The fast food chain's...

While celebrations are on-going this year to mark Charles Darwin's bicentenary, there's at least one place that won't be toasting his memory - a creationist museum in Kentucky, US.

My father's beliefs have been a constant source of verbal and mental abuse my family has had to suffer with for many years. His views consumed him, and in doing so, not only destroyed his life, but destroyed our family and ruined our lives as well. ***snip*** For the extremists who believe my father is a hero: it is imperative you understand what he did was an act of cowardice. To physically force your beliefs onto others with violence is not brave, but bullying. Doing so only serves to prove how weak those beliefs are.

Not only is this the most blatant case of media bias. THEY WERE WRONG!In the wake of the shooting by a lone gunman at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, the usual suspects in the "news" media have been doing their best to place responsibility for this tragic episode on conservatives. Targeting right wing talkers like Rush Limbaugh and politicians like Sarah Palin, the left wing media try to suggest that conservatives somehow inspired James W. von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist to do what he did. Rush gave examples on his show Thursday: This is a montage...

HATES THE RIGHT WING FOR BEING NON VIOLENT“The American Right-wing (RW) with few exceptions is totally Pacifist. They are "educators." The RW does NOTHING BUT TALK. It offers no Goal, no short or long-term objectives, no plan of action against the well-known enemy. There is no strategy, no tactical advice. Only the warning: DO NOTHING, BREAK NO LAWS, SIT TIGHT (as it has for almost 100-years). (7 or 8 paragraphs from bottom)

The man accused of opening fire at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC on June 10, James W. von Brunn, left a trail of unhinged writings around the internet. The anti-semitism of von Brunn is the first thing one notices when visiting these bizarre websites. However, like those of most "white supremacists", many of von Brunn's political views track "Left" rather than "Right." Clearly, a re-evaluation of these obsolete definitions is long overdue. For example, he unleashed his hatred of both Presidents Bush and other "neo-conservatives" in online essays. As even some "progressives" such as the influential Adbusters magazine publicly...

The security guard shot Wednesday at the Holocaust Museum has died of his injuries, the museum confirms.

A gunman opened fire inside the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, wounding a security guard before other officers returned fire, officials said. Police are looking at a man identified as James Von Brunn as the shooter, FOX News has learned -- though D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier would not confirm the identity of the suspect. A man named James Von Brunn operates a white supremacist Web site called Holy Western Empire which carries several anti-Semitic statements. The site says he was a World War II veteran and also served time in federal prison for trying to make a...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A gunman entered the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and opened fire, according to reports. Fox News and CNN are reporting a man walked into the museum and shot at a security guard. A second security guard returned fire on the gunman. Fox News is reporting a law enforcement official as saying two people have been shot.

Just interrupted Rush to say that three people had been shot outside the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.

SAINTE MERE EGLISE, France - This town loves paratroopers - in particular, American paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne and the 101st Airborne Divisions. It was those two divisions that liberated Sainte Mere Eglise June 7, 1944, making it the first town in France to be liberated during World War II. To show their appreciation for the veterans, an Airborne Museum opened here in 1964. A non-profit organization, all proceeds go back into the museum to pay for upkeep, new exhibits or extensions. The money is also used to provide decorations and celebrations for the anniversary of D-Day, travel for veterans,...

Steamtown National Historic Site will take one of its two mainline steam locomotives out of service later this year for a federally mandated inspection and overhaul, leaving the park with a single operating steam engine until at least midway through the 2010 season. With the sidelining of Canadian Pacific 2317, the site will make a hard push to complete the lengthy restoration of the Boston & Maine 3713 locomotive and to get its Baldwin 26 locomotive back into service, said Harold H. "Kip" Hagen Jr., Steamtown superintendent. "We are starting to see daylight when we are going to have a...

Michelle Obama stresses the importance of art - at the museum where she and Barack had their first date Michelle Obama returned to the scene of her first date with President Barack Obama as she reopened a wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.... Cutting the ribbon... ...To the amusement of a crowd... Mrs Obama was reminded by museum president...that she and the president had their first date in a museum. 'Thank you for reminding me,' Mrs. Obama said. 'You know, after 20-some-odd years of knowing a guy, you forget that your first date was at a museum. But it...

Iraq was home to some of civilization's first outposts and hosted conquerors from Alexander the Great to Americans. Much of that priceless archeological heritage was lost and looted in the chaotic months after the U.S. invasion in 2003. Now, the Field Museum and the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute are part of an effort to turn things around: They're training Iraqi archeologists and cultural preservationists, who will return home to train their colleagues, in techniques that would wow Indiana Jones.

NYC's Guggenheim celebrates Frank Lloyd Wright By ULA ILNYTZKY, Associated Press Writer Ula Ilnytzky, Associated Press Writer – 47 mins ago NEW YORK – For Frank Lloyd Wright, the slow rise of the spiral ramp at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum allowed paintings to be displayed as if on an artist's easel. When the museum opened 50 years ago, the groundbreaking design embodied the architect's guiding ethos that form and function are indistinguishable. That philosophy was expressed in projects large and small but perhaps best realized in his then-controversial, now-revered design for the art museum on Manhattan's Upper East Side....

The aircraft carrier Yorktown is one of four museum vessels berthed at Patriots Point. The struggling attraction might have to reduce the number of exhibits it has to maintain. Its development authority is seeking a long-term plan to carry it into the future. "We have ships 25 years old and no structure in our funding to maintain them," Hagerty said. "That leads to some very difficult choices." Over the past several months, the attraction's dire situation became increasingly clear: All four ships need repairs, and the Patriots Point Development Authority does not have the necessary money or any plan for...

Science Museum to feature Astronaut Scott Carpenter.

Palestinian PM wants Harper to scrap show, claims violation of international law JERUSALEM–A planned Toronto exhibit of ancient Middle Eastern manuscripts is threatening to plunge Canada, along with the Royal Ontario Museum, into the thick of the long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Beginning in June, the ROM will host a six-month exhibit of the famed Dead Sea Scrolls, organized in co-operation with the Israel Antiquities Authority. But top Palestinian officials this week declared the exhibit a violation of international law and called on Canada to cancel the show. In letters to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and top executives at...

After the fanfare surrounding first lady Michelle Obama's new wax figure at Madame Tussauds in downtown Washington Tuesday, we noticed something peculiar: No Republican first ladies have had the honor of being immortalized in wax at the museum. Besides Mrs. Obama, the Tussauds inventory here includes a figure of Hillary Rodham Clinton and, not one, but two gloved and ladylike Jackie Kennedys. But nary a Nancy Reagan, Betty Ford or Barbara or Laura Bush. "There have not been enough guest requests" for, say, a Mrs. Reagan or Mrs. Ford, museum marketing director Rosemary Del Prado said Tuesday. The museum solicits...

Wright-Patterson museum asks for a space shuttle Monday, April 6, 2009 3:11 AM DAYTON DAILY NEWS DAYTON -- The U.S. Air Force museum is making a bid to land one of NASA's space shuttles after the fleet is retired in late 2010. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley sent a letter to the space agency in March making the request. NASA hasn't indicated when it will make a decision on where the retired orbiters will be displayed. NASA spokesman Mike Curie said it is in everyone's interest to find a location where the shuttles can be seen by the greatest number...