Museum of the Bizarre

10/12/2026

Just to clear the air this Holiday season, we here at Museum of the Bizarre want folks to know why we do what we do!
Follow the link below to find out!

Museum of the Bizarre Wilmington, NC If it’s strange, weird, unusual or a collectible oddity, (YOU'LL SEE IT HERE!)

10/12/2026

10/10/2026

📌 Star Fort — Ninety Six, South Carolina
📍 34°08′45.36″N 82°01′06.59″W

LiDAR reveals one of the best-preserved Revolutionary War fortifications in the United States, the distinctive Star Fort at Ninety Six National Historic Site. Even after more than two centuries of erosion, the fort's sharp angular bastions, surrounding ditch, and defensive earthworks remain remarkably visible in the terrain.

British forces built this star-shaped fort in 1780 as part of a larger fortified complex designed to secure one of the most important Loyalist strongholds in the South Carolina backcountry. Originally settled in the early 1700s, Ninety Six had grown into a prosperous frontier village of roughly 100 residents by the outbreak of the Revolution. The area saw some of the earliest fighting in South Carolina during the war, when Patriot militia under Major Andrew Williamson confronted Loyalists during the November 1775 Siege of Savage's Old Fields. The engagement ended in a truce, but it made clear just how deeply divided the Carolina backcountry really was, where Patriot and Loyalist neighbors often found themselves on opposite sides of the same conflict.

Recognizing the settlement's strategic importance, British forces occupied and fortified Ninety Six in 1780. The centerpiece of the defenses was the earthen Star Fort, backed by a network of trenches, stockades, batteries, and other defensive works spread across the surrounding landscape. The fort itself measures roughly 170 feet across, designed so defenders could deliver overlapping fields of fire from its projecting bastions while minimizing vulnerable blind spots.

The site is best known for the Siege of Ninety Six, fought from May 22 to June 18, 1781. Major General Nathanael Greene led roughly 1,000 Patriot troops against a garrison of about 550 Loyalist defenders commanded by Lieutenant Colonel John Harris Cruger. During the 28-day siege, Greene's forces dug extensive approach trenches and even built a wooden siege tower trying to overcome the fort's defenses. Despite the effort, the Patriots failed to capture the position before British reinforcements approached, forcing Greene to withdraw.

Today, the 1,022-acre Ninety Six National Historic Site preserves not just the famous Star Fort but an entire Revolutionary War battlefield landscape. Few Revolutionary War sites in America preserve their original field fortifications as clearly as Ninety Six, making it one of the most important archaeological and military landscapes from the struggle for American independence.

This comparison image places the LiDAR terrain model above a modern aerial photograph of the same location. The LiDAR clearly outlines the Star Fort's angular defensive walls, surrounding ditch, and nearby earthworks, while the aerial photograph shows how the fort survives today as subtle grassy embankments within the historic battlefield. The contrast shows just how effectively LiDAR can bring centuries-old military fortifications back into view.

10/03/2026

James Sprunt was born in Glasgow on June 9, 1846, and his family reached Wilmington in 1854. NCpedia reports that when he was 14 his father was captured running the Federal blockade, that he studied navigation at night and became a purser on blockade runners, and that he served until Fort Fisher fell on January 15, 1865, when he was 18.

Right after the war, his cotton was sold in England as the first transaction of the exporting firm Alexander Sprunt and Son. The Duke Libraries finding aid says that in 1879 the firm began chartering transatlantic steamers directly, cutting out middlemen, and that in 1907 alone it handled 501,000 bales, ran six compresses and employed 1,000 workers. A compress squeezes raw cotton bales so that more fit in a ship's hold. Duke calls it probably the largest cotton exporting house in the United States, and NCpedia counts more than fifty overseas agencies.

Sprunt became British vice-consul in 1884, a rare blend of diplomat and exporter, and wrote Chronicles of the Cape Fear River. He died on July 9, 1924, at 78, and is buried in Oakdale Cemetery in Wilmington.

09/26/2026

📌 Fort Dushane — Petersburg, Virginia
📍 37°09′01.36″N, 77°25′04.41″W

We're revisiting Fort Dushane with newly enhanced imagery, and this higher-resolution LiDAR reveals the Union earthwork in remarkable detail. The updated elevation model brings out the fort's angular bastions, surrounding ditch, interior features, and connecting trench lines far more clearly than before, part of the enormous system of fortifications that kept expanding around Petersburg through the final year of the Civil War.

Fort Dushane was built in the aftermath of the Battle of the Weldon Railroad in August 1864, when Union forces under Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren seized and held a critical stretch of the Petersburg and Weldon Railroad. Holding that railroad threatened one of Robert E. Lee's important supply routes into Petersburg, but it also pushed the Federal army farther south and created a new exposed flank that had to be protected. Fort Dushane became one of the strongpoints anchoring those new defenses along the railroad.

The fort was named for Colonel Nathan Thomas Dushane of the 1st Maryland Volunteer Infantry, killed in action near the Weldon Railroad on August 21, 1864. Just two weeks later, Warren recommended that the new bastioned fort be named in his honor.

Its importance grew further following the fighting at Peebles' Farm from September 30 to October 2, 1864, when the Union army pushed its left flank still farther west. Army engineers immediately began laying out another series of forts and connecting trenches extending from the newly captured ground back toward Fort Dushane, effectively turning the fort into an anchor for a powerful rear defensive line meant to protect the Federal army against a Confederate attack around its exposed flank.

By the winter of 1864–65, Fort Dushane was part of an interconnected landscape of forts, batteries, breastworks, and trenches stretching for miles around Petersburg. The 138th Pennsylvania Infantry was assigned to garrison the fort, guarding the rear of the Union army against raids or flanking movements while the siege dragged on through the winter.

Fort Dushane never saw a dramatic assault like Fort Stedman or Fort Gregg. Its story is really about the massive engineering effort needed to sustain the Petersburg Campaign, every time Grant extended his lines, thousands of soldiers and engineers dug new forts and trenches just to protect the ground they'd already taken.

More than 160 years later, much of that military landscape can be hard to recognize beneath vegetation and modern development. LiDAR brings it back into view, and in this newly enhanced image, Fort Dushane's geometry is remarkably clear.

09/20/2026

Ray Charles Leonard was born in Wilmington, North Carolina on May 17, 1956, named by his mother after her favorite singer. Nobody in that Wilmington hospital room could have guessed that the baby would grow up to become one of the most famous boxers in the world, better known simply as Sugar Ray. 🥊

Leonard's amateur career peaked at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where he won gold in the light welterweight division before turning professional the following year. Over a two-decade career, he claimed world championship titles in five different weight classes, a level of versatility that few boxers in history have matched.

A Wilmington birth certificate and an Olympic gold medal don't usually end up in the same sentence, but here they are. Did you know Sugar Ray Leonard's North Carolina roots before today, or did you always picture him starting out somewhere else?

09/17/2026

https://music.youtube.com/channel/UCe5v2o6mAdh6GG2WJNsTO5A?si=t9zQFzgQI8qtEnah

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