Established in 2006, the Craftsmanship Museum is both a workshop and display gallery for miniature working engines, machines, and the singular custom tools required to made them.
There is a whole subculture of machining enthusiasts who craft replicas of machines and motors, all in fully working order, that could fit in the palm of your hand. Tiny little combustion engines, boat motors, guns, and even ship riggings are created in perfect exacting detail and will click to life with satisfyingly precise efficiency. Most of the creations are made by single craftsmen laboring at their little works for months or more. The bite-size machines often have pieces so small that no tool exists with which to work them, so the craftsmen need to even create their own down-sized tools, unique to each project such as a near microscopic wrench used to build a little steam engine.
The museum itself began as a website that displayed the disparate miniature projects, however now a brick and mortar location has been opened in Carlsbad, California which has brought together over 300 of the little wonders. Cars, guns, boats, exposed engines, and even an elaborate contraption called the Do Nothing Machine that will click whir to life, accomplishing nothing more than looking really cool, are all on display, each with its own little plaque detailing the story of its creation.
The Flame of Liberty in Paris is a life-size replica of the Statue of Liberty's iconic fire and this continuation of the handshake of friendship between France and the United States has also become a de facto memorial to the death of Princess Diana.
Erected in 1986, the 12 foot metal fire is a made of copper covered in actual gold leaf. Donated to the city by the International Herald Tribune, the flame officially commemorates not only the paper's hundredth year of business as well as acting as a token of thanks to France itself for some restorative metalwork which the country had provided to the actual Statue of Liberty. Even with the air of global familiarity emanating from the sculpture like heat from a flame, the site has taken on a grimmer association in recent years.
When Diana, Princess of Wales was tragically killed in a 1997 car accident in the tunnel underneath the the Flame of Liberty it quickly became a focal point for mourning citizens to leave small tokens and pictures and such. Despite the explanatory plaque, to most who come upon the flame today they think it was purpose built as a memorial to the beloved princess.
