Museum visitor destroys priceless clock

[JoseB]

The link below shows CCTV footage from the National Watch and Clock Museum in Columbia (Pennsylvania).

The museum hosts an awesome collection of one-of-a-kind clocks of all types, many of them priceless.

The video shows a museum visitor completely disregarding museum rules: He begins touching and fiddling with the mechanism of a clock hanging on the wall, until the (possibly) inevitable happens: He ends up dislodging the clock from its hook, the clock falls to the ground and smashes into pieces.

There is not enough facepalm in the world for this… :smack:^∞

Link to the YouTube video with the CCTV footage in question.

[silenus]

This is why every civilized nation should always keep the Death Penalty on the books!

[buddha_david]

@JoseB

Link to the YouTube video with the CCTV footage in question.

I’ll bet, when that clock fell off the wall, time stood still for him.

[gigi]

The Git and the Pendulum

[cochrane]

@buddha_david

I’ll bet, when that clock fell off the wall, time stood still for him.

I’ll bet he made a face when the clock hit the ground.

[running_coach]

So, who gives him a time-out?

ETA: gigi two thumbs up

[Leo_Krupe]

It’s the museum’s own fault for not putting the clock behind a barricade. They were just asking for trouble…

Shayna, they bought their tickets; they knew what they were getting into. I say, let 'em crash!

[/sarcasm]

Serious comment: I didn’t see the video, but anyone who touches a museum exhibit is an idiot. The exception is of course if the exhibit explicitly directs hands-on interaction.

[gigi]

@silenus

This is why every civilized nation should always keep the Death Penalty on the books!

Or a corporal punishment that would leave him with one big hand and one little hand.

[Johnny_L.A]

He needed someone to keep him away. You know, a clockblocker.

[Little_Nemo]

Fortunately the clock isn’t really destroyed. The museum has said the damage is repairable.

[silenus]

Unfortunately, his stupidity isn’t.

[gigi]

@Johnny_L.A

He needed someone to keep him away. You know, a clockblocker.

[jtur88]

Is this museum a part of a petting zoo? Why would a museum leave something “priceless”, not to mention fragile, out where everybody could touch it?

[gigi]

@jtur88

Is this museum a part of a petting zoo? Why would a museum leave something “priceless”, not to mention fragile, out where everybody could touch it?

In sad news, they had to shoot the clock lest it injure the museum patron.

There is a documentary in the works, They Shoot Horloges, Don’t They?

[robert_columbia]

I guess this is evidence that time really doesn’t fly.

[Senegoid]

Indeed, a capital crime!

@Dialog at the (original) Mad Tea Party:

‘Well, I’d hardly finished the first verse,’ said the Hatter, ‘when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, “He’s murdering the time! Off with his head!”’

‘How dreadfully savage!’ exclaimed Alice.

‘And ever since that,’ the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, ‘he won’t do a thing I ask! It’s always six o’clock now.’

[Senegoid]

There was that other news article lately, about the kid (in China, I think) who demolished a multi-thousand-dollar Lego statue that had been on display for all of an hour. The article mentioned that the Lego artist spent three days building it!

It seemed such an awful shame. Three irrecoverable days of the guy’s life wasted!

[TriPolar]

Look like the antique store scam. Hang some worthless piece of junk clock loosely on the wall and wait for some sucker to break it. What made that clock priceless? Didn’t look special to me. It’s a clock, I’ve had plenty of clocks, but now I have a cell phone, computer, and cable TV box to tell me the time, making all clocks worthless. It’s a scam.

[Senegoid]

Then you’ve got this sculpture: Rolling Through The Bay built with 100,000 toothpicks by one man over 35 years.

Somehow they cart this thing around from place to place, displaying it at County Fairs and the like. I saw it at the Sonoma County Fair a few years ago. It’s not behind a glass case either. There’s a cordon around it, but that’s all.

I cringe at the sight of that thing out there in the same space as the Teeming Millions. And trucking it around from place to place must be a real nail-biting feat too!

[Ludovic]

I’ve been to a museum with a couple other people, one of whom casually leaned on a pile of (thick, non-cordoning) rope that happened to be an art exhibit, and was quickly told otherwise. I don’t recall rope around it, nor labelling from my perspective, but it seems to me that if there’s a rope on a platform in an art museum, you don’t touch it.