Museum to feature Ohio's old electric chair

COLUMBUS (AP) — An electric chair and other artifacts of Ohio’s darker history are featured in an upcoming exhibit that will restrict younger visitors.

When “Controversy: Pieces You Don’t Normally See” opens April 1 at the Ohio Historical Center, children under 17 will not be allowed in unless accompanied by an adult.

The show at the museum in Columbus also will include a 19th century wooden cage for restraining Ohio mental patients, an aluminum mitt that once kept children from sucking their thumbs, and a 1920s Ku Klux Klan hooded robe.

The Columbus Dispatch reports members of the public have not seen the electric chair — nicknamed “Old Sparky” — since tours of the old Ohio Penitentiary stopped 80 years ago. The chair was last used for an execution in 1963.