1910s
Mystery Gadget 40
A granite sphere sitting on a base. No moving parts. Yet it performed a useful function. What?
The answer is here.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Sep 23, 2016 -
Comments (5)
Category: Statues, Monuments and Memorials, Technology, 1910s, 1940s
Early Car Bomb and/or Guided Missile
Original article here.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Sep 13, 2016 -
Comments (9)
Category: Inventions, War, Weapons, 1910s, Cars
Wild Woman Escapes
1916: The chain holding Yebea, the "wild woman from Borneo," snapped during a performance in St. Louis. Yebea instantly became less wild, apologizing to a woman who was accidentally struck by the chain: "I beg your pardon, dearie; I didn't mean to do it. I hope I didn't hurt you."However, at the sight of the freed wild woman the audience panicked and fled, with people crying out warnings that Yebea had escaped and was running amok. A police officer investigated and found her resting in her boudoir.
Mount Carmel Item - Jan 12, 1916
Posted By: Alex - Mon Sep 12, 2016 -
Comments (2)
Category: ShowBiz, 1910s
The Giant Bible of 1917
Why, one hundred years later, can I find no extant traces of this massive Bible?
Original text here.
Original article here.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Sep 03, 2016 -
Comments (8)
Category: Engineering and Construction, Excess, Overkill, Hyperbole and Too Much Is Not Enough, Religion, Books, 1910s
Tanlac
Original text here.
Despite this 1915 revelation of fraud, Tanlac continued to sell for at least another 30 years. The bottle in the picture dates from 1942.
Maybe it was due to ads like this one.
Original ad here.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Aug 18, 2016 -
Comments (2)
Category: Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, 1910s, 1940s
Pinocchio In Africa
Not expecting Disney to film this sequel any time soon.
Full text here.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Jul 28, 2016 -
Comments (3)
Category: Puppets and Automatons, Racism, Fantasy, 1910s, Africa, Europe
Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls
"Sex trafficking 2016," meet "white slavery 1910."Original text here.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Jul 16, 2016 -
Comments (9)
Category: Crime, Sexuality, Public Indecency, The More Things Change, 1910s
Shave the Corpse
Another phrase that would be a great name for a band.According to the Charles Addams blog, this ad was originally published in January 1912 in Casket and Sunnyside ("The foremost journal of the funeral profession since 1871").
Posted By: Alex - Thu Jul 07, 2016 -
Comments (4)
Category: Death, Baths, Showers and Other Cleansing Methods, 1910s
Dolph Traymon, 97-year-old at the Keyboard
I cannot find anything to contradict this review from 2015 which had Dolph Traymon still tinkling the ivories at his Fife and Drum restaurant.
Source of 1948 ad.
Posted By: Paul - Sun Jun 19, 2016 -
Comments (1)
Category: Music, Restaurants, 1910s, Longevity
The Lafargue Retirement Plan
November 1911: Paul and Laura Lafargue were found dead in their home in Draveil, just outside of Paris. They had committed suicide by injecting poison. Laura was the daughter of Karl Marx. She was 66, and Paul was 69.It turned out that their suicide was the result of a ten-year plan. Or, at least, that's the story that circulated around. Ten years before, they had decided that they could either live ten years very well, or longer with more financial uncertainty. They opted for Plan A. So they mortgaged the house and divided up all they had into 10 equal parts and spent one part each year. When they had nothing left, they both took poison and checked out.
The Indianapolis Star - Jan 7, 1912
Posted By: Alex - Sat Apr 23, 2016 -
Comments (7)
Category: Death, Suicide, 1910s
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |