1920s
Imperishable Burial Robes
Alex gave us green burials--here's the opposite! Keep your corpse looking fresh, stylish and whole!
Original article here.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Mar 30, 2015 -
Comments (3)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Body, Death, Fashion, Body Fluids, 1920s
Violet Rays
Good thing they clarified that this was NOT a vibrator. Otherwise someone might have gotten hurt.
Source: Illustrated World, March 1920.
Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 18, 2015 -
Comments (5)
Category: Medicine, 1920s
Losing 103 lbs to Music!
Mrs. Derby suffered from a "mountainous burden of flesh," but when the music started to play, the pounds just melted away.
Source: The Ladies Home Journal, Nov. 1922
Posted By: Alex - Sat Mar 14, 2015 -
Comments (6)
Category: Advertising, 1920s
Baby Cage
Problem: It's hard to travel with a baby.Solution: build a portable cage to carry your kid in. I wonder if the TSA would approve of these. Source: Illustrated World (Mar 1920).
Posted By: Alex - Sat Jan 24, 2015 -
Comments (7)
Category: Babies, Family, Babies and Toddlers, Parents, 1920s
Stockings for Camels
In the early 1960s, Alan Abel ran a long-running hoax involving an organization (The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals) whose members wanted to put clothes on all the naked animals in the world. So I was amused to discover there was a similar, but non-hoax, campaign back in 1926. The "philanthropic Englishwoman" Mrs. F.K. Hosall spearheaded an effort to get women to donate their old stockings so they could be worn by the donkeys and camels of north Africa. However, it wasn't exactly similar, because it sounds like Mrs. Hosall had a sensible reason to put stockings on the camels — to prevent fly bites.Source: The Alamance Gleaner (Graham, N.C.) - Feb 11, 1926.
Posted By: Alex - Tue Jan 20, 2015 -
Comments (7)
Category: Animals, Fashion, 1920s
Women Becoming Dumb
Back in 1926, art historian and cultural critic Dudley Crafts Watson sounded the alarm on a looming problem. The modern American woman, he believed, was fast becoming a "statis dumb bunny" because labor-saving devices were allowing her too much free time which she spent amusing herself with frivolous entertainment, instead of improving her mind.Today, Watson is best known because he became the guardian of Orson Welles. His warning about the dumbing down of our culture actually sounds like what a lot of cultural critics say. The only unusual thing about it is his focus on women alone.
The Ogden Standard-Examiner - Apr 2, 1926
Dudley Crafts Watson
Posted By: Alex - Mon Jan 19, 2015 -
Comments (14)
Category: Culture and Civilization, Stupidity, 1920s
Can-Fed Husbands
Shamokin News-Dispatch - Apr 1927
From Songs of a Housewife, by Marjorie Rawlings. It's an odd book of poetry, recording in verse all the various complaints and problems of 1920's housewives, such as husbands who complained about being given canned food.
Available at Amazon
, which gives the following, fuller description of it:
Posted By: Alex - Fri Jan 16, 2015 -
Comments (5)
Category: Wives, Poetry, 1920s
Tony Sarg’s Marionettes: “In the Orient”
Posted By: Paul - Fri Dec 26, 2014 -
Comments (9)
Category: Puppets and Automatons, 1920s
Santa takes a cigarette break
The kids can wait. He needs his nicotine fix!
Source: Popular Science - Dec 1920. via What the Apothecary Ordered.
Posted By: Alex - Tue Dec 23, 2014 -
Comments (7)
Category: Holidays, 1920s
Follies of the Madmen #237
Original ad here.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Dec 19, 2014 -
Comments (11)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Radio, 1920s, Bodybuilding
| Who We Are |
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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 |