Find the answer by watching
Undersea Kingdom!
Wikipedia entry.
During the 1930s and 40s, there was good money to be made by raising giant frogs, as evidenced by the number of ads promoting this income opportunity.
The plan was to buy the booklet "A Future in Frogs." Start growing the giant frogs. Sell them to the American Frog Canning Co. Then count all your money!
The booklet "A Future in Frogs" seems to have entirely disappeared. I can't find any copies used or in libraries. The world has lost a literary classic.
Modern Mechanix - Jan 1936
Los Angeles Times - June 21, 1936
Chicago Tribune - Dec 4, 1940
After losing his larynx and windpipe to cancer, Herman Schulenberg created a new windpipe for himself by ramming a white-hot ice pick through his flesh. Then he learned to sing through this opening by "closing the windpipe's artificial opening with his index finger and manipulating his neck with his other fingers" in order to "direct the air through the passage in such manner as to get a variety of tones."
Finally, he gave a singing performance before a group of 50 doctors at a meeting of the Milwaukee Oto-Ophthalmic Society. That would have been a strange concert to attend. From the
San Antonio Express - March 3, 1935.
I came across this ad in
Boys' Life - Oct 1935. Then I realized that Paul had already posted a version of the ad
two years ago. But I decided to post this version anyway, since it shows the Taxidermied Frog Orchestra. I wonder how many kids actually went ahead and made one of these.
Milford Barnes was the Head of the Department of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine at the University of Iowa from 1930 to 1952. The annual Milford E. Barnes Award for Academic Excellence in Biostatistics was established in his honor. He made this prediction in 1934. Evidently, he was an optimist.
The story below is from 1939. Would the students have been dealt with as harshly today? My guess, based on all the stories of overreacting school officials that Chuck reports, probably yes.
Donkey Baseball (which is, as the name implies, baseball played while riding on donkeys) became a popular fad in the 1930s. But it wasn't always fun and games. There was one case of a donkey baseball fatality. In 1934, William Beck fell from his donkey three times in the course of trying to make first base. The fourth time he fell, he fractured his spine and died. [
Gettysburg Times - Aug 6, 1934]
According to Hollywood "figure experts" back in 1939, this one exercise would have any woman looking like a starlet in no time:
"Sit or stand erect with arms up — elbows bent, hands in front of you at chest level with fingertips touching. Now, without putting any strain on muscles of the arms, lightly press fingertips together. When you are doing this correctly, you can see the pectoral muscles expand with pressure of fingertips against fingertips. Do the exercise 40 times a minute for two minutes every day. At the end of two months, according to Mr. Davies, you no longer will be flat-chested." [
Pittsburgh Press - Apr 6, 1939]
Back in 1938,
Lewis F. Richardson worked out a mathematical system for predicting war. He presented his findings at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. His conclusion: no chance of war in Europe!
The New York Times reported his findings on Aug 23, 1938:
No Sign of War Seen
Before the section on psychology, Lewis F. Richardson of Paisley arrived at the encouraging conclusion that there is no sign of war — at least no mathematical sign. For the professor reduced to beautiful differential equations general tendencies common to all nations — resentment of defiance, the suspicion that defense is concealed aggression, response to imports by exports, restraint on armaments by the difficulty of paying for them, and, last, grievances and their irrationality. The psychologists were bewildered and amused.
Mathematically, Professor Richardson treated love and hate as if they were forces that could be designated by the usual X and Y. The forces make possible two opposite kinds of drifting, one leading to suspicion, the other leading from cooperation to united organization.
The balance of power, Professor Richardson holds, is best maintained by countries of different sizes rather than by a few countries of the same size. When he concluded from his mathematical analysis that there was no chance of war at present he remarked:
"I never would have accepted this unless I proved it to myself by mathematics."
His hearers left with the feeling that Europe's feverish preparation for war is only a declaration of peace to the knife.
It's worth noting that Richardson wasn't just some random crackpot. As wikipedia notes, he's the guy who came up with the idea of weather forecasting by solution of differential equations, which is the method used today.