Category:
1940s
1940s
Music Out of the Moon
I was very excited to discover that the first album of Les Baxter--prince of space-age exotica--had been digitized for our enjoyment. From 1947, before there even was a Space Age!Wikipedia entry here.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Apr 25, 2023 -
Comments (1)
Category: Debuts, Christenings, Launches and Reboots, Space-age Bachelor Pad & Exotic, 1940s
The Morrison Table Shelter
The Morrison Table Shelter was a steel bomb shelter that could double as a dining room table. During the Blitz, the British government distributed thousands of them.The idea of your dining room table also being a bomb shelter seems a bit odd nowadays, but apparently they saved many lives. So they were weird, but practical.
More info: No Tech Magazine
London Daily Telegraph - Feb 12, 1941
Posted By: Alex - Sun Apr 23, 2023 -
Comments (3)
Category: War, 1940s
G.I. Hamlet
During WWII, Shakespeare's HAMLET was adapted for soldiers in the Pacific theater. As TIME magazine revealed:
The Theater: Hamlet in Hawaii
Monday, Nov. 27, 1944
The Army, taking the Bard by the horns in Hawaii, has come up with a G.I. Hamlet. Moreover, it has come up smiling. With Major Maurice Evans bossing the job and playing the introspective Prince for the first time since 1940, the effect on the dogfaces has been, for Evans, "simply staggering." They even rise above normal behavior by refraining from hollering or whistling when performers go into a clinch. Commented one G.I.: "They certainly must have done a lot of rewriting to bring that play so up to date."
A blue pencil, not a pen, helped do it: a third of the play has been hacked off.
The modernish costumes helped, too: Hamlet wears trousers instead of tights, delivers "To be, or not to be," in a dinner jacket with silver-brocade lapels. No help at all were the unpoetic sergeants who inevitably shattered the high-tragic mood of the soldier cast's rehearsals, with such prose passages as "Hey, Polonius, you and those other guys get some brooms and clean up the theayter."
Wikipedia reveals:
[the] highly truncated version of the play that he played for South Pacific war zones during World War II...made the prince a more decisive character. The staging, known as the "G.I. Hamlet", was produced on Broadway for 131 performances in 1945/46.
This interesting article has more details, and another picture.
Regarding the quote below, I can just picture Hamlet in a fistfight with his stepfather.
Evans’s romantic, extroverted, unneurotic, virile, and soldier-like Hamlet suggested Lord Byron.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Mar 27, 2023 -
Comments (1)
Category: Theater and Stage, War, Adaptations, Reworkings, Recastings and New Versions, 1940s
A comparison of teflon and plastic
From the Hagley Archive's collection of DuPont Product information photographs.Definite industrial chemist as dominatrix vibe.
An explanation:
From a boiling bath of hot sulfuric acid, a laboratory technician lifts two rods of plastic. One has charred and deteriorated. The other-a rod of DuPont's new Teflon tetrafluoroethylene resin-is not affected at all by the highly corrosive hot acid. Teflon resists the most corrosive acids and solvents to a degree unequaled by any other plastic. It is not attacked even by aqua regia which dissolves gold and platinum.
A photo of another chemist doing the same thing, but it doesn't have the same vibe to it:
Posted By: Alex - Sun Mar 26, 2023 -
Comments (3)
Category: Mad Scientists, Evil Geniuses, Insane Villains, Photography and Photographers, Science, 1940s
Dr. Walker’s Paste-Pump Toothbrush
How the hell could this be any less work than just squeezing a stripe of toothpaste from the tube onto your brush?Source of article.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Mar 20, 2023 -
Comments (2)
Category: Hygiene, Inventions, Chindogu, 1940s
Belt ‘em one
Help beat Germany and Japan by... buying a belt?
Life - Nov 1, 1943
Posted By: Alex - Sun Mar 19, 2023 -
Comments (0)
Category: War, Advertising, 1940s
The Great Starvation Experiment, 1944-1945
I wrote this brief article a number of years ago. It used to be posted on another site, which no longer exists. So I'm relocating it here. . .One of the greatest killers of World War II wasn't bombs or bullets, but hunger. As the conflict raged on, destroying crops and disrupting supply lines, millions starved. During the Siege of Leningrad alone, over a thousand people a day died from lack of food. But starvation also occurred in a more unlikely place: Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was here that, in 1945, thirty-six men participated in a starvation experiment conducted by Dr. Ancel Keys.
Group photo of the participants
The Purpose of the Experiment
Dr. Ancel Keys
The starvation experiment developed out of Keys' interest in nutrition. He realized that although millions of people in Europe were suffering from famine, there was little doctors could do to help them once the war was over, because almost no scientific information existed about the physiological effects of starvation. Keys convinced the military that a study of starvation could yield information that would have both humanitarian and practical benefits — because knowing the best rehabilitation methods could ensure the health of the population and thereby help democracy grow in Europe after the war. Having secured his funding, Keys set out on his novel experiment.
More in extended >>
Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 07, 2023 -
Comments (5)
Category: Experiments, Nutrition, 1940s, Dieting and Weight Loss
Visit Gay’s Lion Farm
The Wikipedia page.A very detailed article on the place, with lots of photos.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 02, 2023 -
Comments (0)
Category: Animals, Eccentrics, Hollywood, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s
The Fake Village That Hid a Giant Wartime Plant
See the whole story here, with many more pictures.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Feb 28, 2023 -
Comments (2)
Category: Military, Camouflage, Counterintelligence, Diversions, Chaff and Fakeouts, Industry, Factories and Manufacturing, 1940s
Miss Grill of 1949
If no one is selling that hot-dog hat, someone should be.
Life - Nov 14, 1949
Posted By: Alex - Mon Feb 20, 2023 -
Comments (2)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Headgear, 1940s
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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 |