Cigarettes for mermaids

Why did the guy take cigarettes with him while scuba diving? And what exactly does the mermaid do with the cigarettes? Use them as jewelry?

House Beautiful - May 1956

Posted By: Alex - Mon Mar 13, 2023 - Comments (8)
Category: Advertising, Smoking and Tobacco, 1950s

Miss Paramount Week

This beauty prize is plenty weird on its own. Most beauty queen titles are not delimited by a timeframe. Of course, the winners of the most famous contests generally reign for a year. A week seems a short splurge. But this winner, actress/singer/model Sandy Warner, also notches up another claim to WU fame. She was the cover girl for many of Martin Denny's exotica albums. Read about her at the link.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 10, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Movies, Music, Space-age Bachelor Pad & Exotic, Television, 1950s, 1960s

Music for playboys to play by

The woman looks both disturbed and perplexed.

Lancaster Sunday News - May 4, 1958

More info: Unearthed in the Atomic Attic

Posted By: Alex - Sat Mar 04, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Music, 1950s

Nudists eject clothed parson

Dr. Braxton B. Sawyer was an anti-nudist activist. In August 1954 he attempt to gain entry into the American Sunshine Bathing Association Convention in order to film the people inside and thereby expose "the national threat of nudism." Guards at the door told him he was welcome in but only if he followed the rules that applied to everyone — that he first remove all his clothes. He refused and was eventually forcibly ejected.

San Francisco Examiner - Aug 6, 1954

In addition to crusading against nudism, Sawyer was also well known as a dog breeder and American Kennel Club judge. His article, The Value of the Brood Bitch, is available online.

Posted By: Alex - Thu Feb 23, 2023 - Comments (2)
Category: Censorship, Bluenoses, Taboos, Prohibitions and Other Cultural No-No’s, 1950s

Wild Hog Hop

The sound effects make it special.

Encyclopedia entry on the musician.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Feb 19, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Animals, Music, 1950s

Miss Color TV

Apparently the contest continued beyond 1956 (first and second images), because the advertisement that follows is from 1959.

Ann Daly (No. 25) screams as she is declared "Miss Color-TV" in beauty contest at Palisades Amusement Park, N.J.; other contestants stand alongside her.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Feb 08, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Television, 1950s

God Speaks To Modern Man

Looks like he's asking for a raise.



The illustrations inside the book (which you can read for free via archive.org) are equally odd.

Posted By: Alex - Mon Feb 06, 2023 - Comments (3)
Category: Religion, Books, 1950s

Crisco is digestible

When the best that a company can say about their food is that "it's digestible," it sounds like damning with faint praise.

Better Homes and Gardens - Sep 1956

Better Homes and Gardens - Sep 1954

Better Homes and Gardens - Mar 1957

Posted By: Alex - Wed Feb 01, 2023 - Comments (4)
Category: Food, Advertising, 1950s

Suitcase-Size Wife

If it was allowed to save money on airfare by carrying your contortionist wife on as luggage and putting her in the overhead compartment, I'm sure some people would try it.

Omaha Morning World Herald - June 6, 1951

Posted By: Alex - Fri Jan 27, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Human Marvels, Air Travel and Airlines, 1950s

Sidney Cornell’s Geyser Relays

Over the years there have been a lot of ideas proposed to solve Southern California's water shortage. One of the more unusual, from back in the early 1950s, was Sidney Cornell's geyser relays.

His idea was that, instead of moving water from Northern to Southern California by means of pipelines or canals, one could use hydrocannons to shoot it through the air.

He envisioned a series of powerful hydrocannons each positioned a mile apart. A geyser of water would be blasted from a cannon, a mile through the air, and collected in a funnel at the next pumping station. It would then be blasted to the next station in the chain, continuing like this for four-hundred miles.

Durham Herald-Sun - Jun 17, 1951

Mechanix Illustrated - Oct 1951 (via California WaterBlog)

San Pedro News-Pilot - Aug 8, 1951

The idea seems so harebrained that it's hard to understand how Cornell thought it could be even remotely possible. I'm guessing he was persuaded by the phenomenon of laminar flow, by means of which it's possible to get a jet of water to remain tightly focused, with minimal turbulence or scattering. See the video below for an example.

But even so, I'm sure that winds would push the water off-course, despite Cornell's claim that this wouldn't happen. And the cost would be significant.

Posted By: Alex - Tue Jan 24, 2023 - Comments (8)
Category: Engineering and Construction, Crackpots, 1950s