1950s
Money in sock disappears
To this day, the mystery remains unsolved.
The Louisville Courier-Journal - Dec 5, 1953
Seattle, Dec. 4 (AP) — John E. Trimmer reported to police yesterday that before retiring Wednesday night he put $40 in his sock, bolted the door of his apartment from the inside, put the sock on his foot, climbed into bed, and went to sleep.
When he woke up in the morning, he reported, the $40 was gone, but the sock still was on his foot.
Posted By: Alex - Sun Mar 20, 2016 -
Comments (13)
Category: Unsolved Mysteries, 1950s
Follies of the Madmen #277
Consider the iconography: woman who forgot to rinse off all the soap bubbles from her bath provokes love and/or lust among male subway riders.
Original ad here.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 17, 2016 -
Comments (8)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Hygiene, Baths, Showers and Other Cleansing Methods, 1950s, Men, Women
Miss Optometry of 1956
In line with Alex's ceaseless quest for oddball beauty queens, may we present Kipp Hamilton, who actually had a career. But she must have misremembered this honor, for all sources quote Kipp as claiming it happened in the year 1953. But such data has become easier to verify or disprove since Google added its newspaper archives.
Original story here.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Mar 14, 2016 -
Comments (7)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Contests, Races and Other Competitions, Movies, 1950s, Eyes and Vision
“I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke!”
Egyptian swingers get down with Coke.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Mar 12, 2016 -
Comments (1)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Foreign Customs, Soda, Pop, Soft Drinks and other Non-Alcoholic Beverages, 1950s
Tom Haywood’s Self-Kicking Machine
Look at the sorry state of this fine invention nowadays.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 11, 2016 -
Comments (8)
Category: Eccentrics, Humor, Inventions, Regionalism, 1950s
Giant Telephone Engineers
These 1957 General Telephone System ads are the latest addition to my slowly growing collection of Giant People In Ads.Soon no one will be able to deny the truth of my thesis that a race of giants lives amongst us, and that for decades the advertising industry has been dropping hints about their existence.
Posted By: Alex - Sat Mar 05, 2016 -
Comments (8)
Category: Giant People in Ads, 1950s
Follies of the Madmen #276
1) Sausage pancakes.
2) Cocktail shaker preparation.
3) Wife-swapping ambiance.
Everything you could want in a commercial!
Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 04, 2016 -
Comments (5)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Food, Sexuality, 1950s
Corn Swimsuit
June 1955: The U.S. Agricultural Research Service put on a fashion show for members of President Eisenhower's Agricultural Advisory Commission in which they showed off the "newest refinement" developed by their scientists — a swimsuit made out of corn. They boasted that the suit was mildew resistant, moth-proof, and "won't dissolve in water." They recruited Betty Richter, a "corn-fed girl from Maryland," to model the swimsuit for the members of the Advisory Commission.The Research Service scientists had, in addition, created an "apron made of hog lard," which Richter also modeled, but I can't find any pictures of the hog-lard apron.
Santa Cruz Sentinel - June 30, 1955
Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 01, 2016 -
Comments (8)
Category: Fashion, 1950s
The Romance of Transportation in Canada
The Romance of Transportation in Canada by Colin Low, National Film Board of Canada
With so many USians threatening to move to Canada if the November Presidential election goes one way or another, I thought it would be handy to screen this comical but accurate cartoon to get such folks ready for their new citizenship.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Feb 27, 2016 -
Comments (4)
Category: Foreign Customs, Cartoons, Transportation, 1950s, North America
The Draft and Army IQ
Following up on Chuck's mention of "military intelligence" in his latest column, this short article from 1951 noted the (perhaps unexpected) effect that a military draft has on the average IQ of GIs.
St. Petersburg Times - Oct 13, 1951
HEIDELBERG, Germany — The intelligence average of American troops in Germany is going up.
Reason: The draft.
Officers in the U.S. Army's European Command headquarters here say Army intelligence averages go up every time there is a military draft.
"With the draft, we get the extremely brilliant persons, as well as the average or slightly below average persons," one officer explained. "The 'brilliant' persons usually do not enlist in the Army as a private."
Posted By: Alex - Thu Feb 25, 2016 -
Comments (10)
Category: Intelligence, Military, 1950s
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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 |