Category:
War
War
Finnish Floating Trees
A bizarre image, but not an optical illusion or some kind of darkroom trick. It shows trees in Finland strung by a cable over a road as camouflage during World War II. As explained by PetaPixel:Pine trees were hung from cables which were connected to poles on the right-hand side of the road. The trees were strategically installed there to obscure the view from the nearby enemy Russian tower... the erected trees would not conceal the road from aircraft. But if Russian forces were looking at the area from a watchtower, all they would be able to see was an uninterrupted line of trees.
More info: Finnish Defence Force's photographic archive
Posted By: Alex - Sun May 14, 2023 -
Comments (1)
Category: Photography and Photographers, War, 1940s
Device for attracting submarines and the like
Submarines were a new menace during World War I, but Louis Schramm figured he had a way to defeat them. His invention (Patent No. 1,143,233) involved powerful electromagnets that would pull submarines to the sides of a ship where they could be electrified, killing their crew.Critics pointed out that the magnets would attract anything metallic to the side of the ship, including mines.
Posted By: Alex - Mon May 08, 2023 -
Comments (3)
Category: Boats, Oceans and Maritime Pursuits, War, Patents, 1910s
“Chicken Sam” to “Kill the Jap”
An arcade game where one tried to shoot a chicken thief was repurposed, after Pearl Harbor, to a game where one sought to nail a Japanese soldier.
Posted By: Paul - Wed May 03, 2023 -
Comments (1)
Category: Ethnic Groupings, Games, Stereotypes and Cliches, War, 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
The Mole Torpedo
Weapon tunnels through the earth to the enemy. Why is this not in constant use today? Too easy nowadays to sense seismic activity?Full patent here.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Apr 10, 2023 -
Comments (0)
Category: Death, Inventions, Patents, War
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
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
Woops!
A comedy about life after nuclear Armageddon.Fox cancelled the series in late November. At the time, it was ranked 105th out of 108 weekly shows [54]. Only 10 of the 13 produced episodes were aired; the last was broadcast on December 6th.
Posted By: Paul - Wed Mar 01, 2023 -
Comments (5)
Category: Humor, Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art, Television, War, Atomic Power and Other Nuclear Matters, 1990s
Shelter Suit
From 1939. Something casual to throw on when the air-raid signal sounds. Plus, "the wearer is safe from mustard gas, because it will stand penetration for one hour."Wear it in a blast-resistant house and you'd have no worries.
Derby Evening Telegraph - Oct 24, 1939
New York Daily News - Oct 2, 1939
Related post: Air Raid Apparel
Posted By: Alex - Wed Jan 04, 2023 -
Comments (4)
Category: Fashion, War, 1930s
Waterloo Teeth
Text from the British Dental Association:The BDA Museum has several sets of 'Waterloo' teeth in its collection - some of these are teeth taken from dead soldiers after the Battle of Waterloo, which were made into dentures.
Replacement teeth were traditionally made from ivory (hippopotamus, walrus or elephant).
However such teeth did not always look natural and deteriorated more quickly than real teeth. If you wanted a really nice set of dentures these were made with an ivory base and then set with real human teeth.
These were expensive as it could take six weeks to make a complete set. They have subsequently become known as 'Waterloo teeth', as some were scavenged from dead soldiers on battlefields.
Replacement teeth were traditionally made from ivory (hippopotamus, walrus or elephant).
However such teeth did not always look natural and deteriorated more quickly than real teeth. If you wanted a really nice set of dentures these were made with an ivory base and then set with real human teeth.
These were expensive as it could take six weeks to make a complete set. They have subsequently become known as 'Waterloo teeth', as some were scavenged from dead soldiers on battlefields.
Posted By: Alex - Fri Dec 16, 2022 -
Comments (0)
Category: War, Teeth
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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 |