Paul once posted about a camera that looked like a gun. This does that one better. It's a camera AND a gun. Pull the trigger and it simultaneously takes a picture of and shoots a bullet at whomever you're aiming the gun at. It was created and used in the late 1930s in New York City. [via petapixel]
Thanks to the recent movie The King's Speech, King George VI is now best known as the king who stuttered. But apparently he also occasionally told jokes. Several of them are reproduced below. They're not bad, for a royal. [Milwaukee Journal — Apr 25, 1937]
[In response to a speaker who was praising him in extravagant terms]. "I am reminded," he said, "of the woman who went to her husband's funeral service. The couple had never got on well together, but the minister devoted his long sermon to a panegyric of the husband's virtues. So glowing a picture did he paint that the widow completely failed to recognize her late husband. 'Milly,' she nudged her friend and whispered loudly, 'is there another corpse about?'"
There was a petrol dump where men sent a canary down into the empty tank to see if the atmosphere was safe for them to go down and clean it out. One day the foreman saw a man walking about in the bottom of the tank before the canary had been let down. "Hey, what are you doing there?" he yelled. In all seriousness the man below shouted back: "I'm just seeing if it's all right for me blinkin' canary."
On July 4, 1935, Dr. Walter G. Kendall, 81, drank a glass of water. It was the first glass of water he had drunk in 25 years. He reportedly "suffered no ill effects," and followed it by several cocktails.
In addition to being famous for abstaining from water, Kendall was also a well-known dentist, bicyclist, and horticulturalist. That's him in the pictures below. [image source: here and here]
In 1935, the Nudist Theater Guild put on its first (and apparently last) play, with a New York performance of "The Girl From Childs," which was an adaptation of a 1920s vaudeville comedy. Music was provided by "Al Bennett's Nudist Orchestra," and "nudist cocktails" were served during the intermissions.
However, the play was panned by critics — their top complaint being that the performers weren't actually nude. Instead, they wore skimpy costumes. Promises were made that all would be bared during the final act, but when that arrived the lights were turned down low and a gauze curtain was lowered to protect the modesty of the performers.
Nor were any of the performers actually nudists. Official nudist organizations denied any affiliation with the "Nudist Theater Guild." In other words, it was pseudo-nudism, adopted as a marketing gimmick. [Tuscaloosa News — Apr 24, 1935; Milwaukee Journal — Apr 16, 1935]
Below are some pictures of the Nudist Theater Guild performers in action.
Fritz von Opel was one of those early-20th-century rocket-besotted guys who pioneered this exotic means of propulsion. Just look at his rocket car go in the film clip above! (Narration in German, but not necessary to comprehension.)
But von Opel's innocent excitement had its darker side. I give you the 1929 newspaper article below. Specifically, the enlarged sentence.
Here's a little something for the lady WU-vies. This otherwise innocuous home movie features two guys playing handball while wearing only jockstraps.
They come on around the one-minute mark, and play for three minutes. Then they reappear around the eleven-minute mark for another four minutes, joined by a third guy in trunks.
Not sure if this was conventional attire for handball in the era of the filming (1930s-1940s, judging by the clothes). Or if we are just dealing with a couple of exhibitionists.
I do know that even in the 1960s of my youth, the Boys' Club in town featured naked swim sessions for boys. Nobody used to believe me, till I found proof in LIFE MAGAZINE.
Category: Clowns, Music, Stereotypes and Cliches, 1910's, 1920's, 1930's, Name That List