Category:
1900s
1900s
In Gold We Trust
Back in 1907, banks had run out of U.S. gold coins because depositors had withdrawn them all, fearing a recession. So a bank in Baker City, Oregon, having access to gold from a nearby mine, decided to print up its own gold coins. It stamped them with the phrase "In Gold We Trust" to differentiate them from official currency. Which immediately made them a collector's item.However, government agents soon showed up and destroyed all the existing coins and the dies, since private minting of currency is, of course, illegal. I'm not sure if any of the coins survived.
I found a 1984 replica of the coins on eBay going for around $2000.
Posted By: Alex - Sun Jul 08, 2018 -
Comments (1)
Category: Money, 1900s
Boarding School Girls at Coney Island
I cannot believe that rolling drum ride...
Posted By: Paul - Wed Jan 24, 2018 -
Comments (9)
Category: Fairs, Amusement Parks, and Resorts, 1900s
Munyon’s Homeopathic Cures
Once, these remedies were state-of-the-art.
More photos here.
His Wikipedia page.
Although Munyon appears to be clutching a cigar in his upraised hand, that is indeed supposed to be his signature gesture of upraised index finger.
Original ad here.
Certificate here.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Jun 13, 2017 -
Comments (3)
Category: Forgotten Figures and Where Are They Now?, Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, 1900s
Helpful Dead Wife
Original article here.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Jun 02, 2017 -
Comments (3)
Category: Crime, Death, Superstition, Marriage, 1900s
The Empire of the Sahara
In June 1903 a French sugar millionaire, one Jacques Lebaudy, a dapper little man with a sharp nose and a shrill high-pitched voice who was said to have a personal fortune of some pounds 3m, recruited a dozen Breton sailors and landed them on the coast of Spanish Morocco, commanding them to go forth and establish an empire. Lebaudy then informed the French authorities that he was henceforth to be addressed as Jacques I, Najin-al-Den, Emperor of the Sahara, Commander of the Faithful, King of Tarfaia, Duke of Arleuf and Prince of Chal-Huin.
Full account here, including his inglorious death.
Wikipedia entry here.
Posted By: Paul - Fri May 12, 2017 -
Comments (5)
Category: Bombast, Bloviation and Pretentiousness, Dictators, Tyrants and Other Harsh Rulers, Eccentrics, 1900s, Africa, Europe
Follies of the Madmen #313
That is one friendly and powerful cereal.
Original ad here.
Posted By: Paul - Sun May 07, 2017 -
Comments (7)
Category: Anthropomorphism, Business, Advertising, Products, Food, 1900s
Mystery Gadget 45
Why is this man inside a steel cylinder?
The answer is here.
And after the jump.
More in extended >>
Posted By: Paul - Tue Mar 21, 2017 -
Comments (4)
Category: Technology, 1900s
Husband Wields Occult Powers
September 1909: Mrs. Christina Brown of Elgin, Illinois filed for divorce from her husband on the grounds that he was a wizard who wielded occult powers, compelling her to do things against her will, such as:- Sitting for hours in one chair while he controlled her thoughts as well as actions without touch or word.
- Revealing the choicest bits of neighborhood gossip, no matter how solemnly she had sworn to keep them a secret.
- Telling him what she really thought of him, despite her effort to pretend that he was the only man in the world.
- Admitting that she didn't believe his fish stories.
- Confessing that she had cooked up the oldest and poorest food in the house when he brought a friend home to dinner unexpectedly.
- Purchasing a hat and gown at the cheapest store in town when she had fully intended to buy them at a more expensive establishment.
The Alexandria Times-Tribune - Sep 6, 1909
Posted By: Alex - Thu Jan 05, 2017 -
Comments (1)
Category: Divorce, 1900s
Crook, the Unkissed
Algie R. Crook (or "Alja" Crook, as his name was sometimes spelled) was a professor of mineralogy at Chicago's Northwestern University. His great claim to fame, however, had nothing to do with science. Instead, it was that in April, 1901 he allegedly told his undergraduate class that he had never kissed a woman. More specifically, he reportedly said, "I have never uttered a profane word, never have smoked or chewed tobacco, drank intoxicants, nor hugged or kissed a woman."Given that he was thirty-seven years old at the time, this was considered a remarkable admission. So remarkable that when word of it leaked to the press it became international news.
Great Falls Tribune - May 15, 1901
The media started referring to him as "Crook, The Unkissed." Acquaintances of Crook (or people who claimed to be his acquaintances) readily confirmed the tale, attributing his lack of kisses to his embrace of "austere science." One said, "the scientific atmosphere is inimical to the love germ."
Offers of marriage flooded in, from women hoping to be the one to thaw the professor's icy reserve.
Philadelphia Times - Apr 28, 1901
The French were particularly taken with the story. As reported in the Leavenworth Times (May 8, 1901):
Leading [French] novelists and scientists have been interviewed. Some pronounce the Chicago instructor an "idiot" and a "monster," but a powerful clan uphold his theory that love for woman, even love of the ideal type, seriously impedes a man who would be great and learned.
Supposedly the news even reached as far as China where the dowager empress expressed a desire to see him.
Philadelphia Inquirer - Apr 27, 1901
Crook, for his part, was said to be "abashed and humiliated over the gossip the affair has provoked," and also furious at the "tattling undergraduates."
He issued a denial of the allegation, stating, "I have never told any one that I have refrained from hugging or kissing women, for the reason that I consider it nobody's business but my own."
He recalled having advised a student to do as he did — never to kiss, hug, swear, and so forth. And he figured that's how the story must have started. But he insisted that he hadn't said that he had never done these things at all.
However, it was too late. The story was out there and couldn't be taken back. His denial got buried in the back pages of newspapers, if it was printed at all.
In other interviews, Crook asserted that he had kissed female family members, which didn't help his case much since it implied that he had indeed never romantically kissed a woman. Also, a former student recalled that Crook had made similar claims before, noting, "He is a consistent Methodist, and his convictions sometimes cause him some trouble." So I kind of suspect that Crook really did make the no-kissing claim to his class, but denied it later out of embarrassment.
Whatever the case may have been, the tale continued to haunt him. The following year (1902) a group of students at Northwestern formed an "Anti-osculation Society," claiming that they were "following the teachings of Professor Algie R. Crook, the man who never was kissed." They elected him an honorary member.
In 1904 Crook got married, and inevitably this triggered a renewal of the no-kissing story. "Unkissed Man To Wed," reported the papers.
The Hutchinson News - Dec 28, 1904
Crook and his wife eventually had five children together. He died in 1930, at the age of sixty-six, and the kissing story resurfaced in his Chicago Tribune obituary (June 1, 1930). It was, after all, the achievement he was most famous for:
In 1901 he won fame by being credited with having declared he was never kissed. He denied he had made the assertion after it roused world wide comment.
However, the memorial of him in the Journal of the Mineralogical Society of America omitted the kissing story. Nor is it mentioned on the wikipedia page about him.
Posted By: Alex - Wed Dec 21, 2016 -
Comments (3)
Category: Eccentrics, Science, 1900s, Love & Romance
The Littlest Maniac
Original article here.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Dec 03, 2016 -
Comments (4)
Category: Children, 1900s, Brain Damage
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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 books such as Elephants on Acid. 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. Our banner was drawn by the legendary underground cartoonist Rick Altergott. Contact Us |