Category:
1920s

The Most Useful Mayonnaise

How useful is your mayonnaise? Not as useful as Durkee's!

San Francisco Examiner - Aug 21, 1927



San Francisco Examiner - July 3, 1927

Posted By: Alex - Thu Mar 05, 2020 - Comments (5)
Category: Food, Mayonnaise, Advertising, 1920s

Whose fault is it when your husband is cross at breakfast?

Answer (according to 1920's ad men): It's the wife's fault for serving him coffee or tea.

Strange, because I'm pretty crabby in the morning if I don't have coffee.

The Helena Star - Oct 6, 1921

Posted By: Alex - Fri Feb 28, 2020 - Comments (4)
Category: Advertising, Husbands, Wives, 1920s

Airplane Hat

Created by Gilbert Myers of Boise, Idaho. He was evidently worried that someone might steal his idea because, in 1929, he patented it. From the patent:

an important object of this invention is to provide a novelty hat in the form of a simulated air plane intended to be worn during festivals, parades, dances, expositions lawn parties and the like especially when aviation is the subject of the celebration...

Use of a number of novelty hats constructed as herein disclosed has demonstrated that the hat enjoys the favor of adults as well as children and may be applied to heads of various sizes in a highly convenient and expeditious manner and will remain firmly in place, all without exerting an objectionable pressure on the head.



The picture below shows the airplane hat being worn. (The accompanying article identified it as Myers's hat).

Minneapolis Star Tribune - Feb 2, 1930



These other photos, of actress Alice White, I'm not so sure about. It looks a lot like his hat. If it isn't, someone ignored his patent.



source: Flickr



Battle Creek Enquirer - Jan 14, 1930

Posted By: Alex - Sun Feb 23, 2020 - Comments (2)
Category: Patents, Air Travel and Airlines, Headgear, 1920s

Unauthorized Dwellings 12

Once Manhattan was home to squatters. Go to article link for readable text.



Article source.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Feb 20, 2020 - Comments (2)
Category: Eccentrics, Urban Life, Unauthorized Dwellings, 1920s, Nostalgia

Mystery Illustration 92

What horrible tragedy is causing this houseguest to run away in so perilous and dramatic a manner?

The answer is here.

Or after the jump.



More in extended >>

Posted By: Paul - Mon Feb 03, 2020 - Comments (2)
Category: Domestic, 1920s

Follies of the Madmen #463

The most potent cosmic force in the multiverse approves of this floor polish.

Source.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Jan 28, 2020 - Comments (0)
Category: Anthropomorphism, Business, Advertising, Domestic, 1920s

The boy who was trained to be an astronaut

Jeanne Granveaud wanted her six-year-old son Paul to be an astronaut who would fly to the moon. So she began training him for this role. What made this unusual is that she came up with this plan back in the 1920s.



Some details about little Paul's training from the San Francisco Examiner (Aug 28, 1927):

The body of Baby Paul will be trained by exercises and food and careful scientific supervision to withstand the enormous strains of the starting of that wonderful voyage. He will be accustomed to breathe as little air as possible; to live in a rarified atmosphere or to endure the close confinement of the moon projectile.

So far as the hardships of a moon voyage can be foreseen, young Paul will be seasoned to them in advance. His scientific training will include the parts of astronomy which he must learn in order to navigate his queer craft when it gets well out in space. Every fact that terrestrial scientists can learn about the moon will be written down, not in any book for Paul to take along and read, but in a book which he cannot forget or leave behind. These facts will be poured into his brain. Better than an ordinary child knows the alphabet or the multiplication tables, Baby Paul Granveaud will learn to know each scrap of fact about the moon that the astronomers of the world can supply.

The mother's plan seemed incredibly eccentric to people in the 1920s, but in hindsight, her timing was pretty good. Paul was born in 1921, and Alan Shepard, who went to the moon in 1971, was born just two years later, in 1923. So it wouldn't have been impossible for Paul to have grown up to become a lunar astronaut. If only he had been born in America rather than France.

Edmonton Journal - Nov 12, 1927

Posted By: Alex - Mon Jan 13, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: Spaceflight, Astronautics, and Astronomy, 1920s

The Zone of Veracity


From the San Francisco Examiner - June 5, 1927:

Science has devoted considerable thought and experimentation in the hope of devising a reliable lie detector, and some interesting results have been announced in various directions.

The latest researches have been made known by Dr. Boris Orlov, a Russian psychologist, now living in Paris. Professor Orlov asserts that modern fashions, by exposing women’s necks, have incidentally exposed their minds. When a woman is not telling the truth, he insists, she will blush in the area just below the breast bone.

Dr. Orlov calls this telltale area the “zone of veracity,” and his book, “La Pseudologie Humaine Normale et Anormale,” offers a number of other interesting tips for the casual detection of untruthfulness. This “zone of veracity,” Dr. Orlov says, is a sort of window through which certain well-disguised feminine mental processes may be seen…

“When a woman lies,” Dr. Orlov continues, “there is inevitably a nervous tension inside her. During the mental stress of lying, this tension is communicated to the vasomotor nerves which control the arteries and capillaries in the skin.

“Blushing in any part of the body is produced by an increased flow of blood into the capillary vessels serving the parts where the blush extends. The area affected is not only reddened, but there is a perceptible increase of heat there.

“The interaction between mind and body is close. A nerve filament from the sympathetic system lies along the sheath of and parallel with each artery and capillary, controlling the expansion and contraction of the muscular coat of the vessel. This is the vasomotor nerve. The mental agitation produced by lying causes temporary vasomotor paralysis and an ensuing rush of blood into the capillary vessels of the skin, which we call blushing.

“A self-controlled deceiver can inhibit blushing in the face. But the feminine fibber’s throat, her upper thoracic area, will visibly palpitate and redden. A throbbing or fluttering will be seen in the area about the breast bone. The blushing will usually cover a space two to three inches in diameter. In many cases, this section of the throat or bosom will redden though not a trace of a blush will color the cheek.”

Posted By: Alex - Thu Jan 09, 2020 - Comments (3)
Category: Lies, Dishonesty and Cheating, Psychology, 1920s

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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.

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