I suppose this is somewhat in our line of "Oddball Beauty Queens."
Mirabelle Muller, the 13 year old schoolgirl, rode on a white horse as 'Lady Godiva' in the Carnival Fete procession at Teddington, Middlesex. Mirabelle was asked to leave her convent school after she had been chosen as Godiva.
A lie detector used at the 1932 wedding of Harriet Berger and Vaclav Rund determined that their love was true.
Vaclav and Harriet were still together in 1940, according to the census. So, score one for the lie detector. I haven't been able to trace their marriage any later than that. Though a V.R. Rund of the correct location and birth year died in 1989.
(Some media sources listed the bridegroom's name as Vaclaw Hund, but I think 'Rund' was his correct name, given the census data.)
Because she had been sneezing every few minutes since Oct. 9, Mary Margaret Cleer, 13, daughter of a Fort Myer, Va. gasoline station attendant, last week held the attention of a great many curious laymen and puzzled doctors. No one knew what caused the prolonged sneezing fit which had racked the child to skin & bones and put a constant, haggard sneer on her face.
To see if allergy to some substance caused the sneezing, Washington doctors scratched her skin some 80 times, rubbed into the scratches hay pollen, flower pollen, pulverized cat fur, dog hair, house dust, food extracts, dozens of substances.
Skin tests failed to reveal any specific allergy. A Washington doctor cut out the adolescent's tonsils, with no effect on the sneezing. Other specialists could find nothing unusual in her lungs or nervous system.
Lay cures for sneezing which Mary Cleer was urged to try included wearing a "magnetic" letter pinned to her night dress, looking down the bridge of her nose at pieces of bright silk held close to the tip, clipping an electrified wire to her nose and toes, getting tattooed, taking snuff.
Last week when Mary Cleer went to Johns Hopkins Hospital, the great medical faculty there had never before treated or even seen a girl who sneezed so persistently. Johns Hopkins specialists began a new series of tests. A psychiatrist examined the girl and summoned her parents to analyze their mental and emotional makeups. Mary underwent fluoroscopy, blood testing, other examinations. A gynecologist also took her in charge, for the nasal and genital tissues are histologically related. The mucous membranes of the nose swell during sexual excitement. This well-known phenomenon gives rise to a theory that the noses of many little girls become sensitive as they turn into young womanhood, and that this makes such girls sniff, lisp or pamper their noses in an apparently affected manner, and that this overture to womanhood causes an occasional girl to sneeze uncontrollably. That, a gynecologist might guess, was the trouble with Mary Cleer, 13.
Apparently the sneezing eventually stopped of its own accord. No one ever figured out what the cause was.
Decatur Daily Review - Dec 3, 1936
(left) Alexandria Town Talk - Oct 27, 1936
(right) Daily Clintonian - Dec 8, 1936
This seems to have been a game at the famous 1939 World's Fair. I find this partial description: "Termed 'De-Bunk-Her,' it consists of two beds, on each of which a lovely lady lies, with a target between. For a quarter the participant gets ten throws at the target..."
Plennie Wingo walked around the world backwards in 1931, hoping the stunt would make him money. He later described the journey in his book Around the World Backwards.
And in 1976, when he was 81, he reprised the stunt by walking backwards from San Francisco to Santa Monica.
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.