Category:
1930s

Stratos Fear



A cartoon that surely must have produced many nightmares in its day. I'm certain there was much psychosexual damage done when the sexy woman revealed her true identity.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Jun 10, 2013 - Comments (3)
Category: Dreams and Nightmares, Surrealism, Science Fiction, Cartoons, 1930s

Manhattan Super Terminal

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If only this gargantuan structure had actually been built! What a different world we would have inhabited....

Original article here.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Jun 04, 2013 - Comments (6)
Category: Engineering and Construction, Urban Life, Utopias and Dystopias, Transportation, 1930s

The Six Brown Brothers



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Blackface, clownsuits and saxophones: a winning combo in any era!

Learn the whole story here.

Posted By: Paul - Sun May 05, 2013 - Comments (0)
Category: Clowns, Music, Stereotypes and Cliches, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s

Revolver Camera

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]

Posted By: Alex - Sun May 05, 2013 - Comments (3)
Category: Guns, Photography and Photographers, 1930s

The Jokes of King George VI

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."

Posted By: Alex - Sat Apr 27, 2013 - Comments (0)
Category: Humor, Jokes, Royalty, 1930s

No water for 25 years

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]





Posted By: Alex - Thu Apr 25, 2013 - Comments (14)
Category: Eccentrics, Soda, Pop, Soft Drinks and other Non-Alcoholic Beverages, 1930s, Alcohol

Skywald Comics

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The image above is the first cover from one of the more oddball comics firms of the 1970s, Skywald Publications.

You can read the whole of issue number one of Nightmare here, at the Internet Archive, which also features several other full comics from Skywald.


Posted By: Paul - Thu Apr 25, 2013 - Comments (5)
Category: Business, Eccentrics, Comics, 1930s

Fritz von Opel



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.

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Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 29, 2013 - Comments (7)
Category: Inventions, War, Space Travel, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, Europe, Cars

The Coal Mining Daughter

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I would have been proud to shake Ida Mae Stull's hand--except that she might have crushed mine!

Original article here.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 07, 2013 - Comments (7)
Category: Feminism, Law, 1930s, Women, Mining

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Who We Are
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.

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