Category:
Marriage

Janet Downes, Sologamy Pioneer

We’ve posted before about sologamy, which is the term for marrying yourself. Back in 2017, we described it as a growing trend. But apparently the woman who gets credit for pioneering this practice was Janet Downes of Nebraska who, on June 27, 1998, married herself. She recited her vows in front of a mirror.



Downes died in 2007. But in a post over at realdivasride.com, she recollected about her self-wedding and explained how it came to be:

In 1998 I was about to celebrate my 40th birthday. I had a wedding theme planned for my party and everyone thought I was nuts. Maybe I am a little but I got tired of seeing everything in the stores that was related to ‘40’ being in black. So I decided to poke a little fun at society because I didn’t feel old. That coupled with the fact that after 19 years of adulthood, I was finally at a place in my life where I was happy with almost every aspect of my life. I’d been married & divorce twice at that time, yet I no longer needed a man to ‘fulfill’ me. I had 3 beautiful children (Nicole, Jasmine & Eugene Jr.) and for the first time, was satisfied with my body. You know what I mean ladies? We always seem to feel that our breasts are too small or too big. Always complaining that something is wrong with our hips, butt or legs. We can always find something wrong with ourselves when we look in the mirror. One day I woke up & decided, I was happy with who I was, just the way I was. So that led me to, marrying myself. I didn’t know it at the time but that little stunt got me international fame. It seems that I was the first woman to think of it and actually carry it out. It was a beautiful wedding and I am happy with myself, even now.

Calgary Herald - June 18, 1998

Posted By: Alex - Wed May 08, 2019 - Comments (0)
Category: Marriage, 1990s, Weddings

Jerry Pulls the Strings



Imperious coffee magnate is wooed by his future son-in-law's puppets.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Apr 02, 2019 - Comments (0)
Category: Business, Advertising, Corporate Mascots, Icons and Spokesbeings, Puppets and Automatons, Coffee and other Legal Stimulants, Marriage, 1930s, Love & Romance

Unauthorized Dwellings 7

The famous author Robert Louis Stevenson spent a large part of his honeymoon squatting in an abandoned cabin.

After their marriage in San Francisco on 19 May 1880, Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson set off on an adventurous honeymoon to the Napa Valley. Stopping briefly for a night in Vallejo, the Stevenson’s then boarded a train to carry them (and their dog Chuchu) to Calistoga at the northern end of the Valley. They spent the remainder of May in Calistoga, at one of the Hot Springs Hotel cottages. Then, once joined by Fanny’s son Lloyd Osbourne, the family made their way up the grade of Mount St. Helena to the Toll House, from which they found their way to the abandoned Silverado Mine bunkhouse where they would squat until the end of July.


You can read his account of that time, THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS, here.

Or, you can visit the state park named after the writer.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Dec 18, 2018 - Comments (2)
Category: Buildings and Other Structures, Nature, Unauthorized Dwellings, Marriage, Nineteenth Century

Married to a hologram

We recently posted about a Japanese company (Gatebox) that had created a "digital wife"... a device that created a holographic companion for lonely people. Now 35-year-old Akihiko Kondo has married his hologram companion. From sde.co.ke:

Since March, Kondo has been living with a moving, talking hologram of Miku that floats in a ShSh280,000 ( $2,800) desktop device.
Gatebox, the company that produces the hologram device has issued a "marriage certificate," which certifies that a human and a virtual character have wed "beyond dimensions".
The singer welcomes Kndo home every evening and tells him when it is time for bed. He even sleeps with a doll of the hologram beside him.

I'd bet money that the 'marriage' is a publicity stunt engineered by Gatebox.

Posted By: Alex - Sun Nov 18, 2018 - Comments (4)
Category: AI, Robots and Other Automatons, Marriage, Love & Romance

Left wife, lived in forest for 10 years

Malcolm Applegate claims that he got fed up with his wife's nagging. So he left and went into hiding in a thick woodland outside of London for ten years.

Applegate has since emerged from the woodland, reconnected with his wife, and he says, "We now have a great relationship again."

It reminds me of that story of the Iranian guy who's wife left him, so he lived half-naked in a cave for 30 years.

It also supports my theory that without their wives many men would revert to a stone-age-type existence.

More info: NZ Herald

Malcolm Applegate

Posted By: Alex - Tue Oct 17, 2017 - Comments (1)
Category: Husbands, Marriage

Helpful Dead Wife






Original article here.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Jun 02, 2017 - Comments (3)
Category: Crime, Death, Superstition, Marriage, 1900s

Left by wife, becomes caveman

There's two ways to read this. Either this guy really took the break-up hard. Or, after his wife left him, he decided to live exactly as he wanted, and he was the happiest man in the world.

I suspect there's a lot of married men who would revert to a caveman-like existence (perhaps to a less extreme degree) without the influence of their wives.

The Deseret News noted that he was known only as "Darab." But otherwise there's no more info to be found about this mysterious, wifeless hermit.

Philadelphia Daily News - Oct 24, 1996

Posted By: Alex - Tue May 02, 2017 - Comments (2)
Category: Divorce, Marriage, 1990s

Allergic to wife

1966: After suffering from asthma for 15 years, Sigurd Lindh learned that he was allergic to his wife, Greta. He moved into a cabin 600 yards from their home, and his asthma cleared up.

It's pretty rare for spouses to be allergic to each other (as in, actually having a physical reaction to the other's presence, not just hating each other's guts). But it's doubly rare for a husband to be allergic to a wife. So Lindh was pretty unique. For whatever reason, the overwhelming majority of these spousal allergy cases involve wives allergic to their husbands. See here and here.

Detroit Free Press - June 2, 1966



Akron Beacon Journal - Sep 12, 1966

Posted By: Alex - Tue Apr 18, 2017 - Comments (1)
Category: Health, Marriage, 1960s

Accidental Marriage

The final paragraph of this article sounds like it could be the start of a novel:

Mr. and Mrs. de Leon decided several days later they no longer were in love. It was then they learned they were married.


The Canonsburg Daily Notes - Aug 30, 1952

Posted By: Alex - Sun Apr 16, 2017 - Comments (2)
Category: Marriage, 1950s

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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.

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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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