Category:
1920s

Anne Carroll Moore and her Doll Nicholas

The famous children's librarian Anne Carroll Moore was wont to tote around a doll named Nicholas and make people interact with it.



She eventually wrote a whole book (300+ pages) about Nicholas: Nicholas: A Manhattan Christmas Story.

You can read the book here.

I have tried in vain to find a real photo of Nicholas. However, here is his depiction from the book.



Posted By: Paul - Tue Mar 05, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Books, Libraries, 1920s, Dolls and Stuffed Animals, Mental Health and Insanity

Special Driver Gloves for Signalling

Full patent here.



Posted By: Paul - Sat Mar 02, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Inventions, Patents, Signage, 1920s, Cars

Fatigue Vaccine

I wonder what was this "vaccine against fatigue" that scientists in the 1920s thought they had discovered. Methamphetamine perhaps? I know that the Nazis thought it was an anti-fatigue wonder drug.

More info: Robert Armstrong-Jones (wikipedia)

Nottingham Evening Post - Nov 29, 1923



Daily Mirror - Nov 30, 1923



Shreveport Times - Nov 30, 1923

Posted By: Alex - Tue Feb 20, 2024 - Comments (1)
Category: Science, Sleep and Dreams, 1920s

Konjola

Read the full story here.

It was a vegetable concoction with a high alcohol content that could be sold without prescription and gave comfort to many who could not or would not find a bootlegger to ease the strictures of Prohibition.

Konjola sold like bathtub gin in the Roaring Twenties. Gilbert and Roberta started Mosby Medicine by mixing up tubs of Konjola in their basement and bottling it themselves. By 1927, Mosby owned a factory on Reading Road in Avondale and was planning an even bigger complex up the road. Mosby bought a spectacular neon sign, 84 feet long and 32 feet high, to advertise Konjola on the central pier of the Atlantic City boardwalk.

And then it all fell apart.




Posted By: Paul - Mon Jan 29, 2024 - Comments (2)
Category: Regionalism, Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, 1920s, Alcohol

The Far-out Costumes of Dancer Nina Payne

Read her story here.

Source of advertisement.















Dancer Nina Payne (USA) Nina Payne doing exercises in the Elizabeth Arden beauty parlor, Paris (to prepare for her performance in the Folies-Bergere) - undated, probably 1925

Posted By: Paul - Sat Jan 20, 2024 - Comments (1)
Category: Eccentrics, Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies and Slackers, 1920s, Dance, Europe

They Needed a Songbird in Heaven, So God Took Caruso Away

Never a good look for God, when He selfishly abducts entertainers for Heaven's Variety Show.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Jan 02, 2024 - Comments (1)
Category: Death, Music, Religion, 1920s

National Radio Silence Day

From Wikipedia:

On August 21–23, 1924, Mars entered an opposition closer to Earth than at any time in the century before or the next 80 years. In the United States, a "National Radio Silence Day" was promoted during a 36-hour period from August 21–23, with all radios quiet for five minutes on the hour, every hour. At the United States Naval Observatory, a radio receiver was lifted 3 kilometres (1.9 miles) above the ground in a dirigible tuned to a wavelength between 8 and 9 km, using a "radio-camera" developed by Amherst College and Charles Francis Jenkins. The program was led by David Peck Todd with the military assistance of Admiral Edward W. Eberle (Chief of Naval Operations), with William F. Friedman (chief cryptographer of the United States Army), assigned to translate any potential Martian messages.

No Martian messages were received.

More info: ufopast.com



Posted By: Alex - Thu Dec 14, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Aliens, Radio, 1920s

The Psycho-Expander

Expand your inner psycho.

Popular Mechanics - June 1924

Posted By: Alex - Sat Dec 02, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Advertising, 1920s

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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, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

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