Category:
1940s

Miracle Face-Bra

"the newest way to make lastex yarn work for you"

Radio and Television Mirror - July 1948

Posted By: Alex - Sun Mar 17, 2024 - Comments (1)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Advertising, 1940s

Norma and Normman

In the summer of 1945, the Cleveland Health Museum put a statue of "Norma" on display. Norma was said to be the "norm or average American woman of 18 to 20 years of age." Accompanying her was a statue of Normman, her equally average brother. The two statues had been sculpted by Abram Belskie, based on data gathered by Dr. Robert L. Dickinson.

The statues were celebrated at the time but seem like oddities now because a) their idea of 'average' didn't include any minorities, and b) they seem to represent a mid-20th-century obsession with being average or normal.

As the saying goes, the real weirdos are those who think they're normal.





Natural History magazine - June 1945



More details from The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World that Values Sameness by Todd Rose:

The Cleveland Plain Dealer announced on its front page a contest co-sponsored with the Cleveland Health Museum and in association with the Academy of Medicine of Cleveland, the School of Medicine and the Cleveland Board of Education. Winners of the contest would get $100, $50 and $25 war bonds, and 10 additional lucky women would get $10 worth of war stamps. The contest? To submit body dimensions that most closely matched the typical woman, "Norma," as represented by a statue on display at the Cleveland Health Museum. . .

In addition to displaying the sculpture, the Cleveland Health Museum began selling miniature reproductions of Norma, promoting her as the "Ideal Girl," launching a Norma craze. A notable physical anthropologist argued that Norma's physique was "a kind of perfection of bodily form," artists proclaimed her beauty an "excellent standard" and physical education instructors used her as a model for how young women should look, suggesting exercise based on a student's deviation from the ideal. A preacher even gave a sermon on her presumably normal religious beliefs. By the time the craze had peaked, Norma was featured in Time magazine, in newspaper cartoons, and on an episode of a CBS documentary series, This American Look, where her dimensions were read aloud so the audience could find out if they, too, had a normal body.

On Nov. 23, 1945, the Plain Dealer announced its winner, a slim brunette theatre cashier named Martha Skidmore. The newspaper reported that Skidmore liked to dance, swim and bowl — in other words, that her tastes were as pleasingly normal as her figure, which was held up as the paragon of the female form.

Martha Skidmore, "Norma" Contest Winner. Cleveland Plain Dealer - Sep 23, 1945

Posted By: Alex - Sun Mar 03, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Statues and Monuments, 1940s

Mabel the Lush



The artist.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Feb 05, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Addictions, Alcohol, Music, 1940s

“Tomorrow’s bombs will destroy fires”

Unfortunately, Seagram's got this prediction totally wrong. Forest fires are now a far bigger problem than they were in the 1940s.

Newsweek - Aug 14, 1944

Posted By: Alex - Sat Feb 03, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: 1940s, Yesterday’s Tomorrows

Ziegfeld Coin Test

Life - Dec 13, 1948

Posted By: Alex - Wed Dec 27, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Money, ShowBiz, 1940s

Miracle at Syracuse, NY

Not a "Christmas Miracle," but we'll take what we can get.









Posted By: Paul - Fri Dec 22, 2023 - Comments (2)
Category: Crowds, Groups, Mobs and Other Mass Movements, Religion, Supernatural, Occult, Paranormal, 1940s

Raising Mt. Rainier

In 1948, Washington's Mt. Rainier was considered to be the fourth highest mountain in the U.S., behind California's Mt. Whitney and Colorado's Mt. Elbert and Mt. Massive. But the difference between Rainier and the Colorado mountains was only a few feet. So Seattle chiropractor (and mountain-climbing enthusiast) C.A. Mittun came up with a plan to build a 24-foot mound of rocks on top of Mt. Rainier, thereby leapfrogging it from fourth place into second.

However, their plan never came to fruition. A Colorado-born park superintendent stopped Mittun and his team on their way up, telling them that their plan was illegal.

None of the articles from 1948 about Mittun's plan mentioned Colorado's Mt. Harvard, which Wikipedia lists as being four-feet higher than Mt. Rainier. So sometime between 1948 and now the relative heights of the two mountains must have been adjusted, pushing Mt. Rainier further down the list. When Alaska became a state in 1959, Mt. Rainier fell far down the list to its current spot at #17.

Incidentally, Mt. Harvard has its own history of being artificially raised. In the 1960s a group of Harvard graduates put a 14-foot flagpole on its summit in order to make it the second highest point in the contiguous United States. The flagpole stayed up for about 20 years.

Santa Cruz Sentinel - Aug 13, 1948



Hanford Morning Journal - Aug 17, 1948

Posted By: Alex - Tue Dec 19, 2023 - Comments (4)
Category: Geography and Maps, Landmarks, 1940s

Gladys Sellew’s 15-cents-a-day diet

Back in the 1930s, sociologist Gladys Sellew decided to find out if it was possible to survive spending only 15 cents a day on food. I think, in today's money, that would be about $3/day.

She used herself as a test subject and, five years later, reported that not only was it possible, but she actually only spent an average of 13 cents a day on food.

She said she was going to remain on her frugal diet for the rest of her life.

Austin American Statesman - June 3, 1942



The headline below claimed that she gained weight on her diet, but in the picture above it sure doesn't look like she had any extra weight on her.

Hartford Courant - Feb 24, 1941



A typical day's meal plan:

Austin American Statesman - June 3, 1942



By way of comparison, here's a more recent version of an experiment in frugality: "Spending $5 a day on food. Is it possible?"

Posted By: Alex - Mon Dec 04, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Food, 1940s, Dieting and Weight Loss

Dial Comes to Town

Posted By: Paul - Thu Nov 30, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Family, PSA’s, Technology, Telephones, 1940s

Dog Collar with Decorative Tie

When you want to bring your dog to the office, he or she must be properly dressed in a business-like manner.

Patent here.



Posted By: Paul - Mon Nov 27, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Business, Fashion, Patents, Dogs, 1940s

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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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