Some weirdness from the world of In Vitro Fertilization. Since the 1970s, one of the tools used to gauge male fertility by IVF clinics has been the "Hamster Egg Penetration Test."
As described by the University of Utah's Health page:
The hamster egg penetration test (HEPT) (also known as the sperm penetration assay) is the most accurate test that predicts whether your sperm will be able to fertilize an egg. It can also predict whether lab techniques can improve your sperm’s ability to fertilize an egg.
During a hamster egg penetration test, a lab analyst will evaluate your sperm samples using techniques that are similar to the techniques used in IVF. The only difference is that a doctor uses eggs from a hamster. A lab analyst will chemically treat hamster eggs to see if human sperm can penetrate them.
The prepared sperm are incubated with 15 to 20 chemically treated eggs. If your sperm is working how it should, it will be able to penetrating the eggs. The lab analyst will then count how many eggs were penetrated and calculate a percentage.
In other words, they test to see if the sperm of the male donor can fertilize a hamster egg.
Wikipedia notes:
Although medical professionals often present the procedure as unable to create an embryo, these claims are not technically correct. If the human sperm succeeds in penetrating the hamster egg, a hybrid embryo is indeed created, known as a humster. These embryos are typically destroyed before they divide into two cells; were they left alone to divide, they would still be unviable.
Congratulations, you're the father of a humster.
A Polystyrene casket for "still borns, fetals, and prematures" made by Filaform Co.
I think it was sold from the 1960s until around the 1990s.
The ad below appeared in the trade journal
American Funeral Director, but I'm not sure when. I found it reproduced in a Czech-language booklet,
Funebracka Romance (Funeral Romance), by Radovan Kratky.

image source: eBay
This doesn't look safe.
Patent No. 2,035,210 granted to Elizar Zinner of Germany.

Popular Science - May 1938
Make sure your food has been humanised...

Daily Telegraph - Jan 28, 1937

Post-Graduate Medical Journal - June 1935
Concrete uses sand, and this is a problem due to a growing shortage of sand. However, Siswanti Zuraida, a researcher at the University of Kitakyushu in Japan, has proposed that cleaned and shredded diapers can be used in concrete as a sand replacement:
To make the first prototype, Zuraida reused diapers from her own young children. The team washed, sterilised and dried the diapers, before shredding and mixing them with different amounts of other materials, such as gravel or sand. This served as the aggregate that the team mixed with Portland cement and water to create concrete.
More info:
New Scientist
In medical literature, the "anomaly that wouldn't go away" refers to a finding published in 1978 by a group of Welsh doctors (Cochrane, St Leger, and Moore). They had set out to examine the relationship between health services and mortality in the major developed countries, but in doing so they came across a correlation that surprised them — the more doctors there were per capita, the higher was the rate of infant mortality.
The correlation wasn't a weak one. In fact, for infant mortality it was the strongest correlation in their study. The number of doctors per capita seemed to have a stronger negative impact on infant mortality than did the level of cigarette or alcohol consumption in the population.
Obviously the researchers found the correlation unsettling since, ideally, more doctors should result in fewer, not more, infants dying.
So why would more doctors correlate with higher infant mortality? The three doctors did their best to figure this out:
As the above passage indicates, they didn't think it was plausible that doctors themselves were somehow responsible for the elevated infant mortality, but nor could they come up with a satisfactory explanation for the correlation. So they called it
"the anomaly that wouldn't go away."
I'm not sure if the correlation still holds true. I believe it still did about twenty years ago. Unfortunately much of the relevant literature is locked behind paywalls.
Over the years there have been quite a few attempts to explain the anomaly. I've listed two below. Again, I'm not sure if one has been accepted as THE explanation. So the anomaly may still persist.
C Buck & V Bacsi, "The doctor anomaly," Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 1979, 33:307.
It occurred to us that some of the countries richly endowed with physicians may obtain their large supplies by having bigger medical schools, larger classes, and thus less individual instruction of the medical student. The consequence could be a poorer standard of medical practice, the influence of which would be evident in the mortality of the younger age groups where the outcome of disease is most susceptible to the physician's skill.
F.W. Young, "An explanation of the persistent doctor-mortality association," Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 2001, 55:80-84.
The explanation proposed here is that, as compared with other regions, the expectation of opportunities in the growing industrial cities initially attracts an over supply of doctors. Once in practice, doctors in new regions enjoy fewer economies of scale, which means that they are more numerous as compared with the mature regions. These same industrialising cities attract rural immigrants whose health habits and supports break down in the context of city life. Thus, the places with the most doctors also have the highest death rates, but the two variables are associated only by common location.
More info (pdf):
Cochrane, Leger, & Moore, "Health service 'input' and mortality 'output' in developed countries."
Skina Babe, produced by Mochida Pharmaceutical Co., has been a popular brand of baby bath oil in Japan for decades. Mochida trademarked the name in the U.S. However, I don't believe it ever tried to introduce the product in an English-language market, which seems just as well.
Incidentally, Mochida also sells "Skina Fukifuki," which is a skin cleanser for senior citizens.
More info:
mochida.co.jp
1939: Having filed for divorce from her husband, Mrs. Virginia Cleary announced that she was seeking a "perfect specimen of manhood" in order to father a "test tube" baby with her. Never mind that the technology for this didn't exist, and wouldn't for another four decades.
She consulted with a doctor to determine what qualities the father of her "eugenic baby" would need to have:
- Between 28 and 32 years of age;
- Athletic in type, preferably light-haired;
- Unmarried, good habits, moderate in smoking and drinking;
- Strong, well-formed features;
- Strong personality, good ancestral background;
- Weight between 160 and 175 pounds.

San Francisco Examiner - Apr 26, 1939
Inspired by the example of Mrs. Cleary, Jean Gordon came forward and announced that she too wanted to mother a "test tube baby."

Des Moines Tribune - Apr 28, 1939