The Human Spinning Rotor or simply “The Rotor” was invented by a German scientist, Ernst Hoffmeister, and was financially supported by businessman Carl Friese. They operated a Rotor in West Germany at Oktoberfest in 1949. Hoffmeister and Friese had an a…
For hundreds of years, Sami people harnessed reindeer and strapped on Nordic skis as a way to travel across vast snowy expanses. Skijoring ("ski driving") is still popular in all Scandinavian countries. Reindeer races are still held in Tromso, Norway; I…
Nowadays you can easily listen to new songs on your smartphone using your earphones, but this wasn’t the case in the past. Many music stores in the 1950s introduced special sound-isolating booths where customers could sample new sounds without having to…
By the 1890s postcards were widely available throughout continental Europe. The postcards appealed to tourists looking for a souvenir of their travels abroad. Although travel was still largely limited to elites, it was becoming more accessible to the middl…
In 1910, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott led a privately funded expedition to become the first people to successfully reach the South Pole. The expedition was Scott's attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole, as well as carry out important s…
When an earthquake ripped through Santa Monica on March 10, 1933, the city was already in bad shape. The quiet community on the Pacific coast had prided itself in being socially elite and culturally refined, but that pride hadn’t stopped the Great Depre…
It is said that Niagara Falls has a mystic allure that gives some people the uncontrollable urge to jump in and blend into the swirling waters. Officials say that they recover an average of 20 people per year who chose Niagara Falls as the place to end …
The woman suffrage movement actually began in 1848, when a women’s rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York. The Seneca Falls meeting was not the first in support of women’s rights, but suffragists later viewed it as the meeting that launche…
Lie detector tests have become a popular cultural icon — from crime dramas to comedies to advertisements — the picture of a polygraph pen wildly gyrating on a moving chart is a readily recognized symbol. NYPD criminologist Roy Post invented his own vers…
These rare photos from the end of the 19th century capture a range of Bedouins at a time of change. As modern governments projected their power into previously ungovernable tracts of the desert, many Bedouins chose or were forced to abandon a purely nom…
Recreational cannabis smoking took on a negative connotation in the American cultural imagination when people began to associate it with Mexican immigrants arriving in the US. After the Mexican Revolution of 1910, a wave of Mexican immigrants poured int…
Ladies, this is how you land a man in 1938-style. We always find these vintage “dating tips” for single women hilarious. Just think about it: “Don’t drink too much, as a man expects you to keep your dignity all evening. Drinking may make some girls seem cle…
These pictures show what was acceptable in the 1980s at Spring Break. Mostly from Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, these show a party scene that seems alien, the kind of en masse binge-drinking you could have before the intervention of social media. T…
Blow dryers were invented in the late 19th century. The first model was created by Alexander F. “Beau” Godefroy in his salon in France in 1890. His invention was a large, seated version that consisted of a bonnet that attached to the chimney pipe of a g…
In the 19th century, there were no real institutions to regulate the advertising claims of health products. In such a climate, a popular so-called “patent medicine” market flourished. Manufacturers of these medical products often made misleading claims …
These rare color views of the capital (then known as Constantinople) of the Ottoman Empire at the close of the 19th century were produced using the Photochrom process. The technique applies layers of artificial color to a black and white image with surp…
The pattern of Influenza Outbreak of 1957 is sickeningly similar to COVID-19. A new and deadly strain of flu emerges in Asia, then spreads across the world and comes to the United States. A pandemic is declared. In 1957 the new virus was first reported …
Edwardian fashion refers to the clothing that was in style between the late 1890s and 1914 or the beginning of the Great War. Also called La Belle Epoque (the Beautiful Era), and the Gilded Age, this was a time when women's fashions took on a new opulen…
The World Health Organization has had an official and recommended method of hand-washing since 2009. It’s an 11-step process that, all done properly, takes 42.5 seconds. The WHO is following in an age-old practice — it was a doctor from Hungary, Ignaz S…
In 1969, more than 400,000 people descended on Bethel, New York, headed to a dairy farm owned by Max and Miriam Yasgur, where the Woodstock Music & Art Fair was being held. The epic event became synonymous with the counterculture movement of the 196…