Posts in category Vintage + Historical Oddities

Parker numbed their mouth with a cocaine solution before extracting a rotten tooth. The band’s blaring music distracted the patient and, should they scream, drowned out their wails.

In fact, ice cream became so important that in at least one incident, sailors took what they could as they abandoned their sinking ship!

 The Voldemort-esque parasitic twin is fearsome, but fake.

Dressed in layered skirts, sandals, pigtail braids, and bowler hats, the Fighting Cholitas perform in front of hundreds of spectators, tossing each other around with perfectly practiced maneuvers.

The reader is challenged to correctly rearrange the pages, which were printed “in an entirely haphazard and incorrect order.” There are 32 million possible combinations!

When diehard fans of 19th-century ballet dancer Marie Taglioni got their hands on a pair of her shoes, they did what any true fan would do: eat them.

The first version of this bejeweled book sunk with the Titanic, while the second was destroyed in a Blitz attack on London during World War II.

Did Jesse James die in 1882? Did he fake his own death, and live on in the guise of J. Frank Dalton (or someone else)? It was a question not even Robert Ripley could convincingly answer.

Over a span of 40 years, late novelty architecture aficionado John Margolies photographed more than 1,000 roadside attractions lining the highways of America.

Were the telegram systems really on the fritz? How did John Wilkes Booth escape the scene? Where is the derringer used in this fatal crime currently located?