This new set of old-timey photographs proves that we’ve always been weird. Yeah, believe it or not, the past seemed even more bizarre than the crazy world we’re living in today. Just take a look.
1. A police officer judges an ankle competition in London (1930)
2. A professional “rat catcher” showing off his kill. Rat catchers would scour the sewers of Europe and receive money for each rat they killed (1904)
3. Women painting their legs to make it appear that they were wearing stockings (1942)
4. The day Sweden switched which side of the road they drive on (1967)
5. Members of the Seattle Tubing Society relax on a warm afternoon (1953)
6. A maintenance crew loads 5 megabytes of memory into a Pan am Aircraft (1956)
7. A man testing a prototype football helmet (1912)
8. Batman on elephant (1967)
9. Nazis singing outside of Jewish art shops to encourage Germans to boycott the shops (1933)
10. “People Scooper” for cars (1920s)
11. A “Punt Gun” which was used to hunt waterfowl – it was banned for being too effective (1800s)
12. A brewery in England delivering kegs of beer on Spitfires to troops fighting in Normandy June 1944
13. War orphaned Vietnamese babies are flown to LAX (April 12, 1975)
14. Alfred Hitchcock serving tea to the MGM Lion (1957)
15. Exercise machine designed to “roll the fat” out of legs (1936)
16. Salvador Dali walking his pet anteater (1969)
17. Women box on a rooftop (1938)
18. Women in “wooden bathing suits” designed to make you more buoyant (1929)
19. An alien mugshot, part of a 1958 hoax in Bad Axe, Michigan
20. A Berlin boy selling lemonade with a portable lemonade dispenser (1931)
21. United States Border Patrol trying to drag a fugitive across the US border in order to keep him from escaping to Mexico (1920)
22. An overhead view of New York showing that everyone wore a hat (1939)
23. Japanese women cover their faces in shame in a Tokyo courtroom.
24. The Dynasphere was a monowheel electric vehicle which could go up to 25 miles per hour (1932)
25. Russian soldiers feed polar bears from their tank (1950)
26. A German soldier firing a gun from the back of his horse (1939)
27. A woman waits for the hoops of her crinoline to be completed by a London dress shop (1860)
28. Pedal skates (1910)
29. Kids playing with stacks of German money (1922)
30. Portable TV Concept (1967)
31. Parisians navigate flood waters by walking across rows of chairs (1924)
32. A woman wearing a cape designed to block harmful UV rays (1946)
33. World War I “Sound Finders” used to detect which direction enemy planes were approaching (c. 1914 – 1918)
34. A nurse applying UV light to babies (1927)
35. Belgian troops stand with their dog drawn cannons on their way to the Western Front (1914)
36. Participants of a “Miss Lovely Eyes” contest held in Florida (1930)
37. An advertisement for an anti-malaria drug (1941)
38. An “icebox” facial beauty treatment (1966)
39. A masked Mickey Mouse Club meeting (1930s)
40. Smuggling beer during prohibition sometime between 1920 and 1933
41. Actors recording an episode of the “Gang Busters” crime radio show (1934)
