WeirdVintage

Ads, illustrations, and photographs of a vintage or antiquated nature that make you just a tad bit confused/alarmed/amused.

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Cat eating corn, photo by Allan Grant in Life Magazine, 1951

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Leaning Tower of Pizza, Quincy, Massachusetts. Photo by John Margolies from his Roadside America photograph archive, 1984

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Dog playing bagpipes from the lower margins of a finely illuminated "book of hours" produced in late thirteenth-century England.

“Books of hour” are medieval Christian prayer books and are the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. They are all unique and often lavishly illustrated with various drawings…some of which were quite bizarre. There were a lot of bored monks transcribing them. This one comes from a whole set of anthropomorphic animals (scroll to the bottom)

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“The Fly-Catching Macaroni,” engraved by Whipcord, published by M. Darly, 1772

“Macaroni” was a pejorative term used to describe a fashionable man of 18th-century Britain, usually considered effeminate in nature. They were a common subject of teasing in caricatures at the time.

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Practical Combination Auto-Goggle Cap: When putting on both goggles and a cap separately is too much for you, they’ve got you covered.

(Source: McClure’s Magazine, July 1907 from my personal collection)

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“Charles Darwin” by Frederick Watty, from Cartoon Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Men of the Day, 1873

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Moulin Rouge photograph from the collection of Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing, a German-Austrian psychiatrist and early sexologist. He is famous for his book Psychopathia Sexualis: eine Klinisch-Forensische Studie, first published in 1886.

The book was intended for the use of physicians, psychiatrists and judges (and written partly in Latin in order to discourage the general public from reading it), the book explores fetishism, sadism, masochism and homosexuality, as well as nymphomania and the most taboo inclinations.

For Krafft-Ebing, any desire for sex unrelated to procreation was a deviation from the heterosexual norm, making, for example, gay sex a "perversion" of the sexual instinct.

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1) I have never heard someone make Chiclets sound so beautiful before, those “pearl-like pellets of delight”

2) So…they made their own Chiclet Palmistry Chart becauuuuse…? (Maybe they were trying to hop on the latter part of the Spiritualism and occult movement because…????)

(Source: McClure’s Magazine, July 1907 from own collection)

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An early 20th century postcard against the coercion of motherhood and promoting the usage of contraception.

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I’ll take one Human Talker from the Largest Mail Order Bird House in the World, please (Source: McClure Magazine, July 1907 from my own collection)

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From Albert A. Hoskin’s book “Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions” (1897)

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Old Gold cigarette ad, 1940s

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Dr. Dye's Voltaic Belt, 1883

(“Abuse” in this case probably meant masturbation, which Victorians often believed made men weak and sickly)

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“Illustrating Author's method of treatment of throat or vocal organs in cases of congestion, hoarseness, loss of voice, or inflammatory or painful conditions in all classes of patients, but especially in the throat affections of singers, speakers, acute or chronic colds.

With the proper current in action, press the electrode deeply in the depression above the supra-sternal notch and instruct the singer to forcibly stretch the muscle-fibres of the larynx and related organs by movements of swallowing, saying ‘ah,’ running the musical scale, etc., etc., alternated with moments of rest.”

High Frequency Electric Currents in Medicine and Dentistry, 1910

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Turners on the pommel horse by Heinrich Hamann, c. 1902

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Dyke's Beard Elixer, 1882

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“Auto Polo”—A short-lived sport thought to have been created as an advertising stunt to sell Ford Model Ts in 1911.