History sure has its fair share of mysteries! Every time we discover something from the past, it is just a scratch on the surface. When you hear the word ‘History’, the first thing that probably comes to your head is significant figures, pivotal events, and influential movements that have shaped our world. It is common to think of history as we know it today.
However, this conventional view of history often neglects the smaller, less prominent moments that don’t fit neatly into a timeline or a grand narrative. These unremarkable, eccentric, and occasionally bizarre remnants of the past may not have had a lasting impact on history or altered its path, but their oddity and unpredictable nature can still fascinate and amuse us.
Let’s explore some of the moments in history that uncover the hidden stories that lie beneath the surface of history. You can gain a deeper appreciation for the complexity, diversity, and richness of human experience throughout the ages by delving into the oddities, curiosities, and trivia of the past. These are some of the strangest photos ever
1. KKK on the Wheel
In April 1926, many members of the Ku Klux Klan in Caon City, Colorado, walked down Main Street and rode a touring carnival’s Ferris wheel for fun and games. There, the carnival owner made them pose for a picture, and the next day, a story about it was on the front page of the local paper.
At the time, the Klan was the most popular group in America, and it often did its business in the open with the government’s permission. People have even seen the kids of Klan members in the area write “KKK” on their school uniforms and call themselves the Ku Klux Kids.
2. In Hextable, England, in 1938, not long before World War II began, a woman tries out a stroller that was made to be safe from gas attacks.
3. Adolf Hitler in lederhosen.
Hitler had this picture and a few others banned because he thought they undermined his dignity. In 1945, an Allied soldier found copies of the photos in a German house. This brought the photos back into the public eye.
4. In London, mothers kept their babies in cages outside their windows for a brief period in the 1930s so they could get fresh air. Surprisingly, no one was ever hurt or killed.
5. In 1951, at the Beautiful Leg Contest, Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey, the participants wore pillowcases on their heads so the judges can only see their legs.
6. In Montreal in 1939, women wear plastic headgear to protect themselves from snowstorms.
7. On the afternoon of May 6, 1937, a few hours before its famous, fiery crash in Manchester Township, New Jersey, the German airship Hindenburg flies over New York City.
8. Beach Policeman
In 1922 in Washington, D.C., Bill Norton, a beach policeman, measures the distance between a woman’s knee and the bottom of her swimsuit to make sure that the distance is not too much and make sure that it follows the rules of the time.
9. During a raid on an illegal distillery in 1929, Prohibition agents found alcohol that is pouring out of the windows of a storefront in Detroit.
10. A pile of American bison skulls sits at an unspecified location, waiting to be ground down into fertilizer, circa the mid-1870s.
11. A man wears an early version of roller skates powered with pedals and wheels, 1910.
12. Inventor Hugo Gernsback models his television goggles for LIFE magazine in 1963.
13. Marketing at its best
In the winter of 1936, a Danish clothing store owner came up with a strange but effective way to sell clothes: he hung more than 1,000 overcoats from a scaffold around his store. So many people came to see the show that the police had to be called, but he still sold every coat.
14. A French Red Cross dog wears a gas mask, 1917
15. A Mongolian woman sits trapped inside a wooden box as a form of punishment, 1913
16. Lunch with a view
On November 14, 1930, when the famous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was being built, two steelworkers were eating lunch on a girder high above New York City.
There’s no denying that each of these images is thought-provoking in its way, even if they evoke distinct feelings from viewer to viewer. Moreover, they all contribute to the complex picture that is our history.
Let us, then, hold on to the main points of the past while not forgetting history’s dangling strings. Let us recall the strange creations, obsolete practices, and unforgettable events that bring to life the past in all its wacky, happy, or sad grandeur.
