Jeff Wysaski
Do some digging into the right online image archives, and it won’t take long before you find a vintage photo or two that seems a little off. Whether it’s due to old-fashioned social norms, a change in political correctness or a lack of scientific knowledge, there are plenty of old photos that may leave today’s modern world scratching their heads. Using this fact as a springboard, here are five extremely curious vintage photos:
Owls were once considered vermin on farms and in rural communities. To get rid of all that incessant hooting, Lysol came out with this product in the mid-1950s.
Here it is ladies and gentlemen – the show that single-handedly changed the definition of the word “gay” forever. As the poster indicates, this extremely controversial early 20th century production included a homosexual relationship and boasted a cast of “the world’s most beautiful men.”
Up until the early 1980s, there was a widely held belief that gravity could, for any number of reasons, suddenly stop working. This handbook, printed in 1977, was meant to help readers prepare for their inevitable departure from solid ground.
The free-love era must have certainly been a curious time to be a kid. This page comes from a small ‘progressive’ elementary school workbook published in the early 1980s. The school – started by a group of previous hippies who had since had kids – obviously didn’t last long.
Wow, we’ve sure come a long way when it comes to addressing sex and abortion. This inflammatory Maytag product may seem vulgar in this day and age, but back in the 1950s it actually sold quite well. Click image to enlarge.
——
Note: in case you couldn’t tell, none of these images are real. Original photo sources were found at two of the best repositories for vintage images: Retrospace and the Vintage Ads Community Livejournal.
If you liked this, then other humor blog posts you may like include: