This underground bomb shelter from the Cold War era is super creepy to see now.
Did you know some flights used to hand out cigarettes with your in-flight meal? This pack is from the '50s.
These 1930s NYC apartment listings for $4 a week and up made me sad. That's about $74 a week today, accounting for inflation, BTW. Even $25 a week is under $500 a month. For context, I currently live in Manhattan with a roommate, and my rent is about $2k...just for my room, not the whole apartment. Electricity and heat are not included.
This list of bands banned from being played on Soviet radio in the '80s — along with the reason why — is basically a list of the best bands from the '80s.
This teacher's contract from 1923, which forbids teachers from getting married or even "keeping company with men," is honestly sad to look at. And what do they have against ice cream parlors???
TIL about the "scold's bridle," a torture device used on women who gossiped or nagged. Their use began in the 1500s and went on until the 1800s.
"Sticking with the creepy theme, this is what firefighters' masks used to look like."
"I'm obsessed with this photo of high school women from 1942 who showed up to school in pants to protest after a classmate was suspended for wearing pants."
"This old report card from 1926 gives a glimpse into what it was like to be a student back then. Check out the "bookkeeping" and "homemaking" classes."
"This old ad advertising beer to children did notttt age well."
"I didn't even know they had sex toys in 1933, so these ads for pretty frightening-looking sex toys are absolutely wild to see."
"And these drawings from a 1970s book are wildly sexist."
"This note about clickbait from the 1980s is a little weird to see now, considering what happened with the internet."
"I bet you didn't know that Henry Ford was an anti-Semite who inspired Hitler himself. Here, you can see him receiving the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, a Nazi award."
"These suitcases of people who were sent to concentration camps are so, so sad to see. Many of these people never left those camps, and those who did had lost everything."
"It's pretty metal to me that elephants once had armor. This model from 1500s India is incomplete yet is still the largest existing suit of animal armor."
"This video of Oppenheimer talking about the atomic bomb is kind of depressing to see, TBH, especially if you've seen Oppenheimer."
"This is what the very first Legos looked like. Lego actually started with wooden toys and didn't build their signature bricks until 1949."
"Did you know Sony's been around since the 1940s and that their first product was an electric rice cooker?"
"This illustrated version of Elisha Otis introducing his invention, the first safe passenger elevator, in the 1850s shows the elevator has changed a lot over the years."
"Crayola crayons also used to look very different."
"Old calculators also used to look pretty cool."
"This horse-drawn hearse from the 1800s is making me wish we still used horses and carriages."
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Like student debt and medical debt and spending most of their money on rent. Those young generations, am I right?
#30 She was dreaming if she wanted a man in good financial position. There’s only one reason for a middle aged man to date a 106 year old.
#8 I knew a guy whose mother - a respected attorney - was thrown out of court for wearing slacks in court. She later became DA for the city, which at the time was the 3rd largest in the US. (btw: 'pants' was still probably not as common a term; they were more likely called slacks for women or trousers for men. To this day, 'pants' in much of the English-speaking world refers to underwear, ie panties)
#9 Home Economics was required into the 70s until the women's libbers complained it was sexist; so it was eventually dropped. 50 years later - on these very boards - women (and men, apparently) now complain that they get no training at things such as budgeting, etc. You asked for it; you got it. Now go cry about not being able to cook for yourself cost-effectively.
#11 Without question the most incredible item on this list. I don't mean the sex toys. I mean the idiot poster saying 'I didn't know they had sex toys in the 30s'. Wtf. Do you children think you invented sex?
#13 So I guess you kids invented misleading titles, too. You think click bait is where misleading titles started? That example of a supposed cancer cure is the perfect example. As old as time itself.
#14 Ford was a horrible anti-semite. He did eventually change his views, to the point of taking steps to cease publication of his anti-semitic writings. His apologies, which he made in the late 20s well before WWII, were received surprisingly well by the Jewish population, as evidenced by the overwhelmingly positive letters received from Jewish people. After the war, when shown film of the concentration camps, he suffered a stroke which eventually killed him. However, the damage had been done, and couldn't be undone. I visited Dachau as a teenager on an exchange program in high school. 50 year later, it is still numbing. ...btw: in the 90s, when Rush Limbaugh was at the height of his popularity, and when Fox news was emerging, I told people we were going to have our Hitler. I knew this because i talked to camp survivors who said that their oppression started with two things: jokes - such as the 'jokes' told by Limbaugh, and propaganda being disseminated as 'news', like on Fox. And here we are 30 years later; we have our Hitler.