Some historical photographs survive because they are grand, beautiful, or obviously important. Others endure because they are simply strange. This section is for the odd corners of the archive: peculiar jobs, unsettling houses, unusual customs, advertising figures, eccentric inventions, comic scenes, and images that raise more questions than they answer. Curiosity is a serious historical tool. When an image looks bizarre, it often points toward forgotten assumptions about work, health, class, entertainment, technology, fear, or taste. These pieces invite readers to linger over the details and ask why the scene once made sense.
As the world wrestles with Covid, it’s worth remembering that things could always be worse. We could be dealing with an outbreak of smallpox or bubonic plague. One particularly bad outbreak of the bubonic plague, dubbed the Black Death,…
wpsso pinterest pin it image added on 2021-06-14T03:28:41+00:00 .wpsso-pinterest-pin-it-image What is a Cigar Store Indian? The cigar store Indian is a form of iconic advertising art consisting of a stylized rendition of a Native American,…
Great Chicago Fire Illustration of the fire that destroyed most of Chicago in 1871. The Great Chicago Fire destroyed most of the Chicago in the space of just under 3 days. It started some time on Sunday October 8, 1871 and raged until…
Every once in a while I stumble across an obscure historical by way that makes me wonder just how different the world might have been if only events had come together just a little bit differently. In the 1930s, the Hindenburg and other…
