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Category / Obscure history

All Aboard the Incredible Flying Yacht, circa 1950

They don’t call it the ‘Golden Age of Travel’ for nothing. If you thought you were having early symptoms of the pre-summer travel bug, this will surely finish you off. Found deep within LIFE magazine’s archives, introducing “the flying yacht” … Hold the phone! A flying yacht in 1950?! Or an amphibious airplane, depending on…

That Time Harvard and Yale Took Naked Photos of All Their Freshmen Students

Somewhere out there is a naked photograph of Hillary Clinton… Between the 1940s and the 1970s, several ivy league colleges had a very strange requirement for all their incoming freshmen students. Harvard, Yale, Wellesley College, Vassar as well as Brown University, were among the elite American colleges that asked all the young men and women…

The 1970s Political Activist Who Invented Penis Pants

Introducing Eldridge Clever, Presidential candidate, writer, political activist, a prominent early leader of the Black Panthers, oh and inventor of the penis pants. The fashion statement the world never asked for, solved all sorts of problems according to their late inventor, Eldridge Cleaver, such as ‘fig-leaf mentality’… “Clothing is an extension of the fig leaf –…

Ladies’ Smoker Night, 1941

I think I need to step up my ladies’ night game– these gals I found filed away in the Life archives are putting us to shame! In June 1941, Life magazine’s photographer Nina Leen attended a women’s “smoker”, the term usually reserved for a men-only social gathering. The concept flabbergasted local menfolk in Milford, Connecticut, who were strictly uninvited. The…

Inside the Paris Brothels of the Belle Époque

Behind the number 12, rue Chabanais, a typical building on a typical back street not far from the Musée du Louvre in Paris, used to be one of the most notorious and prestigious bordellos of the golden era. Today, it’s an apartment building, but just across the road at number 11, an inconspicuous little boutique…

All Aboard the 1970s Sex Raft Experiment: the Best Reality TV Show That Never Was

Five men, six women and one 101-day, sex-starved ocean adventure. Has a catchy ring to it, no? “It was a fabulous adventure story,” said Marcus Lindeen, director of a 2018 documentary called The Raft that chronicles 1973’s “Acali Experiment,” in which an eclectic group set sail to find out if the best– or worst– of humankind rears its…

The Bittersweet Story of the World’s First Motel

It’s as American as Apple Pie in all its neon-lit glory, evoking our collective cultural memory of 1950s road-tripping, film noir fugitive hideouts and the golden age of kitsch. The motel is as much a part of the American open road as the gas station and the roadside diner, an indispensable amenity to the roving motorist; the…

How a Mechanical Chess-Playing Turk gave Birth to the AI Debate 250 Years Ago

As we traverse the world of modern digital technology from smart phones to artificial intelligence, the game of chess still captivates and challenges people the world over. Chess, it seems, has thrived due to the advancement in connectivity. But 200 years earlier, before this electronic wizardry, there was an automated, mechanical marvel that would transfix…

A Boat Trip through the Paris Sewer

Forget boat rides down the Seine, if you were a tourist in Paris in the 19th and early 20th century, the subterranean sewers were the hot ticket. In an 1869 travel guide to the city of light “for the English and American Traveller”, Paris’ new system of sewers came highly recommended in the sightseeing section. “Passing over the…

The Louvre’s Secret Apartments

The Louvre; or, as we’ve prefer to call it, Paris’ most exhaustingly gorgeous tourist trap. In the MessyNessy guide, Don’t Be a Tourist in Paris, there’s even a chapter called, “Anything but the Louvre” that steers folks away from its selfie-stick jungles, and into the arms of more overlooked museums in the city. But this weekend, we decided to pay…

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