‘Weird History’ Is An Account That Shares Interesting, Odd, And Funny Things That Happened Throughout History (50 New Pics)
They say truth is stranger than fiction, and they’re not wrong. We often look for entertainment on the big screen or media only to forget the biggest amusement park of wonder, exploration and ingenuity called human history.
So today, we are taking a look into the weird, bizarre and simply incredible world of the past thanks to the Twitter page “Weird History.” Boasting 186.4K followers, the account shares historical peculiarities not everyone knows today.
From pin boys lining up the bowling pins before automated machines to the fact that Harvard had three campus breweries, to a photograph of a boy experiencing television for the first time in 1948, these are the moments worthy of books.
Scroll down through the most peculiar collection of historical photos below, upvote your favorite ones and be sure to check out our previous curiosity-inducing posts about history in photos here and here.
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Although we most often imagine old photographs as black and white, the history of applying color to photographs is almost as old as photography itself. But up until the mid-1940s, the vast majority of all photographs were black and white due to limitations in modern techniques and technologies.
The only way to make a color photograph was to color it by hand, which was a meticulous and lengthy procedure. This was naturally a very time-consuming process and only very few people were able to afford such a process and artifact, therefore we don’t see many colored photographs left from the earlier photography period.
These days, many historical photographs are colored thanks to the advanced technologies. There are numerous artificial intelligence-powered apps available for everyday users, and then there are professional photography renovators and colorists who work meticulously to bring the old photographs back to life.
According to Lisa Yaszek, a Regents Professor of Science Fiction Studies at Georgia Tech where she researches and teaches science fiction as a global language crossing centuries, continents, and cultures, colorizing historical photos appeals to us as modern people because we’ve grown up surrounded by colored images.
“In particular, we’re often attracted to historical photos that have been colorized because that process allows us to see details we might not notice otherwise—the subtle pattern of someone’s clothing, the scattering of freckles on another person’s face and arms,” she explained.
Is it disrespectful to say she looks like kind of a badass? Since I actually find that trait rather admirable?
No, she really was a badass! You should check out her story (not just the Wikipedia version) She was known to be a woman you didn't want to mess with (but was also giving & kind), and she was reliable as the sun. She was not afraid to defend her mail coach against theives and bandits along her route, and didn't let any kind of weather stop her. I was watching a documentary a while back, and her story was part of it. There's a story that says she was once attacked by bandits pretty badly(I think she won but was hurt), and when she woke up she found herself surrounded by wolves. She not only fought off the wolves in her condition, but then finished her route. Not sure how much of that is true and how much was legend, but I think badass works.
Load More Replies..."which was far more da dangerous job back in 1895" you say that as she's holding a gun the length and size of both of my arms, yeah no I believe you xD
I could be mistaken but I believe she is holdng a Henry Golden Boy repeating rifle. The saying was "Load it once in the morning and you can shoot all day." Definitely not a woman to trifle with.
Golden Boy has a muzzle-loading tubular magazine instead of having a side gate on the receiver. Also the Golden Boy is a modern model, lol. The original Henry Rifle was designed for Winchester (patented by Henry), and Henry Repeating Arms only became a thing as its own company pretty recently.
Load More Replies...Teddy Roosevelt redirected a town's mail 30 miles when the female postmaster of that town was fired and refused to change it until the was rehired. And paid her salary while she had no job
"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." She nailed it. Thank you, Mary.
Very informative article https://www.history.com/news/meet-stagecoach-mary-the-daring-black-pioneer-who-protected-wild-west-stagecoaches
The professor explained that "it literally gives us a new perspective on history, fostering a greater sense of connection between ourselves as modern viewers and the historical subjects we are looking at. For instance, we might marvel that a pattern popularized in the Victorian era is fashionable again or realize that we have the exact same physical characteristics of an ancestor we never met!”
Yaszek argues that colorization can also connect us to history in other, more surprising and creative ways as well. “As a science, colorization is about finding the appropriate hues, tones, and tints to add to a grayscale photograph. This involves intensive research in archives, online, and in conference with other historical experts—all of which, of course, gives the colorist that many more connections to the historical era they are researching.”
Having said that, Yaszek noted that colorization is more than just a science; it’s an art as well. “No matter how many written documents or colored artifacts a colorizer looks at, they can never be entirely sure that they’ve exactly replicated the actual colors of the items being photographed.”
The professor continued: “As so a colorizer often combines information with instinct and data with desire to make color choices that feel both intellectually and emotionally authentic to the historical era in question.”
Moreover, the colorization of old photos reveals something more fundamental about representing memories. “It can also remind us that history is always subjective and that historical documents—including photographs—are not just objective representations of reality, but artifacts that are sometimes carefully staged and otherwise manipulated to present viewers with very specific representations of historical people, moments, and events,” Yaszek explained.
The professor reminds the viewers that colorized photography has an interpretative aspect to it and we should be aware of it. “Because colorized photos have so clearly been manipulated by artists to tell a certain story, they remind us that the process of telling history always involves a certain amount of creative interpretation,” Yaszek said.
She added that it’s okay, “because it means that we all have opportunities to contribute to ongoing conversations about history and its relations to the present and future, much as we find in Reddit and other communities devoted to exploring the past through historical photography.”
Revolutions were taking place all over Europe that year. My third great grandfather left Germany alone as a 15 year old that same year because of them.
I think it didn't quit work as they lived mostly by the coast (where submarines weren't) and they could tell the difference between friendly submarines and enemy ones.
Note: this post originally had 136 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.