90 years ago, the US was already overrun with 40 million cars (ompare that to the 276 million registered vehicles today). Many of those were on their last leg. Chicago car dealers promoted Used Car Week by stacking jalopies nearly 50 feet high on an island in Lake Michigan, where they torched them. 100,000 folks gathered to watch the flames of 200 cars fill the air.
I don’t know if you’ve ever smelled one of these, but they don’t smell pleasant.
I got a new yearbook today, y’all. It’s a 1955 University of Miami. This shot was taken from UM’s 124 piece member band trip to El Salvador. It captures the response of El Salvadorans as the UM band helped celebrate the nation’s independence as “ambassadors of goodwill.”
This yearbook is RIPE, though, y’all. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if you can smell the stale cigarette smoke wafting off the pages of this thing. It made my pants reak, just touching my lap. I think she can smell it.
Ladies use to LOSE THEIR MINDS over Frank Sinatra back when Old Blue Eyes was a lithe young crooner. Swooning bobby-soxers did not concern themselves with invading his personal space, as you can see in this 1943 image. I can’t imagine interrupting a celebrity to ask for an autograph or a selfie; I find that incredibly tacky and self-serving. So the thought of planting a kiss on The Chairman of the Board, basically attacking his face, disturbs me.
Dept of Health & Human Services, Susan Langenhennig
1914, New Orleans. The Public Health Service, created in 1902, helped suppress an outbreak of bubonic plague by mobilizing this team of rat-catchers to eradicate the filthy beasts which spread the disease. Seems like backbreaking work to me, one that would not necessitate a hat and tie.
Per nola.com,
An army of 380 workers swept across the city to carry out the campaign. In a single week, they inspected 6,500 railcars and 4,200 buildings, fumigated 101 ships, trapped 20,000 rodents, laid nearly 300,000 poison baits and discovered 17 infected rats.
Using good scientific protocols, workers recorded data for each trapped rat, and when a laboratory analysis identified an infected specimen, its point of origin was subjected to a scorched-earth campaign of fumigation, burning, and in some cases, complete leveling.. Tactics like these went on daily, citywide, for months.
Ground Zero in the geography of rats proved to be the Stuyvesant Docks, where that first infected specimen had been found two years earlier. Here, mechanical conveyors transferred Midwestern grain among railroad cars, ships and elevators. Coupled with the warm fresh water of the nearby Mississippi River and ample nesting opportunities, the Stuyvesant elevators were a veritable rat nirvana. The campaign made them into a rat graveyard.
Susan Langenhennig, workers preparing rat poison
Death to the Black Death!
Bonus rat fun fact: Cagney never actually said, “You dirty rat.”
I Don't Get It 