Postcards from the Alligator Farm

I had long suspected that these images were merely imaginative artwork, similar to tall tale postcards. Today I learnt that, in fact, they’re halftone photographs with applied colour depicting fun for all the family at the Los Angeles Alligator Farm in the early 20th century:

Originally located in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Joseph ‘Alligator Joe’ Campbell’s Alligator Farm was relocated to tourist hotspot Lincoln Heights, California in 1907. The animals were loaded onto a train and a banner was hung from the side advertising the advent of the attraction.

After paying their 25 cents admission fee, visitors could enjoy the hundreds of alligators, of various sizes and ages, that lived in the back garden - and, as the postcards show, there were opportunities to ride the reptiles. In time, the farm began to supply alligators for the movie industry and feature in such films as ‘King Solomon’s Mines,’ ‘The Adventures of Kathleen,’ Walt Disney’s ‘The Happiest Millionaire’, and numerous Tarzan films.

Most famous was an alligator called Billy. Visitors to the farm would witness Billy sliding down chutes and wrestling underwater with famed alligator wrestler George Link, and, until the 1960s, most of the alligator jaws seen in films belonged to Billy, as he would automatically open his mouth when a piece of meat was dangled above him, just out of view of the camera. Billy was one of the alligators so domesticated that his owners could put a saddle on him and give their visitors a ride. Another highlight was 250lb Galapagos tortoise, Humpy. The owners’ children would put a saddle on Humpy and Billy each and race them around the garden. Humpy would regularly stray off the path but was invariably the winner.

In it’s hey day the farm was the most complete reptile collection in the world, as various other species of snake and lizard were introduced over time, and would entertain 130,000 visitors a year. 

[Mice Chat | Iconic Muse | Image Archeology | Image Sources: 1 : 2 : 3 : 4 : 5 : 6 : 7 | More black and White photographs]

Clairvius Narcisse: Dead Man Walking

When I was at Uni this kind of thing was the focus of my dissertation and I find it absolutely fascinating:

In April, 1962,  [Clairvius Narcisse] checked himself into hospital in the town of Deschapelle in Haiti. [He] had been sick for some time, complaining of fever, body aches, and general malaise, but recently had begun coughing up blood. His condition deteriorated rapidly. Physicians noted that Narcisse suffered from digestive disorders, pulmonary edema, hypothermia, respiratory difficulties, and hypotension … his lips turned blue [and] he reported tingling sensations all over his body. Two days later his two attending physicians, one of whom was American and the other American-trained, pronounced Narcisse dead and he was buried the next day.

Eighteen years later, [his sister] was walking through the village marketplace when she was approached by someone claiming to be Clairvius Narcisse. The man identified himself by a boyhood nickname which which was known only to members of the immediate family, and he had a bizarre tale to tell…    

He said that as he was pronounced dead he felt as if his skin was on fire, with insects crawling beneath it. He heard his sister Angelina weeping and felt the sheet being pulled up over his face. Although he was unable to move or speak, he remained lucid and aware the entire time, even as his coffin was nailed shut and buried. He even had a scar which he claimed was sustained as one of the coffin nails was driven through his face. There he remained, for how long he did not know, until the coffin as opened by the bokor (sorcerer) and his henchmen. He was beaten into submission, bound, gagged, and spirited away to a sugar plantation that was to be his home for the next two years.    

On the plantation, Narcisse and other zombies labored from sunup to sunset, pausing for only one meal a day. He would later report that he passed his time there in a dream-like state, devoid of will or volition, with events unfolding before him as if in slow motion. They were given a paste made from datura which at certain doses has a hallucinogenic effect and can cause memory loss. When the boker was killed, and the regular doses of the hallucinogen stopped, the slaves were able to regain their senses and escape.    

Two scientists investigating Narcisse’s claims have concluded that Narcisse was initially poisoned by a dose of a chemical mixture containing tetrodotoxin (pufferfish venom) and bufotoxin (toad venom) to induce a coma which mimicked the appearance of death. The instigator of the poisoning was thought to be Narcisse’s brother, with whom he had quarrelled over land. Upon returning to his village after the death of his brother Narcisse was immediately recognised. When he told the story of how he was dug up from his grave and enslaved, the villagers were surprised, but accepted his story because they believed that his experience was a result of voodoo magic.    

[Sources: Much more detailed article here : Wikipedia]

Vinegar Valentines

Known as ‘Vinegar Valentines’ these mocking cards, which date from the 1840s to 1940s, were used to tell someone how you did not love them. Yes, that’s right! For almost as long as Valentine’s Day has been an insufferably sappy day celebrating romantic love, it’s also been a day for telling everyone else exactly how much you don’t love them—with an anonymous poem sent via post.

Annebella Pollen, a lecturer in art and design history at University of Brighton, first discovered Vinegar Valentines when she was researching a project on love and courtship … In the back of a stationer’s sample book from 1870, she discovered 44 cheap, single-sheet, insulting Victorian Valentines with a comic sketch and a few lines of verse.

According to Pollen: “often they were sent anonymously. They were to say “Your behavior is unacceptable.” For example, there are quite a few cards that mock men with babies on their laps as being henpecked—the kind of thing now we would think was a man doing the right thing by taking his share of child care. But these cards were specifically designed to make the man seem emasculated and disempowered by being left holding the baby. Or there’d be images of women holding rolling pins, threatening their husbands.

The people sending such cards were usually not either one of the couple. It wasn’t the wife sending to the husband or the husband sending to the wife. It was somebody outside, looking in at their relationship and saying, “This doesn’t conform with what’s expected.” In that way, they did enforce social norms. Sometimes they seemed to be saying, “Change your behavior, or else.” There’s almost this threatening element to them.”

You can see loads more of these, and read a full interview with Pollen, here. See also, last year’s Valentine’s Day oddment.

Children of the Taiga

In 1978, a helicopter flying over the taiga – an immense wilderness stretching from the furthest tip of Russia’s arctic regions to as far south as Mongola – spotted something unusual below: a clearing, 6000ft up a mountain. They concluded that it was evidence of human habitation though it was 150 miles from the nearest settlement and authorities had no records of anyone living there.

Led by Galina Pismenskaya an investigative group “chose a fine day and put gifts in our packs for our prospective friends”—though, just to be sure, she recalled, “I did check the pistol that hung at my side”. Making their way up the mountain they came across signs of human activity: a rough path, a staff, a log laid across a stream, and a small shed filled with cut-up dried potatoes. Then:

“a very old man emerged … Barefoot. Wearing a patched and repatched shirt made of sacking … He looked frightened … We had to say something, so I began: ‘Greetings, grandfather! We’ve come to visit!’ … Finally we heard a soft, uncertain voice: ‘Well, since you have travelled this far, you might as well come in.’”

Over several visits the story of the family emerged. The man was Karp Lykov, an Old Believer – a member of a fundamentalist Russian Orthadox sect, worshiping in a style unchanged since the 1600s. Old Believers had been persecuted since the days of Peter the Great, and Lykov talked about it as though it had happened only yesterday. Ever since they had retreated further and further from civilization.

There were four children. Two had been born in the wild and had never seen a human being who was not a family member. They were educated using prayer books; were not aware that WWII had occurred, and lived permanently on the edge of famine. Karp’s wife died of starvation in 1961, choosing to see her children eat after snow in June ruined their crops.

Karp was delighted by the innovations the scientists showed him, and though he steadfastly refused to believe that man had set foot on the moon, he adapted swiftly to the idea of satellites. They had noticed them as early as the 1950s, when “the stars began to go quickly across the sky,” and Karp conceived a theory that: “People have thought something up and are sending out fires that are very like stars.”

Perhaps the saddest aspect of the Lykovs’ strange story was the rapidity with which the family went into decline after they re-established contact with the outside world. In the fall of 1981, three of the four children died within a few days of one another. Their deaths were not, as might have been expected, the result of exposure to diseases to which they had no immunity.

When they had been buried, the geologists attempted to talk Karp and his daughter into leaving the forest but neither would hear of it. Karp died in his sleep in 1988 and was buried on the mountain. His daughter would stay, she said—as indeed she has. 25 years later, now in her seventies, this child of the taiga lives on alone, high above the Abakan.

[This is a heavily edited version of a Smithsonian Magazine article and I highly recommend you read the whole thing. Thanks to Vintage-Royalty]

collective-history:

Annie Edson Taylor was an American adventurer who, on her 63rd birthday, October 24, 1901, became the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Desiring to secure her later years financially, and avoid the poorhouse, she decided she would be the first person to ride over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Taylor used a custom-made barrel for her trip, constructed of oak and iron and padded with a mattress. Several delays occurred in the launching of the barrel, particularly because no one wanted to be part of a potential suicide. Two days before Taylor’s own attempt, a domestic cat was sent over the Horseshoe Falls in her barrel to test its strength. Contrary to rumors at the time, the cat survived the plunge and 17 minutes later, after she was found with a bleeding head, posed with Taylor in photographs.

On October 24, 1901, her 63rd birthday, the barrel was put over the side of a rowboat, and Taylor climbed in, along with her lucky heart-shaped pillow. After screwing down the lid, friends used a bicycle tire pump to compress the air in the barrel. The hole used for this was plugged with a cork, and Taylor was set adrift near the American shore, south of Goat Island.

The Niagara River currents carried the barrel toward the Canadian Horseshoe Falls, which has since been the site for all daredevil stunting at Niagara Falls. Rescuers reached her barrel shortly after the plunge. Taylor was discovered to be alive and relatively uninjured, except for a small gash on her head. The trip itself took less than twenty minutes, but it was some time before the barrel was actually opened. After the journey, Annie Taylor told the press:

If it was with my dying breath, I would caution anyone against attempting the feat… I would sooner walk up to the mouth of a cannon, knowing it was going to blow me to pieces than make another trip over the Fall.

(via collectivehistory)