Wednesday 14 October 2015

The oldest swinger in Finland - a random selection of intriguing photos with no theme whatsoever...


Believe it or not, this is a photograph of Finland's longest-serving president, Urho Kekkonen, taken in 1975. A wild and crazy guy, by the look of him - and this is at least a year before Punk got going. Respect! (Actually, this cool dude was only 51 when this was taken, but still...)

I've wasted the last hour stealing old photos from websites, mainly from the excellent History in Pictures (here), and Bored Panda (here). Here's a selection of my favourites. The first one's rather poignant, as it's of three young women in Kabul in 1970 - the future must have looked so bright:


London, 1960 - no wonder the town soon started swinging:


Annette Kellerman was an Australian swimmer, vaudeville star and actress who was arrested for indecency on Revere Beach, Massachusetts in 1907 for wearing a one-piece bathing suit like the saucy little number in the photo. She went on to become the first actress to appear naked in a Hollywood film (Daughter of the Gods, Fox, 1916):


A little girl meets a penguin for the first time at London Zoo, 1930:


This utterly humungous beast was Brooklyn Supreme ("Brookie"), a Belgian stallion who died in 1948, aged 20. For those of you who understand horse stuff, he stood 19.2 hands and weighed 3,200 pounds:  


Spectacularly creepy mannequins damaged in a fire at Madame Tussaud's in 1930:


I wonder why this baby cage for high-rise infants (c. 1937) never caught on? After all, what could possibly go wrong?


"Trot on, Smudge!"

  
1959 phone advert - little did they know:


Crossed wires in Pratt, Kansas, 1911:


Helen Mirren, 1965 - and yet she didn't half get the hump when Michael Parkinson made a mild allusion to her physical attractiveness a few years later:


What must surely be the first-ever photograph of someone caught mid-sneeze, 1900:


Finally, to anyone in need of serenity, purity and unspoiled beauty (and aren't we all) I offer this photograph taken in the Canadian Rockies in 1993:

2 comments:

  1. The 1937 photo of the baby-cage is deeply disturbing. The footage of the creep Michael Jackson swinging his infant over the balcony rails is on the same level.

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    1. I'm normally against too much state interference in people's lives, but I honestly thought that the baby (Name Prince Michael II, nickname "Blanket")should have been taken away from Michael Jackson and that Jackson should have been officially banned from ever touching an infant (or anybody under 16, come to think of it) ever again. When he died, the following drugs were found in his body - propofol, lorazepam, midazolam, diazepam, lidocaine, and ephedrine. His son is now 13 and goes by the name of Bigi.

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