British Pathe Newsreels

GIRL SAILORS

There are hundreds of great historical clips to view in this wonderful archive.

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Wonderful World - Sponsored by Coca Cola (1950's)

Queerosities - A Woman Ballplayer (!)

No sound but wow! Other titles in this series The Human Spider, Monkey Auto Race, and the most horrible of them all - A Negro Baptism!

ROR - Rocket on Rotor (1955)

Color Photographs from America (1939-1943)

Some excellent examples of early color photography.

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An Ode To Street Beats

The Big Money has posted a quick roundup of the history of 'Street Beats' - i.e. portable audio and they even included not one but TWO portable record players!

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The Barstow Family's Camping Video (1957-61)

A nice companion piece to yesterday's Kelly Family video, this one has narration and music and is in color.

Part 1


Part 2

Trip To the Yellowstone (1937 Home Movie - Reel #1)

Watch the Kelly family drink Coca-Cola (wow, it must have not been that easy to get back then!), stay at the Hotel Martin, visit the Badlands (in color), fornicate - oh wait (there is none of that), visit a touristy Indian village, visit Mount Rushmore, and lots more. Silent but kind of fun to watch if you are into vintage Americana.

Top 10 Hoaxes of All Time

This blogger has created a list of his top ten hoaxes of all time - from the obscure (an automatic chess playing machine from 1770 named 'The Turk') to the more well known (Paul McCartney is dead).

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Irony in Vintage Advertisements

The Consumerist has posted a nice collection of advertisements that, to our present day eyes, now look like complete disasters!

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40 Years Ago - the Lunar Landing

I got a USB record player yesterday and just finished transferring this limited edition souvenir record from 1969. I was going to wait to post this until the actual 40th anniversary but there is actually some JFK audio included so it still fits. Enjoy.

Side 1 (streaming)


Side 2 (streaming)




Link (direct download MP3's from Rapidshare)

The Carousel of Progress

from wikipedia:

The Carousel of Progress is an attraction located in Tomorrowland at the Magic Kingdom Park at the Walt Disney World Resort, currently operating under the name, Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress. Created by both Walt Disney and the Imagineers of WED Enterprises as the prime feature of the General Electric Pavilion for the 1964 New York World's Fair, the attraction was moved to Tomorrowland at Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, remaining there from 1967 until 1973. It was replaced in Disneyland by America Sings in 1974, and reopened in its present home in Walt Disney World Resort's Magic Kingdom in 1975.

It's kind of a cheesy exhibit and the audio animatronics are not the greatest but I still like it! I have included videos from youtube for two different versions of the ride, one pre-1994 and one post-1994. If you don't want to sit through both of them I highly recommend at least watching both versions of the fourth act as it was substantially updated in 1993 - from a 1960's (i.e. 'today' theme for 1964) to a 2000 Christmas scene (as imagined in 1993). Jean Shepherd was also used as the new narrator after 1993. You may, or should, remember him as the author/narrator of A CHRISTMAS STORY.



Old Version (revamped in 1973 and used until 1993 - fourth act starts at 3:50 in the second clip)





New version (Jean Shepherd narration with updated 'modern' room - fourth act starts at 15:33)


Additional links:

• Download high quality MP3's of the background audio used in this attraction here.
• Click here to visit carouselofprogress.com for even more info about this attraction.
• Click here to visit the official attraction page at the official Disney World website.
• Click here to visit Walt Dated World's look at this attraction, including scripts.
• Click here to visit the NYWF64 website's article about this attraction.
  

70 Years Ago Today (the 1939 World's Fair)

Neato Coolville has posted a nice collection of links related to the 1939 World's Fair in New York City. I was just about to sit and do this myself but he did a much better job than I could have done so I will just link to it. Enjoy.

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3D Stereograms as Animated GIF's

Cursivebuildings has posted quite a few Stereograms converted to animated GIF's. I really like this process and if I ever get more time I will digitize some of my 3D collectoin and share it with the world as well.

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Color Photos from Russia (1909!)

Quick post because I am at work! There was no color film in 1909 Russia but that did not stop Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. Click the link below to find out how he did it. Simple yet ingenious.

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Female Pilots Newspaper Article From 1958

Strangely enough we still don't seem to have very many female pilots.

The Seattle World's Fair

Believe it or not, they STILL have World's Fairs (according to Wikipedia they are planned out to the next ten years or so) although they don't seem to publicize them very well. The World's Fairs of old were a great place to marvel at the possibilities of the future and Walt Disney sure seemed to love them for this reason although most of the predictions never really seemed to come true. Today's link is an excellent overview page from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as they celebrated the 40th anniversary of the 1962 World's Fair in 2002.

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100 Years Ago Today...

The smartest fashions of well dressed folk...



It only cost you $5 to 'cure' a bunch of non-existent diseases, never mind any actual diagnosis...




100 years ago today it took 100 hours to get to New York from Oakland...

Complete Day of Broadcasting - Radio WSJV - September 21st, 1939

I have been meaning to post this for a while now but Classic Televsion Showbiz beat me to it so I will just link to that excellent blog in case any of my readers still don't know about it.

Basically what you get is a full day of radio broadcasting from WSJV (from archive.org). It's long but throw it on your iPod and listen to it while you commute to work this week and the next week (or more) if you have a short commute.

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Video From the Seattle World's Fair (1962)

This goes along with the picture postcard gallery link that I posted earlier this week.