Elevator operator

Before elevators became fully automated, in department stores, hotels, and office skyscrapers, there was always a human operator working an elevator.

Operators manually controlled heavy lever controls in order to level the elevator car precisely with each floor, opened and closed inner metal grates, and announced department names or floor numbers.

Switchboard operator

Even as automatic switching was in its infancy, operators working at large physical switchboards were still handling the majority of telephone calls during the 1950s. They connected calls locally, long-distance, or between households by plugging cords into jacks. The role has since been nearly completely eliminated by automation and digital telephone networks.

Milkman

Because home refrigerators were inefficient and most foods had short shelf lives back in the 1950s, milk, cream, and butter were delivered daily or twice-weekly in fresh glass bottles to your doorstep or milk box. Refrigerators in every kitchen and suburban supermarkets eventually replaced this occupation.

Ice Cutter

By the 1950s, harvesting natural ice had become rare, but there were still labourers cutting large blocks of ice from frozen lakes in winter. It was stored and eventually sold for people to keep food and drinks cool. Sales of electric refrigerators and freezers led to this job disappearing in the decades following.

Pinsetter

Before automatic pin-setters were standard in bowling alleys, people (usually teenagers) stood behind bowling lanes manually resetting pins after each ball and returning bowling balls to bowlers. Automation took away one of bowling’s most strenuous jobs.

Gas station attendant

Service station attendants pumped gas, wiped windshields, and checked tire pressure (and sometimes even oil) at every vehicle that pulled in during the 1950s. There are still some full-service gas stations around, but automatic pumps have replaced attendants for the most part.

Telegraph operator

Businesses, railroads, newspapers and government offices relied on skilled telegraph operators to transmit and receive Morse code messages. When telephones, fax machines, computers and the internet replaced the telegraph, the need for skilled workers vanished.

Linotype operator

Newspapers were previously printed on large Linotype machines that cast whole lines of metal type. Competent operators had to learn how to operate complex machines to prepare material for newspaper and book printing. Desktop publishing and computer typesetting have replaced the trade.

Movie projectionist

Projectionists were needed in movie theaters of the past to load, watch, and change giant reels of film while the movie played. Digital cinema systems today require very little human interaction, thus there are drastically fewer projectionists needed per theater.

Human computer

Before the widespread availability of electronic computers, it was common practice for businesses, research labs, and government agencies to employ individuals to do mathematical computations manually (or with mechanical calculating devices). These employees were referred to as computers. With the fast evolution of electronic computers in the second half of the 20th century, this job largely vanished.

Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.

1. Elevator operator
2. Computer (occupation)
3. Movie projectionist
4. Linotype machine
5. Telegraph operator
6. Gas station attendant
7. Pinsetter
8. Ice Cutting
9. Milk delivery
10. Switchboard operator

M&M

Forrest Mars Sr. realized soldiers in the Spanish Civil War were eating bite-sized chocolates with a hard sugar coating that kept the cocoa from melting in the heat.

Mars developed his own formula and began selling M&Ms in 1941. During World War II, he sold the candies exclusively to the U.S. military so troops stationed in warm countries could enjoy chocolate without it melting inside their bags.

Instant coffee

Although primitive forms of soluble coffee had been available since the 19th century, instant was further developed and distributed widely when the U.S. War Department bought the entire U.S. supply of instant coffee during World War I.

Many doughboys in the trenches became dependent on the speedy caffeine hit, establishing an immense, habit-driven civilian demand when they returned from war.

Cheese powder

The dehydrated cheese powder that coats Cheetos, Doritos and boxed macaroni came into being in 1943. George Sanders, who worked for the U. S. Department of Agriculture and the U. S. Army Quartermaster Corps, came up with the idea.

It was a means to remove moisture from real cheese to compress it for overseas shipping as lightweight shelf-stable bricks. The cheese bricks were later pulverized by food manufacturers to become snack seasoning.

Canned food

In 1795, starvation and diseases like scurvy caused more casualties in the French military than armed conflict. In hopes of finding a solution, Napoleon Bonaparte offered a 12,000 franc prize to anyone who could devise a way to keep food from spoiling for his marching armies.

Nicolas Appert, a confectioner, claimed the prize when he found that sealing cooked food in airtight glass jars prevented it from spoiling, which eventually led to canning in metal tins.

Condensed milk

Sweetened condensed milk was patented by inventor Gail Borden in 1856. However, it wasn’t until the American Civil War began in 1861 that condensed milk caught on commercially.

The Union Army bought millions of cans to feed hospital patients and soldiers in the field with a high-calorie, long-lasting dairy source. Instantly successful, Borden’s condensed milk became a staple ingredient in home baking.

Spam

Spam was created by Hormel in 1937, but the canned pork shoulder did not become popular worldwide until World War II, when over 150 million pounds were bought by the U.S. military for its troops in Europe and the Pacific Theater.

As it didn’t need refrigeration and held up well under harsh conditions, Spam was shipped out to not only the Allied troops but also the local civilians of countries where troops were stationed. It became part of local diets in places like Hawaii, Okinawa, and the Philippines.

Energy bars

The ancestors of today’s energy and protein bars were military survival rations. The predecessor to modern-day bars began with the development of the U. S. Army’s “Ration D” bar in 1937.

Developed by the Army and Hershey Chocolate Company, the compact 600-calorie bar was intended to provide emergency food for soldiers behind enemy lines in case of an invasion.

Powdered eggs

Military strategists required an easily portable substitute for fresh eggs with a long shelf life. Powdered eggs were consumed by soldiers throughout World War II all over the world. Now you can find them primarily in emergency preparedness foods, camp cuisine, and commercial bakeries.

Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.

1. M&M’S History
2. Better living through Military innovation: Instant Coffee
3. How the US Military Helped Invent Cheetos
4. How Napoleon Influenced The Canned Food Industry
5. Sweetened Condensed Milk Was Popularized By Soldiers
6. A War Won With Spam (and a Few Other Things)
7. The Rise and Rise of Energy Bars
8. The History of Powdered Eggs During World War II

Savory Jell-O molds

Mid-century cooks made Savory Jell-O molds by including canned tuna, chopped hard-boiled eggs, shredded cabbage, or ground beef inside lime-flavored or lemon-flavored gelatins. After World War II, powdered gelatin had only recently become inexpensive and represented the exciting world of modern convenience foods.

Plus, it allowed families to turn leftover proteins and vegetables into a mold that looked impressive and stayed firm without refrigeration.

Vinegar pie

This pie from frontier days is made by whisking together cider vinegar, sugar, butter, flour, and eggs to form a sweet-and-tangy custard.

It was baked in homes across the American frontier and during times of financial struggle because while fresh citrus fruits such as lemons were rare, costly, or impossible to find, rural homesteaders still craved that citrus flavor. They found that the acidic punch of inexpensive cupboard vinegar could mimic it nicely in a dessert.

Syllabub

Syllabub was a favourite dessert during Tudor and Victorian times. Made by whisking together heavy cream and wine, cider, or sherry, lemon juice, and sugar until it became a fizzy, layered, drinkable cream, it was drunk everywhere at festivities and feasts.

Syllabub allowed upper-class families to present their fine imported booze, sugar, and fresh dairy together in an extravagant fashion.

Tomato soup cake

This moist spice cake gets its name from one simple can: condensed tomato soup. The condensed tomato soup gets mixed right into a batter with warm spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

Made famous by Campbell’s in the midst of the Great Depression, homemakers baked this cake because the acidity and natural moisture from canned tomato soup improved the texture of the cake without using costly, hard-to-find ingredients such as fresh eggs, milk, or additional butter.

Suet puddings

Suet puddings like Spotted Dick or the traditional steamed Christmas pudding were heavy puddings made by combining raw beef or mutton kidney fat (also known as suet), flour, breadcrumbs, dried fruit and spices, then steaming the batter for several hours.

Many traditional cooks used suet because animal fats were readily available after killing livestock and also had a high melting point. This made for a pudding that stayed moist and would last long, able to stay preserved during the cold winter months before refrigerators became common.

Mock apple pie

Mock Apple Pie was a pie made during the Great Depression era. Instead of using fruit, crushed Ritz crackers were soaked in a syrup made of sugar, water, lemon juice, and warm spices. Cooks made it because apples could be out of season, too costly, or even rationed during tough financial times. The crackers absorbed the syrup while baking and became soft, simulating apples cooked in sugar and spices economically.

Ambergris ice cream

Ambergris ice cream is a rich ice cream created by adding small quantities of ambergris (a waxy substance made in the intestines of sperm whales) to sweetened cream and custards of eggs. It was eaten by the rich and upper-class Europeans, as ambergris was one of the world’s costliest luxury ingredients.

Ambergris ice cream gave desserts a delicate, musky floral scent and aftertaste, the height of opulence.

Candied watermelon rind

Candied Watermelon Rind used to be a popular recipe made by cutting off the green skin from a watermelon, dicing the thick white part of the rind, and boiling it for hours in heavy sugar syrup flavored with ginger, lemon, and cloves.

Families made it at home because waste was not tolerated, and making tasty treats from watermelon refuse that would otherwise be thrown away was an economical means of extending the budget.

Flummery

Flummery was originally a British and American pudding consisting of oatmeal soaked overnight in water until it began to ferment slightly, then boiled down after straining until it formed a thick gelatinous starch pudding. This would then be flavored with rosewater, sugar, or wine.

Oats were cheap and natural starches in them allowed home cooks to produce a firmly set jellied dessert without using costly gelatin or Isinglass.

Baked alaska

Created in the 1800s, this dessert features ice cream and cake topped with meringue and quickly baked at a high temperature. The meringue keeps the ice cream frozen while the outside toasts evenly. Baked Alaska is still impressive, but few people make it at home these days.

Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.

1. Ambergris – Whale excrement once flavored ice cream
2. Baked alsaka
3. Flummery
4. History of Mock Apple Pie
5. Suet pudding
6. Tomato soup cake
7. Syllabub
8. Old-fashioned Vinegar pie
9. Jello salad

Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock.

In medieval writing, i and j weren’t separate

In the Middle Ages, scribes didn’t see “i” & “j” as different letters because there was just one symbol doing both jobs. Any time that they needed to make the last “i” in a Roman numeral stand out, they’d stretch the tail down & leave it like that. They’d write the number 23 as “xxiij” for 23, which is where the j-shape came from.

Trissino’s 1524 proposal split i and j

The story then moves to Renaissance Italy. This is where Giangiorgio Trissino began adjusting the alphabet, and in 1524, he wrote a pamphlet about it. He suggested that the vowel “i” & consonant “j” should finally get their own letters. However, it took a while for his ideas to catch on through reprints & scholars across Europe.

Printers normalized the distinction

English printers also had their role in changing things. By the 1600s, more of them started setting “i” & “j” as separate letters, especially at the start of words, although some of the presses did hang on to the old habits. It took a few decades for the newer style to become the norm in printed books.

The 1611 King James Bible still printed “Iesus”

One of the most obvious examples of that old style lives in the first edition of the King James Bible. After all, it contains names like “Iesus,” “Iuda,” & “Iohn,” which look like typos to a modern reader. But that’s just how things were. “J” hadn’t officially become a letter yet, so “I” was used in its place.

Grammar books flagged the shift

Soon after, grammar writers like Charles Butler began talking about how English spelling was changing. They wrote about how “i” & “j” were becoming separate letters in everyday language, and some of these books included spelling rules to keep things consistent. It says a lot about how common the confusion had become.

English gave j the sound through French loans

Interestingly, the sound we connect to “j” today didn’t actually start in English. It came with French words like “joy” & “jewel” that have that soft /dʒ/ sound. Later, English adopted the sound & kept the spelling before eventually pairing it with the letter “j.” But the split wasn’t totally settled. Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary still included “I” & “J” in one section.

France’s 1694 academy dictionary drew a line

The Académie française printed its first dictionary in 1694. In it, they clearly spelled out that i and j were two different letters in their system, although this wasn’t meant to change pronunciation. They were simply trying to define how the alphabet should look on paper going forward.

Spanish rules in 1815 gave j the /x/ sound

Things went a different way in Spain. The Real Academia Española published new spelling rules in 1815 that officially stated that j made the /x/ sound, as before that, x sometimes carried it. That was rather confusing. However, the update didn’t erase older spellings entirely, but instead created the modern rule.

The 1769 Oxford KJV created modern spellings

In 1769, Oxford University handled a major Bible revision, which is when spellings across the entire King James text were cleaned up. Words like “Jesus” replaced older forms such as “Iesus.” Those changes stuck. Soon enough, this version became the one that most people actually saw, whether in church or at home.

Webster’s 1828 dictionary called j the tenth letter

Noah Webster’s dictionary also affected how Americans thought about language. Near the start, he listed J as the tenth letter of the alphabet, while also mentioning the history of I and J. Including this detail was important. Now, it was clear that J was officially part of the alphabet on its own, no question.

The following sources were consulted in the preparation of this article:

1. The Alphabet Book: A guide to early modern English secretary hand
2. Early modern English: grammar, pronunciation, and spelling
3. The Holy Bible: a facsimile in a reduced size of the Authorized version published in the year 1611
4. Popular Speech: Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–1700
5. The influence of Latin and French on the use and phonological development of the digraphs <ie>, <ea> and <ou> in English between 900 and 1800 CE
6. A Textual History of the King James Bible
7. An American dictionary of the English language

Here are thirteen riots that started over everyday objects. Which one is the worst to you?

Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock.

Straw hat (1922)

In 1922, in New York City, people began tearing straw hats off those walking the streets because they continued wearing them after hat season had unofficially ended.

Fights erupted in Harlem & on bridges. They also emerged along the streets. Over eight days, the city saw arrests and injuries, with the mess becoming a genuine hat-war scandal.

Vinyl records (1979)

Promoters invited fans at Chicago’s Comiskey Park to bring disco records to blow up between games. It soon got out of hand.

Pretty quickly, dust & debris were everywhere, causing the field to get trashed, and even the police became involved. The second game was eventually called off.

Cabbage Patch Kids (1983)

Stores got overrun when the Cabbage Patch Kids craze hit. In Charleston, WV, 5,000 people caused chaos inside a department store, wrecking displays & shoving each other.

It actually got so bad that the police had to step in to restore order. All that drama for, quite literally, a kid’s doll.

“Tickle Me Elmo” (1996)

In 1996, a Canadian Walmart had 48 dolls for a midnight sale. There were 300 people outside chanting for Elmo.

When they finally got in, it turned into a mosh pit, with one poor employee getting knocked over & stomped on. It was so bad he ended up in the hospital with cracked ribs and a concussion. 

Air Jordan XI “Concord” (2011)

Sneakerheads camped out in front of malls everywhere in December 2011 for the latest kicks. By sunrise, the Air Jordan XI “Concord” drop was more of a riot than a shoe sale.

Windows smashed & shoppers shoved each other, while police in several cities used pepper spray just to calm things down. A few were even stabbed trying to skip lines. It was that serious.

iPhone 4S (2012)

Outside Apple’s Beijing store, hundreds of people waited all night for the new iPhone 4S. But then the staff delayed opening. As such, the customers’ patience ran out, and they started throwing things everywhere.

Security was forced to lock the place down. It got so bad that Apple actually suspended in-person sales in parts of China. Who knew that people would get so desperate for a phone?

Nutella (2018)

French store chain Intermarché knocked 70% off Nutella in 2018. Shoppers went wild. Soon enough, people began grabbing jars straight out of each other’s hands, with some even climbing over displays just to reach the last few tubs.

This forced the police to be called. Apparently, France takes its chocolate spread very seriously.

Sugar and cooking oil (2011)

In Algeria, basic groceries became a source of drama after the price of sugar & cooking oil shot up overnight.

People hit the streets & rioters burned tires. They also smashed storefronts and clashed with police for several days, forcing the government to slash food taxes just to calm things down.

Onion (2010)

Onions are practically a necessity in India. So when prices tripled, tempers did too, leading to rioters raiding markets and blaming traders for their issues.

They dragged politicians into the outrage, and this meant the government scrapped import taxes & rushed in extra supplies. Nothing stings quite like an onion shortage in India, apparently.

Toilet paper (2013)

Most people remember the 2020 toilet paper shortages. But it was even worse in Venezuela in 2013.

Shortages were so bad that new shipments caused stampedes, with shoppers packing aisles shoulder-to-shoulder & clearing entire pallets in minutes. Bizarrely, officials actually imported millions of extra rolls to make up for the shortfall.

Cheese (1766)

Yes, cheese. In 1766, prices at Nottingham’s annual Goose Fair suddenly spiked, and the crowd wasn’t having it, so they chased off sellers.

They also rolled cheese wheels down the streets like bowling balls & some ended up dumped in the river. To scatter the mob, the authorities literally read the Riot Act.

Black Friday (2014)

Britain’s first real “Black Friday” was supposed to be fun. Instead, grocery stores across the country became wrestling rings packed with people shoving & shelves collapsing.

Police fielded dozens of emergency calls, targeting 15 stores in Manchester alone. By dawn, several shoppers were cuffed, and TV anchors referred to it as “America’s worst habit.”

Bread (2010)

The cost of bread quickly went up in Mozambique & people’s frustration spilled out fast. In Maputo and nearby towns, people poured into the streets, blocking roads & throwing stones.

Police had to fire rubber bullets and tear gas to push crowds back. Sadly, several people were killed & hundreds were hurt in the mayhem.

The following sources were consulted in the preparation of this article:

1. 100 Years Ago Men and Boys Fought on the Streets of New York Over Wearing Straw Hats Past Summer
2. The 1979 riot that ‘killed’ disco
3. The Strange Cabbage Patch Craze
4. Stampede For ‘Elmo’ Puts Clerk In Hospital
5. Violence Erupts Across the Country Around Release of Nike Air Jordans
6. iPhone sales halted after shoppers pelt Apple store with eggs
7. Great Cheese Riot of Nottingham
8. Fresh rioting breaks out in Algerian capital Algiers
9. Bathroom Blues: Venezuela’s Toilet-Paper Crisis
10. How did France, gastronomic capital of the world, sink to brawls over Nutella?
11. Black Friday: police criticise Tesco after some stores see ‘mini riots’ – as it happened
12. Police disperse rioters in Mozambique bread protests

A 476,000-year-old wooden structure used interlocking logs

Archeologists once discovered two ancient logs notched together at Kalambo Falls in Zambia. What made these logs so interesting is that they worked like a simple joint. They’d been there for approximately 476,000 years.

Clearly, whoever made them knew what they were doing with wood and may have used them to create a platform or walkway of sorts.

Homo erectus engraved a zigzag on a freshwater shell

Not every human wrote on cave walls. In fact, long before we wrote on caves, someone picked up a huge shell in Java & scratched a zigzag pattern onto it. Who did it?

Apparently, it was Homo erecuts, an early human species that lived half a million years ago. You can see the markings under a microscope. They’re that sharp.

DNA from lice points to clothing beginning roughly 170,000 years ago

Body lice can’t live without clothes. That’s good news for scientists because they can work out where they split from head lice to see when we started wearing clothes.

We supposedly began covering ourselves up around 170,000 years ago. People likely wore hides or woven fibers as protection in those days.

Early humans butchered a giant ground sloth the size of a car

Early humans had to deal with a lot of dangerous animals. One of those was a ground sloth species called Mylodon.

In southern Chile, archeologists found evidence that humans took down the animal 17,000 years ago. They carved it with stone blades & the animal’s bones still show clean slices. Our ancestors simply stripped the meat away.

Early humans had lead exposure long before industrialisation

Bizarrely, pollution existed even in the time of early humans. Fossil teeth records prove that ancient hominins (early humans) had lead traces in their bodies over a million years ago. Where did it come from?

It’s likely just contaminated soil or volcanic ash, maybe from water. Either way, their natural world wasn’t as clean as you might believe.

Neanderthals stored seashells full of pigment

Discoveries near the coast of Italy showed that Neanderthals had some interesting collections. They used to gather seashells & turn them into small containers. Why?

So they could store red & yellow pigment, possibly to paint their skin or for tools. Some of them even reused the shells multiple times.

Ancient humans used eagle talons as jewelry 130,000 years ago

Neanderthals also collected eagle talons. Archeologists discovered a handful of eagle claws in a Croatian cave that have tiny cut marks where early humans shaped & strung them together. They’re approximately 130,000 years old.

The fact that their edges are smoothed proves that early humans wore them instead of using the talons only as trophies.

The following sources were consulted in the preparation of this article:

1. Evidence for the earliest structural use of wood at least 476,000 years ago
2. Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving
3. Origin of Clothing Lice Indicates Early Clothing Use by Anatomically Modern Humans in Africa
4. Our Human Ancestors Were Exposed to Lead, and New Research Suggests It May Have Shaped Human Evolution
5. Neanderthals combed beaches and went diving for shells to use as tools, study says
6. Neanderthals wore eagle talons as jewellery
7. Early humans dined on giant sloths and other Ice Age giants, archaeologists find

Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock.

The mechanical problem on early machines

Essentially, the first typewriters were a bunch of thin metal bars all swinging toward the same point. Two that got there almost at the same time would jam together, which stopped everything. Unfortunately, the only way to fix it was to reach in & pull them apart. This meant inventors had to find a way to keep the most common letters from bumping into each other.

The change from alphabet rows

Christopher L. Sholes first tried using a simple alphabetical layout for the keyboard. But that didn’t last long. The constant jamming problem meant he had to shuffle things around, and he kept rearranging letters to space out those problem pairs. What started as a neat A-to-Z setup slowly turned into something far less tidy.

The Remington step

Remington began creating typewriters & things started to look more familiar. The company put the machine into production, and by mid-1874, buyers got their hands on a version that had the bones of the QWERTY keyboard. Now, it was no longer a tinkerer’s experiment, but a commercial product you could actually order.

What the 1878 patent actually shows

A few years later, Sholes locked things in officially with an 1878 patent that included a diagram showing the early QWERTY layout. But why? Putting certain letters farther apart in the type basket reduced the chance of two bars swinging next to each other too quickly. In doing so, the machine worked a lot better than before.

Was the aim to slow the operator?

There’s a myth that the layout was meant to slow everyone down. However, the records don’t really support that, since Sholes’s main goal was to avoid jams & make the machine reliable enough to sell. Changes to speed were a side effect more than an active aim.

The arrival of the shift key

Shortly after QWERTY started hitting the market, Remington released a version with a shift key so you could use uppercase & lowercase easily. The update stuck rather quickly. It made typing quicker & trimmed the number of keys. But it also kept the layout mostly the same, and for a design that’s often accused of slowing things down, this went in the opposite direction.

What early models left off the keyboard

Interestingly, some of the earliest office machines didn’t even bother including a full set of number keys. The numerals 1 & 0 were missing entirely on certain models. Operators had their own workarounds, where “i” doubled as a 1 & “O” covered 0. It’s all because those keyboards were built with different priorities than modern ones.

The following sources were consulted in the preparation of this article:

1. U.S. Patent No. 79,265 (June 23, 1868)
2. U.S. Patent No. 207,559 (Aug. 27, 1878)
3. Separating myth from probability in the origins and evolution of QWERTY
4. On the Prehistory of QWERTY
5. Clio and the Economics of QWERTY
6. The Fable of the Keys

But why? Why did medieval Europeans wear pointy shoes? Here are the facts.

What exactly were these pointy shoes?

Medieval people had a few names for pointy shoes, including poulaines and Crakows. They used both terms to talk about a slim, low-cut leather shoe that had a stretched tip. The shoe’s front extended to look a bit like a beak.

The shoes had quite a simple structure. They had a flat sole & upper cut close to the foot, along with a long extension. Some shoes included a small lace on the side.

The shoes were made of soft leather, usually from a cow or calf, and they were so thin that they kept their shape when archeologists pulled them out.

Where and when did people wear them?

Medieval Europeans weren’t the first people to wear pointed shoes. However, it was the elongated style that really took off in Europe during the mid-1300s.

The style spread all over Europe, including France, Poland, the Low Countries (like the Netherlands), Germany & England.

The shoes remained popular throughout the 15th century. You can still see surviving shoes in late-medieval riverside dumps in England, and they were a big part of clothing laws & illustrations until the end of the century.

How were pointy shoes made?

The majority of poulaines were stitched inside-out & flipped after sewing. They were known as “turnshoes.” Shoemakers left the seam inside so the shoes looked smooth on the outside, while the soles were far thinner than the ones we have today.

The extended toes did cause some problems. Shoemakers had to reinforce them with moss or horsehair to make sure that they kept their shape, although that didn’t always work. Some pairs were slightly more flexible than others.

Who actually wore them?

You might assume that such shoes were only for the nobles. But you’d be wrong. Archeologists discovered a whole range of sizes for both genders & all age groups. They were meant for city populations as much as they were meant for court circles.

However, there was a slight distinction between the pairs.

The longest & flashiest versions were for nobles, while women usually got the shorter, pointier choices. Yet other people wore moderately pointed ones alongside more practical footwear. They were shoes that were, quite literally, for people from all walks of life (pun intended).

Laws, sermons, and complaints

But not everyone liked these shoes. In fact, a few medieval rulers were completely against them, and Charles V actually banned shoes that stretched out too far in Paris.

Edward IV of England also set limits. He stopped people below a certain rank from being able to wear pointed shoes that were longer than a few inches, with later acts targeting shoemakers themselves.

Why did they dislike the shoes?

Simply because they wanted people’s clothes to match their position. Everyone wearing stretched-out toes made it harder for rulers to keep track of who was who. Other rulers thought that making pointed shoes took too much time & energy. They believed the money could be better spent elsewhere, so they banned them.

Why did people wear them?

But the commoners wearing poulaines weren’t thinking about city budgets or clothing politics. A lot of them just liked the style. They wanted to keep up with the new fashion, and shoes were one of the easiest ways to stay trendy. You could simply change your shoes without changing your entire wardrobe.

At first, the shoes were only for the rich. Wearing a pointed shoe was quite impractical for work, so only those who didn’t need to work (AKA the rich) would wear them. The shoes were essentially a status symbol.

However, this changed. Regular people liked the shoes because they went well with the newly popular styles of the time, like fitted hose & shorter tunics. A lot of modest families liked poulaines because they were so cheap to make. You didn’t need any rare dyes or fine fabric to create something that felt modern.

How the style faded out

The shoes began to lose popularity by the late 1400s. Records show that people’s shoes began to widen again, and a style called the “duckbill” or “bear paw” became more common. These shoes were broader & more blunt-toed than poulaines.

Of course, the shoes didn’t immediately fall out of fashion & later centuries did experiment with the use of pointed shoes. But none of these quite matched the stretched and stuffed leather beaks of the 14th to 15th centuries.

The following sources were consulted in the preparation of this article:

1. Fashion for pointy shoes unleashed a wave of bunions in medieval England
2. The Prescot Street Poulaines
3. Poulaine Fashion History
4. Stepping Through Time: Archaeological Footwear from Prehistoric Times Until 1800
5. Getting To The Point Of Medieval Shoes
6. Footwear: Shoe, Boot, Slipper, Patten
7. Medieval Shoe Fashion May Have Left Marks on Wearers’ Feet

For hundreds of years, medical professionals really did think facial hair could keep men from getting sick, could help them breathe better, and might even stave off disease. Weird as it sounds, in a pre-medical world, beards made a whole lot of sense.

What did pre-Victorian doctors think about beards?

Ancient Greek thinkers believed men had something called vital heat, an inner warmth that explained their strength, size, and ability to grow hair.

Renaissance doctors later built on this idea. They believed vital heat helped increase fertility, and excess heat escaped the body by turning into hair, particularly facial hair. So a beard was proof that a man’s body was working exactly as it should.

Women, meanwhile, were also said to produce vital heat, but their bodies supposedly could not process much of it. For a woman, especially a post-menopausal woman, to develop facial hair was not a sign of natural aging, but a sign of internal illness according to these same theories.

The German abbess Hildegard of Bingen wrote in the 12th century that hair grows on the human face around the mouth because of the heat of the breath. Men had hotter breath because they were made from the earth, while women were made from men. Hildegard’s comments on facial hair are connected to religious doctrine, and the creation story directly.

The Victorian era: when doctors actively promoted beards

During the Victorian Era, beards became symbols of health, science, and self-improvement. A thick beard represented strength, vitality, and serious morality. A full beard suggested self-discipline, wisdom, and physical vigor – everything a good, respectable man should exemplify.

The English physician Dr. Tom Robinson went so far as to write an entire article in 1881 entitled “Beards.” Robinson didn’t just like beards. He recommended facial hair for medical reasons. Dr. Robinson claimed facial hair could help prevent or even treat loose teeth, nasal catarrh (chronic congestion and irritation in the nose), and facial neuralgia (sharply defined nerve pain in the face and head). He used both historical examples and contemporary French and English studies to support his case.

One French study Robinson cited was an 1867 experiment that followed several hundred railway workers in Lyons. The French administrators asked all of the workers to shave their beards. Robinson reported that only 14 out of 53 men who had previously worn beards remained in good health after the experiment. Some of the men became ill, some “lost all subordination and began to grow morose and rebellious.” Victorians were eager to link moral decay with physical decline.

Robinson also noted that bearded soldiers were less likely to be sent to hospitals with respiratory illness or bronchitis. Beards, doctors thought, provided a simple filter. Facial hair trapped irritants from the air before they entered the lungs.

Beards as protection in a polluted world

Doctors in the Victorian era were very concerned about air quality, and they had good reason to be. The mid-19th-century London “brown fog” was a well-known environmental disaster. Coal smoke filled the air of London in the mid-1800s. Over a million Londoners burned soft coal each day. Fog in the winter could be deadly. One coal-smog fog in 1873 lasted days. Hundreds died from bronchitis. A four-month fog happened in 1879.

Doctors believed that a thick beard could filter dust, soot, and other pollutants before they entered the nose or mouth. In a particularly practical application of the theory, doctors even recommended public speakers grow beards. Facial hair could “relax the throat” and therefore help prevent soreness.

How did beards fall out of favor in the medical world?

In the late 1800s, Louis Pasteur began to promote what would become germ theory. Within a few decades, that theory would have enormous implications. Beards and facial hair, far from protective, have now become highly suspect. Doctors warned people that their beards could trap microbes. The beard itself was no longer safe or sanitary.

In one French study, a woman kissed by a mustached man was found to have lips “polluted” with bacteria from tuberculosis and diphtheria (accompanied, of course, by various food debris and even a spider-leg hair).

A series of studies published in The Lancet found that clean-shaven men came down with fewer colds than their hairy counterparts. The reasoning was simple. Soap could work better on bare skin than on hair. Shaving, in the name of cleanliness, had become the new medical ideal.

By the late 19th century, hospitals began shaving patients when they were admitted. Doctors believed the beard trapped spit that might carry tuberculosis. In fact, facial hair was then banned for all hospital staff in Britain. Doctors, nurses, and other medical workers had to remain clean-shaven.

The following sources were consulted in the preparation of this article:

1. Beards and Mustaches Have a Weirder History than You Think
2. In the Victorian Era, Doctors Prescribed Beards to Help Keep Men Healthy
3. A Hair-Razing History of the Beard: Facial Hair and Men’s Health from the Crimean War to the First World War

Here are twelve inventions that people genuinely believed would change the world, yet they failed. Which do you wish had been successful?

Segway personal transporter

During the early 2000s, people thought that the Segway would be the ride that would change cities forever. They pictured streets full of commuters gliding around on them. Reality said something different.

Not only did they cost around five grand, but a string of accidents made people go off these “revolutionary” devices rather quickly. They stuck to being used as tourist rentals & in warehouses.

Google Glass smart glasses

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Google Glass would change the world, since they really did look like something out of a sci-fi movie. They were supposed to change the way we interacted with practically everything.

Unfortunately, nobody likes being filmed without warning, and the devices themselves were rather expensive. It didn’t take long for Google to cancel the glasses.

Sinclair C5 electric trike

British inventor Clive Sinclair revealed the Sinclair C5 electric trike in 1985. It ran around 15 miles an hour & he claimed that it would revolutionize the way that people travel.

But the future had something different to say. It didn’t fare well in rainy weather and couldn’t even take on hills successfully. The factory producing the trike shut down the same year that it launched. 

Moller Skycar M400

Essentially, the Moller Skycar M400 was a red flying car that looked like it came from The Jetsons. Its creator, Paul Moller, promised that it would make traffic jams a thing of the past, since it allowed people to take off vertically & have a fast flight. It didn’t.

The Skycar never made a free, manned flight, so the dream of a flying commute failed to clear the runway.

Juicero press

Who needs a Wi-Fi-connected juicer? According to the makers of the $699 Juicero press, everybody. It was supposed to completely change the way people drank juice and enable them to have a healthier diet. But it was a flop.

It was far easier & faster to squeeze the special juice packs by hand, leading to sales of the Juicero press collapsing. It shut down in 2017.

The :CueCat barcode reader

Around 2000, the :CueCat barcode reader was launched, and millions of people received a free copy of it in the mail. It allowed people to scan barcodes from magazines & go straight to the website, a little like QR codes.

However, typing the URL manually was much easier. The reader never managed to change the way that we go online in the way that the company expected. 

DigiScents iSmell

Smell-o-vision was almost a reality. The DigiScents iSmell was a plug-in device that would send smells through a computer, allowing you to literally “smell” the games you were playing or websites you were on.

It would’ve changed internet browsing by making it a 4D experience. However, investors soon realized that nobody wanted to download perfume files or buy the hardware. The iSmell failed before it even got out of the gate.

3D TVs for the living room

There was a time when practically every electronic store pushed 3D TVs, particularly after 2010’s Avatar mania. These TVs were supposed to bring movie-theater magic to your living room. The key phrase there being, “supposed to.”

The glasses were too annoying to use & the cost of upgrading to a 3D TV just didn’t seem worth it. No wonder Sony & LG dropped 3D completely in 2017.

OLPC XO

The idea of the OLPC XO was great. It involved giving every child in developing countries a special $100 laptop to help them with their education. In theory, it would minimize the digital gap between developing & developed countries.

Some countries bought small batches. However, the project never scaled the way it was intended to & failed to close the digital gap.

Solar Roadways

People genuinely believed roads could power the world. Solar Roadways built panels with LEDs & sensors that were supposed to produce clean energy far more efficiently than other technology of the time. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.

The tiles were fragile and hard to clean, for starters, while maintenance bills were high. Most of the panels couldn’t produce enough energy to be reliable.

Segmented sleep pods

Segmented sleep pods promised users that they could get 20-minute naps at work that would leave them feeling fully recharged. Advocates of the device claimed they’d help the world become more productive, as workers could put in more hours at the office.

But they never went mainstream. The cost & space of the pods were enough to turn people off, and most places stuck with coffee instead.

Telautograph

During the time before faxes & email, the telautograph was supposed to be the next best thing. Inventor Elisha Gray patented it in 1888 with the claim that you could send your handwriting over wires in real time using it. You could sign contracts & send notes from miles away, without using a typewriter, completely changing communication.

At least, in theory. The telautograph was slow & expensive. The telephone was a lot faster to use, not to mention cheaper.

The following sources were consulted in the preparation of this article:

1. Dec. 3, 2001: Segway Starts Rolling
2. Google Glass Is Going Into Hiding “Until It’s Perfect”
3. Sinclair C5, the Tiny EV That Dreamed Big – And Failed Spectacularly
4. Neiman Marcus Sells the Skycar
5. Juicero is shutting down, draining VCs of $120 million
6. The Worst Inventions: CueCat
7. The failed quest to bring smells to the internet
8. The Real Reason The 3D Tv Was a Failure
9. One Laptop Per Child: Vision vs. Reality
10. Understanding Solar Roadways: An Engineering Failure of Epic Proportions
11. The Telautograph: Handwriting at a Distance