Humans Have Always Been A Little Odd – And Here Are The Bizarre Photos To Prove It

Humanity’s peculiarities are legion – and we’ve been hunting through the archives to prove the point. After hours of burning the midnight oil, we’ve managed to whittle hundreds of historical photos down to a selection that we think best epitomize the essential weirdness of Homo sapiens. Read on and marvel at just how strange the members of our species can be...

Direction-change chaos

We generally think of Sweden as a sober and well-organized country. But their customary composure was utterly shattered one ill-fated day in 1967, a day jaw-achingly dubbed Högertrafikomläggningen. That roughly translates as, “right-hand traffic diversion.” Having always driven on the left side of the road, to match their European neighbors overnight the Swedes were unilaterally transferred to driving on the right. Result? Pandemonium!

Isolation mask

Of course, we’ve had plenty of mask-wearing experience in recent times. But not like this. Pictured is one Hugo Gernsbach who wears a contraption he himself invented. In fact, his headgear wasn’t designed to combat infection. What the man craved was perfect silence, even although it meant he had to breathe oxygen through a tube. Well, silence is golden, they do say. But that golden?

Painted stockings

These strange goings-on were happening in Croydon, a suburb of London, England. The women with the brushes are actually painting the legs of their customers to make it appear that they’re wearing stockings. It sounds more than a little bonkers but it was all because of wartime shortages. The year is 1941 and Britain had already been at war for two years. Stockings were not to be had at any price.

Cow shoes

We found this intriguing image lurking in the Library of Congress archives. Enigmatically, the only description offered is “Prohibition Unit (Cow Shoes).” Speaking to The Evening Independent newspaper in 1922 state Prohibition enforcement director A.L. Allen described the purpose of these bizarre shoes. Booze smugglers would wear them to bamboozle any cops on their trail. The theory went that law officers would be thrown off the scent when they saw cattle instead of human prints.