THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW YOU NEEDED TO KNOW

  Tik Tok: people dance, sing, make food, extoll the virtues of a good book, basically anything to get attention. But two trends from the 1920s and 1930s became popular crazes without the aid of social media - flagpole sitting and goldfish swallowing. Those trends have died out over many years, but once were popular attention getters. Newspapers covered these antics, and record setters became stars. Now these trends are all but forgotten, even though both seem perfect social media fodder. Flagpole sitting was exactly what it sounds like. Ordinary people would  ascend flag poles in high traffic areas, place themselves on a platform and ... sit. And sit. And sit. The trend started with a man called "Shipwreck" Kelly - called that because he alleged to have survive the Titanic. A Hollywood movie theater hired Kelly to sit atop the flagpole and promote a new film. The novelty caught on and businesses hired "sitters" to advertise sales and other promotions. A record-sett...

  Let's say you're in Nuremberg, Germany on May 26th, 1828. Normal day, doing normal German stuff - eating pretzels, drinking beer, wearing Lederhosen - when suddenly a young man of about 16 approaches town square. Citizens say he looks "drunk or crazy." A shoemaker goes up to the boy who says "I want to be a soldier like my father," and repeats that phrase for days anytime he's spoken to. The boy hands over two letters addressed to a specific Calvary man. The boy is taken to him, but the soldier does not recognize the boy. The first letter, written by the boy's mother, says he is named  Kaspar Hauser  and he was born April 30, 1812. His father was a Calvary man who is now deceased. She could not take care of him and left him with a man. The second letter is from that man who says the boy knows basic reading and writing. The man can no longer care for the boy and says "keep him, or kill him." The handwriting on both letters looks strikingly...

  So you're sitting in the stands of an arena. You buy a snack from a vendor, check the bleachers for well-known faces, and watch a physical entity move around a track. Nascar, Indy car racing?  Nope. It's the 1870s and you are at a competitive walking event. Yep. People used to walk around oval tracks for a really long time while audiences placed bets. The sport of Pedestrianism was America's first national passtime. Pedestrianism has its roots in walking competitions started in England. A man named Foster Powell walked 400 miles from London to York, then back again. This inspired many challenges of walking long distances in a certain amount of time for money. In America a book publisher, Edward Payson Weston, lost a bet by asserting Abraham Lincoln would not be elected president.  Payson walked from Boston to Washington DC in 10 hours and 10 days to attend Lincoln's inaugural ball. Payson won a handshake   from Lincoln and a bag of peanuts. He fared better in his n...

  You ain't nobody's baby Beiber.  Bye, Bye, Bye N*SYNC. Nobody wants to be wanted by you David Cassidy. Get back to where you once belonged Beatles. Music's first heartthrob was Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt. Liszt had the looks and the talent to whip audiences into a frenzy, without radio, records, television or the internet. That frenzy was called Lisztomania. Franz Liszt was arguably the world's first music star. He inspired Lisztomania, a heightened feeling of elation experienced by audiences when viewing Liszt perform. Liszt was a prolific composer any well-respected pianist amongst his peers. He lived a long life but gave up performing in his later years. But the phenomenon of a musical performer inciting ecstasy amongst audiences has never left human culture. Born in Hungary October 22, 1811, Liszt was a musical prodigy. His father worked as a land steward for a member of the Hungarian aristocracy. Liszt's father played multiple instruments and ...