The Talking Doll Created by Thomas Edison
Before the invention of the alarm clock, people were hired to wake others by throwing dried peas at their windows.
“Knocker uppers” were common in Britain before 1970. They used long wooden sticks similar to hooks to tap on windows as a wake up call, or alternatively threw peas at people’s windows from a special device.
One problem they faced was waking people for free, as the noise could also wake neighbors who hadn’t paid for the service.
The Russian Emperor Who Kept His Wife’s Lover’s Head in the Bedroom
When Peter the Great, who was Emperor of Russia from 1682 until his death in 1725, discovered his wife Catherine’s infidelity, he demanded the head of her lover, a man named William Mons, be cut off.
He asked for Mons’s head to be placed in a jar of alcohol in Catherine’s bedroom, so it would serve as a reminder of her forbidden affair for the rest of her life.
Europe Experienced the Closest Thing to a Zombie Outbreak in 1494
The Renaissance period in Italy also had a dark side, less known than Leonardo da Vinci or Raphael.
Sailors returning from the New World brought with them a massive outbreak of syphilis, which spread through the French army.
These soldiers contributed to the spread of the disease, before the antibiotic era, throughout Europe, and its effects on the human body were severe.
It was called “the great pox.”
The skin of victims rotted, and in some cases, noses, lips, or other body parts disappeared.
Many victims eventually died. It was the closest reality came to zombie apocalypse stories.
Thomas Edison Created a Truly Creepy Baby Doll
Despite all his successful inventions, Thomas Edison experienced a significant failure when he tried to create the first-ever talking dolls.
In 1877, Edison was the first to build a phonograph, a device that allowed the recording and playback of sound, a major breakthrough in voice recording.
In 1890, Edison managed to produce baby dolls made of wood, with porcelain heads, and miniature phonographs embedded in their chests.
The phonographs played recordings of young women reciting popular children’s songs of the time.
Despite good intentions, these dolls terrified people.
The old technology, screeching voices, and strange faces made them a nightmare for anyone who saw them then or now.
But this wasn’t the only reason the dolls failed commercially.
They had many flaws parts were easy to lose, the sound was short and hard to understand, and the phonographs were fragile.
In addition, the dolls were simply expensive.
Dentists Once Made False Teeth from Dead Soldiers’ Teeth
In the 19th century, dentists fought tooth decay outbreaks using improvised dentures ivory base plates with real human teeth attached.
The teeth came from the bodies of tens of thousands of soldiers killed at the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon’s decisive battle in June 1815.
The dentists boiled the teeth, cut the roots, attached them to ivory plates, and sold them to customers.
It is unclear if the customers knew where the teeth came from.
