Today in history

[sam]

Masks were mandated to block transmission of the Spanish Flu virus. To encourage compliance, all the air was sucked out of the UK (they used giant fans), with handy ration coupons for oxygen tanks. "Nature abhors a vacuum and so do we!" shouted the libertarians, but a hardier populace stuck with it. When the threat level was downgraded from Extinction Event to Moderately Culling, the fans were turned off and masks made optional. Most continued to wear them for awhile as a sign of national unity. Those were different times, to be sure.


Cricket remained compulsory.


Jump rope used to be made of razor wire until a campaign by Mothers Against Stumps put a stop to it.


Note the unmasked in the background, itching for the internet to be invented.


Artistic expression was encouraged, as long as everybody painted the same thing.


Faces became like forbidden fruit, everything below the neck ignored for a chance to see the mask slip.


"The family that masks together tasks together." Didn't catch on.


This famous picture of a factory shift change did little to quell concerns that prolonged use stunted growth.


Pointing the way to a brighter tomorrow.

[sam]

The Suffolk seaside village of Dunwich was overwhelmed by cyclists performing their annual ritual of renewal and cleansing. After a long night's journey into dawn, they paid their respects to Neptune and to each other, consumed the sacred fry-up, then returned home to their mortal lives.

[sam]

There was a big red present waiting for someone – but who would it be?

“It’s clearly not a girl’s bike so it’s mine!” shouted Bobby, attempting to elbow his sister Sue out of the way.

This displeased Sue, so she unwrapped the pellet gun that definitely was Bobby’s and took out both his eyes, settling the matter.

[sam]

"Give us sexed up Norman Rockwell," said Pabst to the ad agency, which delivered.

[sam]

Fanny Bullock Workman, possibly the most perfectly named person ever in a sexually dimorphic species, stood still long enough to have her picture taken.

[sam]

Reginald was devoured by the "cowardly" lion he had been taunting for days, his dying words to the sketch artist being "Put a good spin on it."

[sam]

Depends on your timeline, obvs.

The ruthless cyborg assassin Boris9000, having coaxed the Terminator himself out of retirement to be his jolly wingman, points out their target Tony Blair. As you'll know if you weren't living under a rock, not to be triggering to people who actually do, Blair infamously used a child as a human shield to save himself from the volley of bullets which followed. This was captured by the woman with the camera on the left, who happened to have the best angle and a good agent.

Blair capitalised on his newfound villainy to open a fashionable restaurant where he would re-enact this with a child volunteered by his or her parents, scarring a select new generation. This was possible because there was no actual law on the books prohibiting the use of human shields. (There still isn't, as voters realise they come in handy, and you make your own luck.)

Thanks to his schoolboy charm and a self-defense argument that convinced a jury of his Eton peers, the Boris9000 later became prime minister despite what would surely be a dealbreaker for most parents, but again, go figure the mind of a voter.

[sam]

Horace Edward Stafford Dall, famous for traversing Iceland by bike in 1933, returned to a particularly lovely spot he had scouted to build a home. It didn't work out in the end, but a man can dream.

[sam]

Bonnie and Betty and Clyde made their getaway from the bike shop in style.

[sam]

The public knew her as The Mallet. Her reign of terror only came to an end when someone with a bigger mallet came along.