Photos that capture life

In our life, there are always many interesting moments that we try to capture. Thanks to modern gadgets, we have a lot of photos and videos that could not have been imagined a hundred years ago. Look at Joy-pup for unique photographs of ancient times, behind which there are interesting stories.

How a 63-year-old teacher jumped into Niagara Falls

Annie Edson Taylor planned to get rich on a unique PR stunt. She intended to ride a barrel down Niagara Falls on her birthday, October 24, 1901. Her barrel was specially made of waterproof material with a soft inner lining. As a test, she first sent a barrel with a cat (poor cat!) into the abyss of Niagara Falls … Much to her pleasure and, of course, to the happiness of the cat, the furry animal survived the dangerous journey.

So, on October 24, the 63-year-old retired teacher, with the help of her comrades, climbed into the barrel and secured the lid. The start took place right above the beginning of the waterfall! After the teacher collapsed into a seething waterfall, below, at its foot, she was met by a boat waiting there. Fortunately, Annie Edson Taylor was found alive and well. Whether this life-threatening act helped her enrich herself is not known for certain.

A manual traffic control mechanism in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1922.

After the cars appeared on the streets of cities, they began to get into accidents. It immediately became obvious that laws and traffic rules were needed to protect the population from negligent drivers driving their cars into other vehicles, people or structures.

Motorists have begun using signals to tell pedestrians when to stop and when to continue through the intersection. Before electric traffic lights, the only alternative was hand signals like the one in the photo above. The traffic inspector had to manually change the sign from “stop” to “go”.

In the 1950s, it was possible to buy cigarettes from a hospital bed.

Before the Surgeon General of the United States came out with a message about the dangers of tobacco use and the high risk of a whole bunch of diseases, the medical community did not consider smoking something bad. At that time, it was believed that cigarettes calmed the human nervous system, suppressed appetite, and were generally beneficial.

As absurd and anti-scientific as it may seem, patients in hospitals at the time could buy packs of cigarettes from their hospital beds. And they could even smoke right in the hospital wards, despite other patients in the same room.

Mother cat carries her kittens across a busy freeway

“Blackie’s grand entrance” – This 1925 photograph amused readers of the Daily News and the New York Times. In the following decades, quite a few pictures were taken of animals crossing the streets, whether they were real pictures or arranged like this one.

How lucky the photographer must have been to stumble across this scene right in the middle of New York City: a police officer pulling over city traffic for a cat carrying her baby in her mouth across the street right in front of his feet. Wow.

In fact, the photographer did not have time to capture the moment the cat crossed the road and wanted to stage it again.