Hey YouTube, Jim here! Welcome to Top10Archive! A human zoo? Gladiators fighting to the death?
Today we’re going to take you back in time, and visit the ways that people chose to be
entertained throughout history. Join us as we discover together the Top 10 Twisted Ways
People Used To Be Entertained! But before we get started,
why not become an archivist today by clicking that subscribe button and notification bell
so you don't miss out on any future uploads! If you end up enjoying this video,
let us know by giving it a thumbs up and in the comment section, tell us a way that
you entertain yourself! (Keep it clean!) 10. Anthropomorphic Taxidermy
In the Victorian era, people didn’t just go to the movies and get Taco Bell afterward like most do.
They, many of them, collected the original stuffed animals. Walter Potter was an anthropomorphic
taxidermy artist who had guinea pigs playing cricket, kittens in costumes getting married,
all very cute until you realize that all of these animals were once very much alive and now are
frozen forever in humanlike poses. Allegedly, all these animals died of natural causes.
9. Gladiators Taking it way back, we all know about this
very interesting, um, sport, of the involuntary variety during which gladiators, usually slaves,
would fight each other until one of them died. The Romans are the most famous for them but many
empires and nations practiced it. Sometimes wild animals would be brought into the mix.
When Christianity started gaining popularity, suddenly it wasn’t so
interesting to watch humans kill each other or be killed by wild beasts on purpose for money.
Still, we do some intense battles to this day including boxing, wrestling, and MMA,
so it’s not too many steps behind someone just dying during the match I suppose.
8. Slum Tourism As if millionaires and billionaires
weren’t already entitled enough, they came up with slum tourism, too. This isn’t even historical,
as it happens all the time, even to this day. People, since 1884 that we know of,
follow a trend of the rich paying a lot of money to take tours of poor areas of cities. First,
it was White Chapel in London, Five Points in Manhattan, Mumbai in India, now onto places
like South Central LA, 8 Mile, Belfast, The Bronx, Sao Paolo, and Pablo Escobar’s Medellin. It’s sold
as a way for rich people to see how much these local poor people need help but it ends up being
a bit of a zoo, doesn’t it? As Kennedy Odede from Kenya once put it in the New York Times,
“They get photos, we lose a piece of our dignity”. 7. Watching Students Swallow Goldfish
The great depression brought on a lot of strange entertainment that needed very few supplies or
money. For instance, at Harvard University, some students started betting freshmen to swallow live
fish. Once the news picked up the story, students all over the country started doing it. One student
set a record of swallowing 42 goldfish! A month later, the record went up to 101!
Luckily, soon after people found better things to do and goldfish could live worry-free again.
6. Mummy “unrolling” This sounds like something you’d see in a cartoon.
In the 19th century, the curiosity and craziness for Egyptian culture and artifacts led to a trend
all about “unrolling” mummies. They wouldn’t do it at home because... well, how would they? Instead,
there would be public unrolling of mummies for people to watch. They’d be done by so-called
experts and they’d cut into mummies they’d bought at auctions. Sounds legitimate. Travelers would
also buy mummies during vacations to Egypt - how do you even pack or declare that at customs?
Newspapers from the time report complaints about made-to-order mummies from the bodies of homeless
and poor people. That is so far from today’s view of death, entertainment, and even mummies,
that it’s hard to picture. 5. Mourning
I know mourning may not sound too entertaining to us now, but since the conditions back in the
Victorian era were less than ideal, funerals were quite the everyday event. After Queen Victoria’s
Prince Albert died, public mourning was even more accepted and almost celebrated. Suddenly,
markets rose just on the idea of it. Mourning clothes, mourning stationery, mourning biscuits,
jewelry - even some using the deceased’s hair! There were a lot of rituals that came and went.
Now, a funeral is a less-than-desirable event and we do very minimal things while still paying way
too much money for them. 4. Human Zoos
This shouldn’t be too surprising. Humans using other humans for profit? Say it ain't so...
They’d call them “ethnological expositions”, but instead of featuring previous civilizations
like a history museum, they’d exhibit real humans labeled “primitive” and highlighting
differences between Europeans and non Europeans. Some even used indigenous people. In Mexico,
there are records of zoos that had animals as well as dwarves, albino people and hunchbacks.
The Medicis back in the Renaissance also had humans that they called savages, such as Moors,
Tartars, Indians, Turks and Africans. Before, these zoos were very entertaining,
now, they’re just wrong for obvious reasons. 3. Freak Shows
After we decided to not display entire races as entertainment, we moved on, as humans,
to displaying individual features as something to gawk at and pay to see. That’s right, I’m talking
about Freak Shows. There was a time when they were the single most interesting form of entertainment,
like what Netflix is to us now. They’d go on all over the world and showcase people who were small,
big, bearded, “ugly”, and other things that people found strange and different.
2. Infantoriums Infantoriums are premature baby exhibits where
people would pay to see incredibly tiny babies literally fight for their lives. These babies were
only really there because otherwise, hospitals and parents couldn’t afford to care for them.
The admission money helped pay for their medical care and often helped them survive. Regardless of
how good it might have been for the children, it’s still a strange concept. An amusement park where
for 40 years, all proceeds helped babies who were IN the amusement park survive. The babies were
placed in boxes stuffed with feathers and they’d rub oil on them, and keep them near fireplaces.
All of this under the glance of all these people who were curious to watch these tiny creatures
fight for their lives in the public eye. 1. Public Executions
I suppose you can still go to a public execution, but the reasons are very different. Usually,
it’s people who want to see justice taking place or people who loved the person who was sentenced.
Perhaps someday, people will look back on that and shake their heads.
Before, though, it was even crazier. Public executions are really just a way to gather
people to witness the power of the government. In the early 19th century, London would see
crowds as big as 100,000 to watch a felon be executed. In Owensboro, Kentucky, in 1936,
20,000 people watched the last public execution in US history. It was that of Rainey Bethea,
a man who raped and murdered a 70-year-old woman named Lischia Edwards and he was publicly hanged.
Thanks for watching! Know of any other odd ways people entertained themselves in times past?
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