r/RareHistoricalPhotos

drlindseyfitzharris On July 4, 1863, Vicksburg fell to General Ulysses S. Grant-the same man who, a year later, would order embalmers off the battlefield entirely.
Before the mid-19th century, embalming was not typically used in funerary practice. It was mainly employed to preserve specimens after dissection. A sea-change in embalming came with the American Civil War, during which there was an outcry for fallen soldiers to be returned to their families for burial. It was during this period that the foundations of the modern funeral industry were laid, and the embalmer-as a professional—began to emerge. But not everyone was happy about the commodification of death.
Embalmers following the Union and Confederate armies around the country were portrayed as vultures fattening themselves on the dead. They pitched tents close to battle sites, and offered soldiers the chance to pre-pay for their own embalming should they be killed. Over the course of the war, one embalmer named Thomas Holmes embalmed 4,000 men. In shops in Washington, Georgetown and Alexandria, he displayed the preserved bodies of unknown soldiers, which he collected from battlefields. Fortunately, there is no record of an unsuspecting relative stumbling across a lost loved one propped up in Holmes's window.

Before photography existed, death masks were one of the few ways to preserve a person's likeness. A plaster cast was taken directly from the face shortly after death, creating an incredibly accurate record of their features.

Most people know Franklin as an inventor, but he was also the first ambassador of the Thirteen Colonies to be officially recognised by a foreign power: France.

During the reign of King Louis XVI, Franklin became something of a celebrity at the French court. Contemporary accounts describe him as widely admired and respected, with his experiments on electricity making him famous long before he arrived as a diplomat. He moved in the same circles as Queen Marie Antoinette, the Marquis de Lafayette, the Comte de Vergennes, who served as France's foreign minister, and many of the leading intellectuals of the Enlightenment, including Voltaire, who famously embraced Franklin during a celebrated meeting at the Académie des Sciences.

His diplomatic skills proved just as remarkable as his scientific ones. Franklin secured France's full support for the American cause, including enormous loans, troops, warships, weapons and supplies. Without French backing, the outcome of the American Revolution might have been very different.

It's strange to think that this simple plaster cast is one of the closest things we have to seeing Benjamin Franklin exactly as he looked in his final hours.

Blond guy is actually holding hands with Shabba and Supercat, partying with them and having a good time, which I have a real hard time imagining him doing today...

In 1954 Mae West did a nightclub show with a troupe of heavily muscled bodybuilders in basically next to nothing. It was a massive hit and toured big venues through 1955, and honestly it kind of ended up shaping what we now think of as a male revue.

It also ended up stirring a lot of backlash at the time, with conservative groups reacting strongly and criticising the fact that men were on stage performing shirtless and basically half naked.

At the time bodybuilding was still a pretty niche, underground, mostly amateur scene with basically no sponsors or real money in it. Mae reportedly paid Hollywood level salaries, which was huge for these guys and helped push a lot of them into way bigger careers, whether as models or future champions.

She personally selected all of the men herself from Muscle Beach in California.

Instead of normal dancers she had these physique guys standing around her in loincloths while she did her usual sharp comedy on stage.

Some of the guys who were part of it

Mickey Hargitay, Mr Universe 1955, who later married Jayne Mansfield
Joe Gold, yeah that Joe Gold, the guy who went on to found Gold’s Gym
Richard DuBois, Mr America 1954
Reg Lewis, Ed Fury, and Chuck Krauser, who also rotated through the cast

Honestly, it feels like one of those Hollywood stories that sounds made up but actually happened 💀