On this month's Morbidly Fascinating Page:
Debunking "proof of time travel" photos
IN THE ARCHIVES:
Mike the Headless Chicken
Disgusting Food Museum
Bat Bombs
Spanish Flu
Pompeii
The Body Farm
All over the internet: photos that "prove" time travel is real
Below are five incidences of so-called time travel. All are real photos from the timeperiod in question and none have been photoshopped
Nonetheless, here is why they are internet hoaxes
1. TIME TRAVELING HIPSTER IN THE 1940s
A photograph supposedly showing a “time-traveling hipster” has been circulating on the Internet since at least 2010. Although the image in question is real and unaltered, the man singled out in the picture for his supposedly unusual appearance is not a time traveler.
The image was first made available to the public in 2004 when it was featured in the Barlorne-Pioneer Museum’s exhibit “Their Past Lives Here.” The photograph was taken in 1941 at the reopening of the South Fork Bridge in Canada, and when the museum digitized and placed online the collection that included this picture in 2010, some Internet users noted that a man in the photograph appeared to be dressed far too modern for 1940.
The idea that the man in the photograph is a time traveler hinges on three items he is seen wearing or holding that appear to be of too modern a vintage for the 1940s: a logo t-shirt, a small portable camera, and wrap-around sunglasses. But all of those items were readily available in the 1940s.
His t-shirt, for instance, bears the logo of the Montreal Maroons, a temporally appropriate hockey team that played in the NHL from 1924-1938 as seen here:
Glasses with protective side shields were also available in the 1940s. While this style of eyewear was not yet widespread, it is more plausible that the photograph shows a man of his time with unusual fashion sense rather than a time traveler, The final nail in this time traveler’s coffin comes to us courtesy of Kodak. While many viewers assumed that the camera that the man is shown holding is simply too small to have existed in the 1940s, Kodak did in fact make several portable cameras that small which were available beginning in 1941.
Conclusion: The man in the image may look out of place at first glance, but nothing about his appearance was impossible for the time the photograph was taken.
Source: Snopes
2. OLD WOMAN USING CELL PHONE IN THE CHARLIE CHAPLIN FILM OF 1928
George Clarke, a filmmaker from Belfast, posted a video to YouTube that has since received millions of hits. In it, he explains that he may have found the first evidence of time travel. In a short clip from the DVD extras included with Charlie Chaplin's 1928 silent film The Circus, a woman walks by in the background talking into what appears to be a cell phone. The scene with the woman in question starts 2:42 in.
Conclusion: Assuming she's not just scratching her face, the answer is that she's using a portable hearing aid, technology that was just being developed at the time.
Four years earlier, in 1924, Siemens, the engineering conglomerate also responsible for building the first long-distance telegraph, filed a patent for "a compact, pocket-sized carbon microphone/amplifier device suitable for pocket instruments."
Source: The Atlantic
3. MODERN MAN IN 1917
The photo taken in 1917 in Canada, portrays a group of men, women and children sitting on the side of a hill. But eagle-eyed observers have noticed the photo stands out for a very particular reason – what appears to be a man straight out of the 21st century.
The photo was discovered in Lester Ray Peterson’s 1974 book ‘The Great Cape Scott Story’ – a tale of the Canadian region’s history.
As some have pointed out, "surfer man" may appear to stick out like a sore thumb from the rest of the crowd, but his clothing could have very well been in vogue. Slip-on garments without buttons were available at the time of this photo. The earliest T-shirt dates back to sometime between the 1898 Spanish–American War and 1913, when the U.S. Navy began issuing them as undergarments.
Conclusion: Considering that other guys in the picture are also wearing shorts (including the man to the left seated next to "surfer man"), logic says he’s not a time traveler.
Source: Science Global News
4. 1905 PHOTO OF A MAN WITH A PUNK HAIRCUT
This photo has been circulated around the internet as a man with a modern, "punk" haircut. The internet is claiming that this man has a "Mohawk" cut from the 1980s.
In reality, this style of hair was called an "Undercut" in 1905 when this photograph was taken.
The undercut is a hairstyle that was fashionable from the 1900s to the 1940s, predominantly among men, and saw a steadily growing revival in the 1980s before becoming fully fashionable again in the 2010s. Typically, the hair on the top of the head is long and parted on either the side or center, while the back and sides are buzzed very short. It was closely related to the curtained hair of the mid-to-late 1990s.
Conclusion: This man is sporting a hairstyle compatible with the 1905 styles.
Source: Wikipedia
5. CELL PHONE CAMERA AT THE 1962 FIFA SOCCER AWARDS
Like the Olympics, the FIFA World Cup for men's football -- what Americans call 'soccer' -- only comes once every four years; the event started in 1930, and has been a major international event ever since. Teams literally from all over the world compete to determine who is, in fact, the best team in the world. In 1962 the event was hosted by Chile and ran from May 30 to June 17, with 57 teams coming from six different continents to participate. The cup was won, once again, by the team from Brazil, who had also won the cup four years earlier!
The event was notable for many things -- for examples, there were many violent matches (much to the delight of the spectators) and it was the first time the average numbers of goals per game dropped below three -- so overall it was an exceptional sporting event, the chance of a lifetime for a true fan to attend... all of which may explain why someone would want to travel through time to see it.
Yes, time travel. Sometime around 2007, when pictures from the 1962 world cup event were posted to the internet, someone noticed something very odd in one photo showing the Brazilian team's captain, Mauro Ramos, holding up the trophy after the team's win in Santiago, Chile. To be helpful, the strange object was highlighted... then posted to Pinterest and other social media websites to be sure no one missed it!
In the following crop, we want to point out similar cameras (especially noticable on the far bottom left):
Yep... it's a box camera, not a cell phone. It's similar in design to other box cameras in the same shot (look to the very bottom left of this photo), but because its positioning in the picture only really shows one side and the fact the photographer is holding it up with one hand, it gives the impression of being used like a modern cell phone to take a picture.
Conclusion: While the answer in this case is a simple thing, the situation itself points up a repeating problem in paranormal 'studies' at the moment, a problem that commonly crops up in both 'time travel' and 'ancient astronauts/technology' claims... namely, the assumption that if you see something represented from the past that looks like something you know now, that they must be the same objects. In this case, if it looks like a cell phone, it must be a cell phone. But it is a box camera available in 1962. No time travel here.
Source: Anomolyinfo
People who claimed to be time travelers
1) Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain
Something weird happened to two British ladies while they were visiting Versailles, France on August 10, 1901. Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain claim that they traveled through time and met some historical personalities.
While walking, Moberly and Jourdain reached Petit Trianon where a strange figure appeared; a lady was sitting on the grass in front of the chateau and sketching. Moberly gave a detailed description of the woman: wearing a light summer dress, white hat, and long hair. When Moberly first saw her, she thought that she’s a tourist, but her appearance was somehow out of time.
She later claimed that the old-fashioned lady was Marie Antoinette. The two wrote a book about the experience, claiming they had traveled back in time for a brief period.
2) John Titor
Titor first popped up in 1998, claiming he was from a parallel timeline where time travel was invented in 2034 by General Electric. In 2001, he explained his mission was to collect a vintage computer from 1975, needing it to debug computers back in 2036. His “predictions” about the future mostly failed to come true (like the second American Civil War, circa 2013), and sleuthing around the Titor phenomenon turned up at least one person (not a time traveler) who seemed the likely source of the hoax. But no amount of debunking can take away the weird and amazing details of this story; it’s one of the earliest instances of internet folklore, and still one of its most fascinating.
3) Andrew Carlssin
THE FIRST NEWSPAPER STORY READ:
NEW YORK — Federal investigators have arrested an enigmatic Wall Street wiz on insider-trading charges — and incredibly, he claims to be a time-traveler from the year 2256!
Sources at the Security and Exchange Commission confirm that 44-year-old Andrew Carlssin offered the bizarre explanation for his uncanny success in the stock market after being led off in handcuffs on January 28.
“We don’t believe this guy’s story — he’s either a lunatic or a pathological liar,” says an SEC insider.
“But the fact is, with an initial investment of only $800, in two weeks’ time he had a portfolio valued at over $350 million. Every trade he made capitalized on unexpected business developments, which simply can’t be pure luck.
“The only way he could pull it off is with illegal inside information. He’s going to sit in a jail cell on Rikers Island until he agrees to give up his sources.”
HERE'S THE REALITY ABOUT ANDREW CARLSSIN:
Unfortunately, back in 2003 when Yahoo! was a primary news source for many Internet users, they reprinted some Weekly World News articles in their TV News section under a heading of “Entertainment News & Gossip,” a title that didn’t convey a strong enough “bogus” warning to readers who failed to notice the original source was the Weekly World News (or didn’t know what the Weekly World News was).
Despite this item’s tabloid origins (and the fact that it was covered nowhere but in the Weekly World News), it showed up in a variety of magazines and newspapers, reprinted verbatim as a “real” news item — to the amusement and consternation of FBI and U.S. Security and Exchange Commission officials.
The spokesman at the US Security and Exchange Commission in Washington gives a weary sigh and then a slightly strained chuckle when he hears the words “time traveler” and “inside trader”.
“This story is pure fantasy. There is no truth in it at all,” he says. “This is the kind of story that belongs in the same file as ‘Elvis Found on Mars.’
THE SECOND NEWSPAPER STORY
In a follow-up article in their 29 April 2003 issue, the Weekly World News reported that mysterious time-traveling Andrew Carlssin had been bailed out by an “unidentified benefactor” who ponied up $1 million, then jumped bail before an April 3 court hearing and disappeared without a trace.