Phone Booth Stuffing

Speaking of logistically confusing fads, the phone booth stuffing craze of the 1950s had teams of participants vying to see who could cram the most people into a single phone booth. Though there are some conflicting reports as to where and when the fad began, it was popularized in Durban, South Africa, in 1959, when a group of 25 people managed to contort themselves into a booth. By March of that year, students on college campuses throughout the United States and Canada were attempting to break the record. 

Students at St. Mary’s College of California achieved a count of 22 in a manner that looks legitimate, but it wasn’t long before a lack of standard criteria led to participants achieving greater numbers by dubious means. Some attempts counted people who were mostly (or entirely) outside the confines of the actual phone booth; some altered the booth itself to make it more accommodating; and others stretched the very definition of a phone booth by instead using an indoor phone room. This increasing entropy caused some existential questions about the activity. By the end of the year, the fad had seemingly died out, but anniversary reenactments still occasionally commemorate it.

Goldfish Swallowing

On March 3, 1939, Harvard University student Lothrop Withington Jr. swallowed a 3-inch goldfish, spurred by a $10 bet with his classmates. There was apparently enough buildup to the stunt that it had spectators and press coverage, and the publicity caused “goldfish gulping” to quickly spread to college campuses across the United States. The stunt almost immediately changed in nature, too —  while Withington’s initial bet was about whether or not he could swallow a whole goldfish, goldfish gulping became about how many whole goldfish someone could swallow in a single session. 

The fad was competitive. Just shy of a month later, the goldfish-swallowing record was 25. Then a record of 36 stood for a day, until MIT student Albert E. Hayes Jr. set a new record of 42. By the time Clark University’s Joseph Deliberato set an unthinkable record of 89, all kinds of concern was building among adults. College administrators considered the trend a breach of proper student conduct, animal rescue organizations thought it cruel, the U.S. Public Health Service warned against health risks, and a Massachusetts state senator even wanted to outlaw it, drafting a bill to do just that. The variety of opposition expedited the fad running its course; by the end of the year, the trend was history.

Ostentatious Hairpieces

Wigs were seen as status symbols among Western aristocracies starting with the reign of Louis XIII of France, who popularized long dark wigs in the 17th century. But by the 18th century, increasingly elaborate and more vertically oriented hairpieces came into fashion. This culminated in a tall and ostentatiously decorated style called a “pouf,” where layers of hair and additional hairpieces were amassed and pinned atop pads, and adorned with unusual decorative elements such as feathers, figurines, and more. 

The pouf was created by Marie Antoinette’s dressmaker Marie-Jeanne “Rose” Bertin and hairdresser Léondard Autié, though it was first worn by the Duchess of Chartres in 1774. Her wig was made from 14 yards of gauze and included a tower with plumes, multiple figurines, and a parrot. Not to be outdone, Marie Antoinette commissioned a series of poufs herself, sparking imitation throughout the French aristocracy. The style’s flamboyance increased throughout the decade and prompted criticism from both nobility and the populace. The peak of extravagance may have been what Marie Antoinette wore in celebration of a French naval victory over the British: a wig topped by a full replica of the victorious warship Belle Poule, blurring the lines between reality and caricature. 

The Pet Rock

The Pet Rock seems, on its surface, like the most frivolous fad on record. This simple Mexican beach stone was sold in a box (with air holes!) that included a satirical-sounding manual with instructions on what to do if the rock "appears to be excited." Created by California advertising professional Gary Dahl in August 1975, the rock was an instant hit as a fuss-free pet.

In reality, the product wasn’t meant to be taken literally, but more as a multimedia gag. After all, Dahl paid great attention to detail in cheekily fashioning the box as a pet carrier, and filled the “instruction manual” with tongue-in-cheek tricks to teach the rock. The entire phenomenon might make much more sense to us today if the manual had appeared on the New York Times bestsellers list under “humor.” As Dahl later explained it, “At the time, the Vietnam War was winding down; Watergate had just started up. There was a whole lot of bad news going on… It wasn't a real good time for the national psyche. I think the Pet Rock was just a good giggle. Everybody needed a good laugh and the media ate it up." 

The media attention was the driving factor in the rock’s popularity. As Dahl wrote, “During its five month retailing life span, the Pet Rock was referenced in nearly every daily newspaper in the country, most major magazines, all national network news programs, The Tonight Show and other late-night talk shows, most radio talk shows, and international media, such as the BBC. I was personally interviewed hundreds of times.” The relentless publicity led to the sale of more than a million Pet Rocks by Christmas of 1975. Even still, jokes don’t have a long shelf life under repetition: The fad was essentially over by 1976.

The emblem was designed by English artist Gerald Holtom, a pacifist and conscientious objector during World War II. His design was stark, yet powerful: a circle, symbolizing Earth, with downward-pointing lines inside, forming the shape of the letter “N” and the letter “D,” for "Nuclear Disarmament.” The symbol also held deeper layers of symbolism for Holtom. In a letter to Hugh Brock, editor of the British pacifist magazine Peace News, Holtom revealed that he saw the symbol as somewhat of a self-portrait, capturing an individual in despair, standing with outstretched hands. The artist also named Spanish Romantic painter Francisco Goya's 1814 painting The Third of May 1808, which portrayed civilian resistance to war, as an influence on his design.

Before long, the CND symbol had made its way across the Atlantic, where it shed its strict nuclear arms association and was used as a sign of peace during civil rights demonstrations. Although the symbol’s exact path to America isn’t known, it seems most likely to have been brought over by Bayard Rustin, a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr. who was at the 1958 London protest. Peace activist Philip Altbach has also claimed he brought CND buttons to his colleagues after a trip to England, introducing Americans to the symbol for the first time.

The symbol's power became palpable as the Vietnam War escalated in the mid-1960s. It was embraced by anti-war activists, and was even seen drawn on U.S. soldiers’ helmets in Vietnam. By 1969, the symbol had evolved into a more general icon of peaceful protest and living in harmony. The peace sign featured prominently at Woodstock, and became an emblem of the hippie counterculture. Today, the Woodstock Museum and New York’s Bethel Woods Center for the Arts etch a peace symbol into the former festival grounds each year.

For as widely as the peace symbol has been embraced over the years, however, it has also faced misinterpretation and criticism. Christian groups have construed it as a broken, reversed cross. Its anti-war association had it condemned as a communist symbol, and it has also been compared to a runic symbol for death. Nevertheless, the simple visual has endured as a totem of nonviolent activism, and it continues to be used in advocacy for conflict resolution, LGBTQ+ rights, and various other social justice issues. As far as South Africa, the sign was adopted as a powerful symbol of the resistance to apartheid, which even caused the government to attempt to ban the symbol in 1973. 

The peace sign’s designer, Holtom, did once express some regret over the final design of his original nuclear disarmament symbol. In an unused design, which was upside-down from the final image, the letter “N” was instead a “U.” Holtom saw this as a way to signify a broader disarmament — a “unilateral” one. Given the peace symbol’s universality, his instincts have proved correct either way, and his creation remains an aspirational symbol for a more peaceful and equitable world.

An Englishman Was the Wizard of Madison Avenue

The 1960s ushered in a new era of creativity in advertising, delivering advertisements that were brash and irreverent but also respectful of the consumer and entertaining to read. Ironically, one of the biggest players in American advertising was British ad man David Ogilvy, founder of the New York City-based advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather and known today as the “father of advertising.” Ogilvy believed in the importance of creating “story appeal” through the use of unique, unexpected elements or “hooks,” such as the eye patch worn by “The Man in the Hathaway Shirt” ads. “Every advertisement is part of the long-term investment in the personality of the brand,” Ogilvy said, and it was a philosophy that Madison Avenue took to heart. Ogilvy’s portfolio included the first national advertising campaign for Sears, the quirky Commander Whitehead ads promoting Schweppes Quinine Water, and the beautiful tourism ads that helped revitalize the image of Puerto Rico. In 1962, Ogilvy’s creative and innovative vision led TIME magazine to call him “The most sought-after wizard in today’s advertising industry.”

The Three-Martini Lunch May Be a Myth

The “three-martini lunch” — the typically all-male leisurely power lunches where ideas were sparked and deals were made over a few rounds of cocktails — is the stuff of legend today, and an iconic image of the culture surrounding Madison Avenue. And indeed, during the heydey of advertising’s golden age, drinking at lunch was not only acceptable, but expected. According to ad exec Jerry Della Femina, “The bartender would be shaking the martinis as we walked in.” It was accepted that drinking fueled the creative process; David Ogilvy’s advice for tapping into the creativity of the unconscious included “going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret.” Regardless of whether the real ad exes of Madison Avenue were regularly imbibing as much alcohol as Don Draper and his pals on “Mad Men,” there’s one indisputable fact about the so-called three-martini lunch: It was a deductible business expense that symbolized success as much as excess.

Real Cowboys Were Used to Sell Cigarettes

The Leo Burnett Company was one of the few major advertising agencies not based in Manhattan, but the Chicago agency was responsible for a number of well-known campaigns, including the Pillsbury Doughboy, Tony the Tiger, and one of the most successful campaigns in advertising history, the Marlboro Man. Smokers and non-smokers alike know the iconic cowboy character, who was developed by Burnett in the mid-1950s to rebrand the “mild” feminine cigarette. The ads were a hit and, in the mid-1960s, the team at Burnett went even further in promoting the brand by using real cowboys on a Texas ranch. When tobacco advertising was banned from television and radio in the early 1970s, the Marlboro cowboys still found success in print, making Marlboro the top-selling brand worldwide in 1972.

The ’60s Saw the First Female CEO of a Major Ad Agency

Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, college-educated women recruited to work on Madison Avenue were more likely to be found sitting behind a typewriter than in the boardroom. In a booklet published in 1963 by the J. Walter Thompson agency (JWT), young women were encouraged to hone their typing and shorthand skills so they could become the “right hand to a busy executive” or “secretary to one of the senior analysts.” But in 1966, Mary Wells Lawrence, the founding president of Wells Rich Greene, became the first woman to found, own, and run a major advertising agency. Two years later, she became the first woman CEO of a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Some of her agency’s most notable campaigns include Alka-Seltzer’s “Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz,” Ford’s “Quality Is Job One,” and the “I ❤ New York” tourism campaign.

The Oculist Order

In 2011, a team of researchers cracked the code of a centuries-old manuscript belonging to a secret society known as the Oculists. The text, known as the Copiale Cipher and believed to date back to between about 1760 and 1780, was discovered in former East Germany following the Cold War. Once the confusing use of Roman and Greek characters, arrows and shapes, and mathematical symbols was deciphered, a ritual manual for an 18th-century German group with a keen interest in eyesight was revealed.

The cipher detailed the Oculists’ initiation ceremonies, oaths, and “surgeries,” which seemed to consist of plucking hairs from eyebrows with tweezers — a nonsurgical procedure, of course, but described by the manuscript as symbolic actions. Another passage described a tobacco ceremony in which the hand pointedly touches the eye; another still told of a candidate kneeling in a candlelit room in front of a man wearing an amulet with a blue eye in the center. Research has suggested that the group’s focus on the eye was simply due to the fact that eyes are part of the symbology of secret societies — the Oculists did not appear to be optometrists, and their ultimate purpose remains a mystery. 

Kañoyetan

Northern Spain’s Basque Country is home to a handful of “txokos” — food-centric secret societies that started as a way to save money on food and drink when dining out of the home. These gastronomic societies function as exclusive clubs; members, often chosen after being waitlisted for years, have access to a fully stocked kitchen and pantry, where they cook for themselves or each other, using the honor system to pay for items needed or used. While it sounds similar to a modern dinner party, many of the txokos have been around for decades, and are still going strong.

Kañoyetan, reportedly the oldest society in the region (founded in 1900), counts renowned local chef Martin Berasategui — a 12-time Michelin star recipient — among its members. Until recently, txokos operated as secret societies only for men; the club claimed to be a place for men to socialize and cook outside of the home, where, according to the BBC, “their wives traditionally called the shots.” Wine and cider are always on hand; these days the dinners can start late in the evening, and have been known to stretch on until the early morning hours.

E Clampus Vitus

The mysterious society known as E Clampus Vitus originated in West Virginia sometime around the mid-1840s. By the early 1850s, the “Clampers,” like many people during the gold rush era, made their way west to California. Many of the fraternal club’s rituals were adopted as a reaction to the formalities of other organizations at the time, such as the Odd Fellows and Freemasons. Clampers, who were primarily miners, wore eccentric clothing and accessories, conducted lighthearted rituals, and adopted the slogan “Credo Quia Absurdum,” or, roughly translated, “I believe because it is absurd.”

The Clampers’ clubs waned around the turn of the 20th century, and by the 1920s, the society was all but defunct. But in the 1930s, the Clampers reestablished themselves with a new objective: to chronicle some of the most obscure details of the history of the American West. In California alone, more than 1,400 historical markers have been installed to commemorate moments in the state’s history that might otherwise go overlooked, including the birthplace of the martini, filming locations, and the “world’s largest blossoming plant.”

The Divine Brotherhood of Pythagoras

The name Pythagoras likely brings back memories of high school geometry, but the ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician was also the head of a mysterious society. The Divine Brotherhood of Pythagoras was formed in the sixth century BCE. The community may have been based on the study of mathematics, but it operated more like a secret society — or, as some might say, a cult. It’s believed they lived together communally, surrendered their personal possessions, were vegetarians who purportedly did not eat beans because it was believed beans had souls, and followed several strict rituals.  

The Pythagoreans’ motto was “all is number,” and their aim was to be pure of mind and soul. Their focus on mathematics and science was a way to achieve purity — as was avoiding wearing woolen clothing, and never stirring a fire with a knife, as laid out in Pythagoras’ rules. The group ultimately had many mathematical achievements, but their selective and rigid way of life contributed to a lingering sense of mystery around the community.