- Ever been so bored you staged a mock Roman naval battle with 1,000 performers?
After a hard day at work, you can come home and turn on the TV, play video games, read a book, go to the gym… We have more ways to keep ourselves entertained than ever in history.
Of course, people have always wanted to avoid ennui by doing something. Anything. Back in the day, though, the options could be limited.
As such, people did some stuff that can seem downright bizarre to us today. But when the other option is to sit at home and do nothing at all, even the weirdest activities start sounding pretty fun.
Here are nine strange things people used to entertain themselves with.
1. Watch People
If you have a grandparent from a certain age group, their favorite activity might still be to go out to the front porch, sit in a rocking chair, and… Watch.
In the modern day, staring at people going by can sound creepy (and get you on a list, depending on where you do it). But for a long stretch of human history, it was a prime form of entertainment.
And to be fair, watching life go by can be a good time and build a sense of community. Cars drive by, neighborhood kids run around, a cool bird lands in the tree, the neighbor dog chases a squirrel…
Maybe we should bring porch-sitting back.
2. Ride an Escalator
Today, riding an escalator is something you do just to get to the second floor of the mall or something. But when the escalator was first introduced in the 1890s, it was a thrill.
In fact, the first ever public escalator was built in 1896 — in the Coney Island Amusement Park. That’s right; it was the equivalent of getting on a roller coaster.
It was a bit different from modern ones, though, as instead of standing, you sat on a wooden slat. Although the escalator was there only for two weeks, a recorded 75,000 people came to ride it.
Even after escalators started appearing in public buildings, people would go ride them just for the fun of it.
3. Picnic in a Cemetery
If you want to have a picnic, you’ll probably head to the park. But in Victorian England and America, public parks were actually very rare.
So, instead, people would have their picnics at cemeteries.
Considering that cemeteries were quiet, landscaped public areas, it was the closest thing people had to a park. While they sat, ate, and chatted, they would often also clean and maintain family grave plots.
4. Take X-rays
Getting an X-ray in the modern day involves going to a hospital, putting on a lead apron, talking to a doctor… It’s not fun. But after Wilhelm Röntgen invented X-rays in the late 19th century, they became a huge fad.
Stores would sell home X-ray kits that would let you peek at your bones just for the heck of it. We now know that showering yourself with X-rays isn’t exactly healthy, but back then, people didn’t know any better.
And come on — they were called “X-rays.” How cool is that?
Home X-ray machines became so popular that some companies started selling lead-lined undies so no one could peek at your privates. We’re not sure if they were ever really necessary, but they sold them.
5. Sit on Poles
In the 1920s, a completely harebrained trend popped up. People would set up tall poles with a small seat on top and then sit there. For days on end.
In these outlandish endurance tests, folks would sit at the top of the pole for even weeks at a time. The longest pole-sitting sessions made national news, but there were certainly plenty of local pole sitters that have been lost to time.
You know what? We called pole sitting weird, but then again, we could absolutely see this trend come back if the right video went viral on TikTok.
6. Shoot Photos and Selfies
You thought taking selfies was a modern thing? Dream on. People started doing it as soon as cameras were invented.
In fact, taking selfies was easier back then, in some ways. While you couldn’t just hold up your phone to snap a pic, old-timey cameras took so long to capture an image that you had plenty of time to get in front of the lens and strike the perfect pose.
Photo manipulation was invented immediately, as well. One of the biggest photo fads back in the day were “headless photos,” where the cameraman would manipulate the image so that it looked like people were holding their own severed heads.
Read more about early photography in our list of 8 ways old-timey photography was odd (and dangerous).
7. Mock Naval Battles
Ancient Rome was well-known for offering its citizens bread and circuses. And one of the best shows the state could put on was the naumachia — a staged naval battle.
During these shows, the venue (including the famous Colosseum) were flooded with water. Actual battleships would sail out onto the stage, with hundreds of performers duking it out to reenact famous sea battles.
Sometimes, however, the reenactment was disturbingly accurate. There were gladiatorial naumachia, where the actors would brandish real weapons and slaughter en masse while the crowds cheered.
8. Tour Asylums
Going on a spooky tour of an old, abandoned asylum or mental institution is fairly common. Back in Victorian England, though, these tours were on a whole other level of creepy — because those notorious asylums were still actively used.
The facilities would charge a pittance to allow visitors to come and gawk at their patients, who often lived in horrendous conditions. Nothing brightens up your day like witnessing the absolute degradation of human dignity, right?
Perhaps the worst offender in this category was the St. Mary Bethlehem asylum in London — better known as Bedlam. Yes, that’s where the word comes from. If the patients weren’t unhinged enough, the “doctors” would allow visitors to poke them with sticks to rile them up.
Fun.
9. Watch Executions
The single most popular pastime of the entirety of human history is watching someone die. Since the dawn of time, public executions have been the main form of spectacle and entertainment virtually everywhere humans have ever lived.
And they weren’t small events. Records from 16th and 17th-century Europe testify that tens of thousands of people came to watch head-choppings, hangings, stake burnings, and other forms of brutality.
Perhaps the largest crowd to ever come see an execution gathered in England in 1824 to watch the hanging of a money forger (the last such execution in Great Britain). According to documents from the time, more than 100,000 people were in attendance.
To put that into perspective, the Super Bowl usually draws 70,000-80,000 live viewers. Football just can’t compete with seeing a man hang.
These were just some things people did to keep themselves occupied. For more, check out our list of 8 strange hobbies and pastimes that used to be popular.