However, it’s pretty obvious that what sqweels means is not Communism per se, but the fear and suspicion of a Communist uprising within the US – McCarthyism, the Red Scare, and all that.
There was a tinge of hysteria to these fears.
My grandmother (born 1890) got terribly upset when I used to wash my hair when I had a period - it was terribly dangerous but she couldn’t say why.
I once read a late 19th-century letter from a man to his son (someone famous, can’t remember who) who was attending boarding school, in which he warned him, among other things, to “not eat any bread”. I have no idea if fear of bread was widespread, but it sure looked strange in that letter.
I’m almost certain that fear of bread is more widespread now than then.
Esculators. When the first exculator was installed on the London Underground, a one-legged man was employed to ride up and down all day, to reassure people it was safe.
Sure, but KinkiNipponTourist was I’m sure referring to the period where it actually happening was a fear for many people, to the point that some graves were equipped with things like bells on the surface that could be rung by the person buried in the coffin, just in case. It was also a lot more reasonable fear back then given the more primitive state of medicine.
Perhaps there had been an outbreak of ergot.
No, there is an actual belief ghat sleeping in a room with a fan will kill you, by some unclear method, bit I’ve heard that some people believe it could suck the air out f your lungs. It’s not merely an issue of wanting to avoid feeling cold.
It’s a common myth in Korea. In fact, there’s a Wikipedia article about it.
In the articles, there’s this statement:
Not so much fear of a popular uprising but a fear that there was a huge fifth column of secret reds and various pinko stooges who were working to one day hand over our country to a totalitarian foreign power. And although the threat was overblown (and tarred many innocent people with a broad brush), it wasn’t baseless. Naive leftist utopians were singing the praises of the Soviet Union through the '30s and '40s, and it was party doctrine in the US for members to submit unquestioningly to party discipline, in many cases actively lie about their affiliation, and engage in agitprop and disinformation campaigns. The fear was that there was essentially a fanatical cult trying to worm it’s way into positions of power.
Doing damn near anything when you had your period. Bathing and hair washing were out, girls were excused from gym and swimming. It was a great excuse to get out of gym class.
People acted like if you got one bit of exercize during “that time of the month,” you would drop dead of sheer exhaustion.
My parents used to have all kinds of things. I wouldn’t call all of them “fears” perhaps, but they were supposed to result in potential unpleasantness. –
– Taking a shower right after a meal
– Drinking water during a meal
– Leaving the house with wet hair
Seconded. I was playing Capture the Flag in a sand quarry, and stepped in the wrong place. I sank up to my waist.
It is *very *disconcerting when (formerly) solid ground suddenly opens up and makes a horrible slurping noise.
Quite true. George Washington, who died in 1799, even gave instructions that he wasn’t to be buried for (IIRC) five days after his death, because of a then-widely-held concern about premature burials.
Black cats . . . or cats in general.
Walking under a ladder.
And there was probably some fear of the first elevators, escalators and revolving doors . . . actually, some people are still scared of them.
But those are straight up superstitions.
There are good reasons not to walk under ladders.
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It’s a fun thread. But it’s not a General Questions thread.
Moved from GQ to IMHO.
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Organ transplation. A recuring theme in old scifi involves the demand for organs being so great that death becomes the default punishment for any felony (again), minor crimes involve a forced donation of a non-vital organ, people being kidnapped & murdered for their organs, etc.
I remember seeing an old movie from the 70s where a woman’s brother (or possibly boyfriend) was in a motorcyle accident, had unexpected complications during surgery, and ended up in a coma or brain dead. She was got suspicious, and upon further research noticed that a large number of patients operated on in that hospital all ended up in comas, and were all sent to the same nursing home. It turned out the nursing was a fake. It only had a few patient rooms were the patients were kept only when their families visited. Otherwise they were stored on racks in a warehouse-type setup and whenever a rich person needed a transplant a patient was harvested and the family told they died.
Still nothing close to half a million given the war in the Pacific.
And I don’t think “slaughtered” is the right word given that the Americans in question were killed overseas while attacking the Nazis.
But the point about communists is that in the US there were widespread fears in the mid-20th centurty of communists lurking under every bed–having emerged from pods apparently.