Here's a precursor to this line from a review of the film Tusk: "You could argue that Tusk has a good idea buried somewhere in its hollow walrus suit."  From the Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1893.

Here's a precursor to the "Be Our Guest" number in Beauty and the Beast, from The Ohio Farmer, 1908.

Here's a precursor to the Michael Jackson lyric, "Beat it, just beat it."  Date uncertain.

Uncle Sam had his own "Mini-Me" decades before the Austin Powers films.  From The Survey, 1917.

Here's a precursor to Skype.  "In the year 2000.  Correspondance Cinéma-Phono-Télégraphique," from 1900.

Before the invention of the recreational vehicle, people had picnics in Winnebago, as opposed to having picnics in their own Winnebagos.  From 1913.

Before phone cameras and social media, people had to buy postcards of their dinners out.

Which came first?: The game of strip poker or the deck of cards?  You guessed correctly — it was the cards.  "Kunstnerkarneval: Hjerterkonges Maskerade" by Brynjulf Larsson, 1912.  A scan by Nasjonalbiblioteket.

Here's a precursor to the photographic phenomenon of dogs with iPods.  The vintage illustration is captioned "Pavlov's artificial neurosis."  From Biology and Man by Benjamin Gruenberg, 1944.  The photograph is courtesy of Nao-cha.

A strange orb in front of a flying machine?  It's a precursor to the cult TV series The Prisoner.  (Airplane photo courtesy of the San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive.)

Here's a precursor to the art installation by Stefan Sagmeister in which a viewer’s movement can disrupt a projected spider web (video here).  From The Microscope by Simon Henry Gage, 1917.

"I'm in the arctic" -- a precursor to the tacky tourist postcard craze, from Letters from High Latitudes by Frederick Blackwood, 1858.  (See our previous tacky postcard precursor here, with a Florida alligator.)

Here's a precursor to Mickey Mouse, from Beihefte Zum Botanischen Centralblatt, 1913.

Before the advent of the sea monkeys, there was the Sea Monk.  From The Book of Days by Robert Chambers, 1864.

Here's a precursor to the still life of a can of yams in the farce The Can of Yams, from Cranberries: The National Cranberry Magazine, 1966.

Here's a precursor to the "pop-up ghosts" of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, from The Life of George Barnwell by Edward Blanchard, 1841.

Here's a precursor to "hot yoga" — "a hot walk to church," from Cassell's, 1894.

Here's a thousand-year-old precursor to arranging seeds into a 9-square grid.  The newfangled technique is for germination (our photo is from Elements of Farm Practice by Archie Dell Wilson and E. W. Wilson, 1919).  The ancient technique is for geomancy and comes down to us from Kazakhstan (perhaps via Persia) called Kumalak (Qumalaq).  One takes 41 beans and (through a simple process of dividing into piles and finding remainders) places them onto the squares of the grid.  The squares at the top of the grid represent two eyes and the head.  The middle squares are two hands and the heart.  The bottom squares are two feet and a horse.  The rows also represent (top to bottom) past, present, and future.  The number of beans in each square is associated with the elements (1 to 4 representing fire [for action and clarity], water [for tension and imbalance], air [for encounters and associations], and earth [for wealth and sorrows]).  And so parts of the body are combined with elements to form the divinatory reading: water in the head, wind in the eyes, fire in the hands, sand in the heart, and so on.  Here's a link to an article about the special meanings that might come up with particular combinations of beans.  By the way, Didier Blau's Kumalak system appears to be very hard to find.  We acquired ours from Simon & Schuster Australia.