"Shake, but be careful of my sore thumb."  From Cartoons Magazine, 1919.

Here's a dollar bill that fell asleep for five years and grew a long beard.  The artist was worried that "$1" wasn't enough to identify the bill, so he added a "Dollar Bill" banner.  From The Saturday Evening Post, 1920.

Here's the crinoline monster from Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1876.

INSTRUCTIONS: Click to move forward in time.

Creep, Shadow! by A. Merritt, 1934.

Here's a precursor to Elizabeth Rees' observation that "the hours overlap" (Tilting Gravity, 2012), from a Soviet greeting card.

"Clothed in 'death costume' and preaching as 'a voice from the dead.'"  From Popular Mechanics, 1911.

Here's Madame Square Root of Negative One.  From Jugend, 1904.

Here's a precursor to the postmasculine world.  From Jugend, 1897.

"You seem to be having a picnic all by yourself."  From Fairy Tale Plays and How to Act Them by Mrs. Hugh Bell, 1896.

"Teaching a child to exhale" (Pearson's, 1897).  Indeed, "Good breathing doesn't come naturally to most people" (Human Biology, 2005) and "A regular system of correct breathing must be taught in the first days of instruction" (Manual of Church Music, 1905).

Can you guess the visual pun here?  The answer is in black text on a black background; highlight to view: Officer's mess.  From Cartoons Magazine, 1919.

"More than ever."  From Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1882.

From Fun magazine, 1886.

"Of course it was sheer luck that I actually saw the ghost."  A detail from Hunter College's Wistarion yearbook, 1934.  See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

INSTRUCTIONS: Click to reveal the painting.

Even if the Loch Ness Monster is an automaton, as Ure's Dictionary of 1846 suggests, "Does it then follow that the automaton possesses a freedom of action, a freedom of will?  Yes, we should think that it has a certain freedom of action (the freedom of will we had better leave aside because here the analogy is doubtful at present)" (I. G. Makarov, Cybernetics Today, 1984).