Courtesy of the Costică Acsinte Archive.

Just as a magician should never lift a bunny by the ears, a ventriloquist should never lift a dummy by the throat.  Photo courtesy of the Stanford Archives.

"How the spirits untie Jacoby."  From Leaves from Conjurers' Scrap Books by Hardin J. Burlingame, 1891.  This should be of interest: Seance Parlor Feng Shui.

Here's a Chess queen from 1876, courtesy of the Library and Archives Canada.  See If a Chessman Were a Word: A Chess-Calvino Dictionary.

In 1957, TV viewers were able to "see the weather record itself."  Indeed, "The weather expresses itself" (Howard Lull, Unless the Lord Builds the House, 2009).

Crop circles in embryo, from Popular Mechanics, 1920.

INSTRUCTIONS: Click for another version of the portrait.
Photos courtesy of the NDSU Archives

INSTRUCTIONS: Click to reveal the original photo.

Can you read her face to determine the strength of the hand she was dealt?  From Hunter College's Wistarion yearbook, 1962.

INSTRUCTIONS: Click to reveal the photo of Bette Davis cropped by the newspaper.

INSTRUCTIONS: Click to reveal the photo of Sarah Bernhardt in 1859.

Water dominoes are played much like regular dominoes, though the rules are more fluid.  From Mocca, 1935.

"Sleep induced by mesmeric passes," from Hypnotism, A Complete System of Method, Application and Use by L. W. De Laurance, 1900.

You've heard of oldschool DJing.  Here's 1929-style.  From Die Bühne.

Today there are warning signs saying not to stand on the top.  But in the good old days ... what a time was to be had!  Photo courtesy of the AOK Library.

Here'a how to use a vending machine, from Hunter College's Wistarion yearbook, 1962 and 1961.  See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

Jean Genet suggested that the sun resists the moon's efforts to muddle, thwart, and counteract the precise measurement of days.  Genet says that the sun cleanses time while the moon makes it elastic and immeasurable.  Here's another way to cleanse time, from Mocca, 1936.

Many are skeptical of "spirit photography," but here is what we know: (1) I took a photo of something "then," (2) linear time is an illusion, (3) you're seeing me take that photo "now," (4) there is a oneness.  Thank you for smiling.

You've heard that it's possible to toot your own horn without blowing it.  It's true, and even a scarecrow can do it.  From Mocca, 1936. 

Before bad Photoshopping, folks pasted in crying babies whose heads are impossibly smaller than kittens'.  But as a general rule, a basket of kittens does go with just about any photo, in the proper proportion, of course.  From Die Bühne, 1926.