Show me anyone today who gets this excited over leap year, and I'll be really surprised.  From Washington State's 1948 yearbook.

From the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks' 1941 yearbook.

Is she playing patty-cake, dive balmy, or collar-bone conscious?  From The Ladies' Home Journal, 1945.

From the University of Alberta's 1947 yearbook.

From Foundations for Living by Fern Silver & Mildred Graves Ryan, 1943.

Twelve years before the invention of Mr. Potato Head, it was believed that potatoes couldn't play with you.  Today, we know that potatoes can in fact play.  From Think-and-Do Book to Accompany Fun with Dick and Jane, 1940.

A horse named Antedilivian Dragon.  From "Don't Give Your Animals a Name" in The Ladies' Home Journal, 1945.

Q: "How does air act?"

A: Unconscionably. 

From Modern Science in Our Environment by Dull & Mann, 1942.

The answer is supposed to be "They sell rabbits here," not "They sell cake here," but of course in The Wicker Man, it can be both.  (Though, as Summerisle shopkeeper May Morrison says, ""Those are hares, not silly old rabbits. Lovely March hares.")  From My Do and Learn Book to Accompany On Cherry Street by Russell & Ousley, 1948.

Most liked and disliked boys' and girls' names in 1945.  From The Ladies' Home Journal, 1945.

From The Children's Newspaper, 1948.

A dream of everything in candy-stripe as parachutists morph into butterflies.  From The Ladies' Home Journal, 1945.

Imaginary letters are so rarely studied anymore, as they were in the 1940s.

From My Spelling Grade 5 by Yoakam & Daw, 1949.

Two decades before Maxwell Smart talked into a shoe in Get Smart, this guy sang into his.  The biggest difference is that this guy is actually singing about sanitary napkins.  From The Ladies' Home Journal, 1945.

From The Children's Newspaper, 1948.

From Our Share in the Home by Laura Baxter, 1945.

From The Children's Newspaper, 1940.

Ours is blank, too.  From Pennsylvania College for Women's 1941 yearbook.

"Clothes make the man.  And the uniform makes man into a ____ ____."  From the Bombay Sunday Chronicle, 1945.

From Hollins College's 1940 yearbook.