Here's a precursor to web searches, from Elizabethtown College's Etonian yearbook, 1922.  (For some unbelievably weird yearbook imagery, see our How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.)

Here's a precursor to W. C. Fields' character of the tramp juggler (see inset), from Bluebeard, or Fickle Fatima and the Fatal Key by Edmund Arthur Ponsonby Hobday, 1888.  See our previous W. C. Fields precursor here.

Here's a precursor to Dr. Seuss' Cat in the Hat, from Lilliput Lyrics by William Brighty Rands and illustrated by Charles Robinson, 1899.

Here's a precursor to dating apps, from The New Hyperion, 1875.  The caption reads, "The trysting-place."

Here's a precursor to the Pillsbury Doughboy, 57 years before his television debut.  From Ye Butcher, Ye Baker, Ye Candlestick-Maker by Robert Seaver, 1908.

Here's a precursor to Harpo Marx under the bed in 1929's The Cocoanuts, from Too Clever by Half by John Lang, 1878.

Here's a precursor to the Woman With No Name from David Lynch's delirious farce "On the Air" (1992), from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

Here's a precursor to 1939's "The Teapot Song" (a.k.a. "I'm a Little Teapot"), from The Nightingale by Richard André, 1899.

Here's a precursor to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, from Twycross's Redemption by Alfred Saint Johnston, 1888.  The caption reads, "Don't let us pretend that any longer, dear."