Long before Netflix, video games, or podcasts existed, people turned toward other hobbies for their personal amusement — some of which seem quite strange by modern standards. Entertainment-seekers of yesteryear would gather to witness the unwrapping of ancient mummies, or pack arenas to watch people walk in circles for hours on end. These odd historical pastimes offer a fascinating glimpse into how folks in the past enjoyed their free time. Let’s take a look at six truly strange ways people used to have fun.

Mummy Unrollings

“Egyptomania” — a fascination with ancient Egyptian culture — swept across Europe in the 19th century, particularly in Victorian England, where people developed an obsession with mummies. It was even popular to attend events known as mummy unrollings, where actual corpses brought over from Egypt were unwrapped in the name of both science and morbid amusement.

In the middle of the 18th century, brothers and anatomists John and William Hunter were among the first to unroll mummies, doing so in the name of science. But the practice transitioned into more of a spectacle under enthusiasts such as “the Great Belzoni,” an explorer and showman who specialized in Egyptian antiquities, and Thomas “Mummy” Pettigrew, an English surgeon who was drawn to Egyptian antiquities. Pettigrew hosted private parties where he unwrapped and performed autopsies on mummies, revealing various amulets or bits of preserved hair and skin to the delight of those in attendance. 

The trend really took off after the U.K. passed the 1832 Anatomy Act, which legally permitted doctors to dissect bodies for study. These mummy unrollings attracted large crowds, and were held at hospitals, scientific research centers, and private homes. The pastime remained popular for several decades, though ultimately lost its luster by the time Pettigrew died in 1865. Mummy unrollings continued, albeit on a smaller scale, with the last recorded event occurring in 1908. 

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Pedestrianism

While spectators fill up stadiums today to watch their favorite professional hockey or basketball team play, people once flocked to arenas for an entirely different sport: pedestrianism. Yup, competitive walking. 

This unusual form of entertainment developed an avid following of folks who would come to see their favorite professional walkers compete. One of the most celebrated competitors of all time was Robert Barclay Allardice, who was nicknamed the “Great Pedestrian” for walking 1,000 miles in 1,000 successive hours. Another famous walker, Edward Payson Weston, was known for his signature wobble, while competitor Daniel O’Leary was famous for pumping his arms while clutching corn cobs to absorb the sweat. Women participated as well, thanks in no small part to competitor Anne Fitzgibbons, who helped popularize the sport with women in the United States. Fitzgibbons became the first woman on record to walk 100 miles in less than 24 hours.

Pedestrianism really took off in the U.S. in the 1870s, in part because people were migrating to big cities and seeking out new activities to enjoy in their free time. Spectators flocked to see pros walk for six days at a time, covering hundreds of miles in total, with the person who covered the most ground over six days being named the winner. Competitions were held in large arenas that offered food vendors, live bands, and even wagering to add to the fun. 

Arguably the biggest event in the history of the sport came on September 21, 1879, when 13 of the best and brightest competitive walkers gathered at the original Madison Square Garden in New York City in front of 10,000 raucous onlookers. However, interest in pedestrianism began to wane toward the end of the 19th century, giving way to the rise of more popular sports such as baseball.

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Headless Portraits

Victorian England saw a heightened interest in all things macabre, so much so that it became popular to take “headless” portraits in the late 19th century. These images often depicted a headless torso holding their noggin in hand, an impressive feat given the lack of modern photo-editing software.

Photographer Samuel Kay Balbirnie was among the best in the business, advertising his services in the newspaper as: “Headless Photographs – Ladies and Gentlemen taken showing their heads floating in the air or in their laps.” To achieve this illusion, the subject would pose as multiple images were captured depicting the body and head making various gestures and expressions. The photographer would then take those images and cut out a head from one and paste it on another, resulting in one or several headless photos that appeared to be captured in one take. 

Seaweed Scrapbooking

While pressing and scrapbooking flowers has long been a popular pastime, for a brief moment in the 19th century there was a fascination with using seaweed instead. The trend was particularly popular among women, who often weren’t afforded the opportunity to travel the world collecting specimens of flora and fauna, but could collect seaweed from the local beach. It was also a social activity: People would head to the shore, pick up seaweed, and return home to scrapbook. It was such a popular pastime that it’s believed Queen Victoria herself was an avid seaweed scrapbooker when she was young, though her rumored collection has been lost to the annals of time.

Each page of these seaweed scrapbooks featured colorful and unusually shaped seaweed surrounded by ornate borders, resulting in amateur works of art. But achieving the results didn’t come easy, as mounting, drying, and pressing each piece of seaweed required considerable patience and skill. The hobby provided an artistic escape and allowed scrapbookers to freely express themselves. This can be seen in the work of Margaret Gatty, a renowned seaweed scrapbooker who published a two-volume handbook titled British Sea-Weeds in 1863 and 1872. 

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Staged Sea Battles

The ancient Romans found fun in watching unusual and indeed dangerous activities. In addition to gladiator battles, they enjoyed a spectacle called naumachia, or mock naval battles. These events drew thousands of spectators to amphitheaters, artificial lakes, and colosseums throughout the Roman Empire, which were flooded with water in order to stage conflicts at sea. Thousands of competitors participated on each side as both oarsmen and attackers, resulting in an entertaining, destructive, and often fatal spectacle.

The earliest recorded naumachia was held in 46 CE under Julius Caesar, and it featured 6,000 people competing atop an artificial basin in Rome’s Campus Martius — a large open area in ancient Rome used for military exhibitions and public gatherings. Forty-four years later, Emperor Augustus held an even grander spectacle with 1,000 additional combatants. But the audience didn’t come to the shows just to watch the action; the poet Ovid noted that naumachia were popular events for raucous revelry such as drinking alcohol and fornication. 

While the ancient Romans stopped holding naumachia by around 250 CE, there was a brief revival in 19th-century England at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre, which was flooded in order to recreate these ancient events for modern audiences.

Incubated Baby Fairs

Incubated baby fairs were dual-purpose exhibitions that not only entertained the masses but also played a pivotal role in providing care for premature babies. The concept originated at the Great Industrial Exposition of Berlin in 1896, where Martin Couney — then working as an apprentice under obstetrician Pierre Budin — debuted these innovative machines that could help premature newborns survive infancy. At the time, many people in the medical community viewed premature children as weak and unfit to reach adulthood, but Couney was an early advocate for their well-being. He brought the exhibition to the U.S. in the early 1900s, but needed a way to fund it, and opted to charge admission.

Couney set up an incubated baby fair along the Coney Island boardwalk in Brooklyn, New York, and another in Atlantic City, New Jersey. On display were 5-foot-tall glass-and-steel incubators housing the infants, who were cared for by a team of doctors and nurses. Many parents willingly brought their children to be displayed in these machines, as there weren’t any dedicated premature hospital units at that time. 

The exhibition was received with positive acclaim in the U.S., as people came to see these unusually small babies in the flesh. Spectators ponied up 25 cents (almost $10 today) to enter the exhibit, which helped cover the daily operating cost of roughly $15. It was essentially a quid pro quo situation — babies received essential care while attendees received a form of entertainment, however strange by today’s standards. That said, some elements of the exhibition were simply for show, such as babies being dressed in oversized outfits cinched at the waist to accentuate their tiny size. Couney continued to oversee these events, which remained popular boardwalk attractions until he shut them down in 1943, as hospitals began to debut dedicated incubator wards of their own.

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