15 Mind-Blowing Old-Timey Photos You Won't Believe Are Real

She actually made a good living this way, at one point taking home $200 a week, or the equivalent of $5,000 a week in today's money, and was able to retire from the sideshow business in 1886, which we're thinking is a happier ending than what other sideshow attractions got back in those days.

Hey, speaking of which ...

That is Fannie Mills, better known as the Ohio Big Foot Girl.

She is believed to have suffered from Milroy disease, which turns the lower half of your body into a Ninja Turtle and the upper half into a low-wage carnival worker. She was otherwise healthy and could actually walk (although with some difficulty). She was married and lived a normal life, aside from her career being a "look at my giant feet" sideshow freak.

Her disease did unfortunately mean that she would pass away at age 39, but then again, average life expectancy at the time was only 49, so it could have been worse.

Those men are not running in terror from an alien spaceship or a time traveler's pod arriving from the year 2250. It's just a tetrahedral kite, developed by Alexander Graham Bell in an attempt to build kites large enough for people to ride in. Which, you have to admit, sounds awesome.

The idea was also to make them so a motor could be installed, thus creating the first manned aircraft, but the end result was just a bunch of admittedly cool-looking kites that could only ever possibly be piloted by G.I. Joes.

That's not an isolated situation, by the way; for some reason that the History Channel has never bothered to explain, Nazi funny bones were well and truly tickled by taxidermy bears. And they were all adorable!

What, you thought robot porn was invented in Internet-era Japan? That picture up there is from 1935, bitches. We bet you didn't think they even had robots back then.

This is in fact a picture of some guy dressed up as Alpha the Robot, a popular World's Fair attraction, for the 1935 World's Fair in San Diego. He just happened to stumble across some nudists, who for some reason were also at the World's Fair, and posed with them for a few pictures, most of them containing way more FDR-era nudity.

This guy looks like he's about to storm a hive of bees and assassinate their queen, or collect a bounty on Jackson Pollock.

In reality, that second joke isn't far from the truth -- the man in the picture is about to engage in bloodless dueling, essentially the precursor to paintball.

It was popular in the early 20th century, and for some reason required everyone to dress like the futuristic guards from the Christian Bale movie Equilibrium:

Which could lead you to believe that the ancient wonder was in pristine condition when it was built 4,500 years ago, and has steadily degraded to its current state over the centuries. The reality is that it got completely buried in sand a few thousand years ago, and stayed that way until the 1800s:

Multiple attempts at excavation and restoration have been undertaken over the last 35 centuries or so to turn it into something tourists would actually drive to see.

The super-hairiness is the result of a condition known as hypertrichosis. But all we can think about is how impeccably groomed he was. Look at him! He must have spent a solid hour combing that shit every morning.

The cafe featured waitstaff dressed as devils and a doorman who screamed damnation at customers as they came in to be seated for the most uncomfortable sandwich in the history of time. Though it's not like you wouldn't know what you were getting into when you walked into the place:

Actually, this is Maurice Tillet, a professional wrestler from the mid-20th century known as the French Angel. His face looks like that due to a condition called acromegaly, a gland problem that makes the bones grow to an abnormal size. There has long been a rumor that DreamWorks used his face as the model for Shrek ...

... but we can find no source verifying the truth of that. We're not sure if it's true and the studio just never said so publicly so they wouldn't have to pay royalties to Tillet's estate, or if it's just a coincidence that the man looked like Shrek from every possible angle:

Actually, the world was so full of pork-based whimsy back then that we're now wondering if it wasn't some kind of meme. Just take a look at this ...

In the text of the bio, he was equally sure to note that his side-of-bacon costume won first prize at the 1894 Covent Garden Fancy Dress Ball, a sentence that really should impress on you the urgency of building a time travel device as soon as possible.

Actually, this is a photograph of the Nazis during their occupation of the Channel Islands between 1940 and 1945, the only part of the British Isles Germany ever successfully invaded.

The Nazis (being Nazis) didn't bother to recognize anything about the territory they had seized, issuing their own money, installing their own road signs (and making everyone drive on the right instead of the left) and even changing the time zone to be in synch with mainland Germany.

The ante was upped by the "Miss Lovely Eyes" pageant in Florida sometime around 1930, wherein contestants put on Hannibal Lecter masks and presumably won if they could maintain eye contact with the judges for the longest without crying.

And that, once and for all, proves that people back in the day just had no concept whatsoever of "creepy," for the same reason fish have no concept of "wet."

For more old-timey goodness you can't find in a bottle, please follow Jacopo della Quercia on Twitter.

For more batshit crazy things old-timey folks did, check out 8 Terrifying Instruments Old-Time Doctors Used on Your Junk and 7 Songs From Your Grandpa's Day That Would Make Eminem Blush.

If you're pressed for time and just looking for a quick fix, then check out 3 People Who Cheated Death Using Cartoon Physics.

And stop by LinkSTORM to discover how old-timey folks used to two-step like a boss.

And don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr to get sexy, sexy jokes sent straight to your news feed. Are you on Google+? So are we!

Do you have an idea in mind that would make a great article? Then sign up for our writers workshop! Do you possess expert skills in image creation and manipulation? Mediocre? Even rudimentary? Are you frightened by MS Paint and simply have a funny idea? You can create an infographic and you could be on the front page of Cracked.com tomorrow!