Every era has its forms of entertainment.
Some hang around over the centuries, more or less in their original form, like the plays of William Shakespeare or the music of Beethoven.
Others, though, don’t age as well. I was reading an article on the Fodors travel website this week and they wrote about some tourist attractions from the old days that we’ve sort of outgrown.
Staged train wrecks, for one.
Promoters would take a couple of old trains that were headed for the scrap heap anyway, and run them into each other.
Never mind that this could – and did – hurt spectators, it was entertainment! There were tickets to be sold!
The amusement parks in Coney Island went even further.
They recreated disasters, tragedies from the news, everything from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum, to the Galveston Flood. The reenacted the flood only a few years after it had happened!
People went to these events for the same reason people today watch disaster movies. In this case, they were watching the reenactments live on a massive field, next to a grandstand that could hold 12,000 people – who all wanted to watch people pretending they were in one of the most tragic floods of all time.
I’m sure those spectacles were something to see, but the amusement park in its current form just seems a lot more… I don’t know… amusing?
We’re just a few weeks out from Halloween, and a nature preserve in Goshen, Kentucky is making the most of the moment.
They’re holding a haunted hike this month – and each year a big part of that haunting is handled by artist Jean Marie Smith, who constructs massive characters, from Frankenstein’s monster to Dora the Explorer, out of hay bales.
Nothing says horror than a giant hay bale Baby Shark.
4 Bizarre Spectacles From History That People Couldn’t Get Enough of (Fodors)
Iconic Characters Sculpted Into Halloween Hay Bales (Laughing Squid)
Back Cool Weird Awesome on Patreon and I promise not to make a spectacle of myself
Image via Wikicommons