Yesterday's Tomorrow Today

Roadside Resort reader Neil has reminded me of a terrific blog featuring articles from the now defunct Modern Mechanix, a science and technology magazine first published in the late 1920s to compete with the already successful Popular Science and Popular Mechanics.

Many articles, like those of its competitors, were simply outrageous. Two of Neil's favorites cover a 1934 plan to dam up and fill in the Hudson River to reconnect Manhattan Island with the mainland and a 1932 proposal to convert city intersections to two under-over levels topped by a high-rise, eliminating traffic signals (and also, apparently, left turns).

Pictured here is one of my favorites, the "Hangover Heaven" bonnet designed to "refresh [actresses'] faces on hot studio sets," a device purportedly appropriated by the rest of Hollywood's elite to cure their party ills.

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