Late 19th facts

While investigating facts about Late 19th, I found out little known, but curios details like:

It became illegal to sell ice-cream sodas on a Sunday in the American town of Evanston during the late 19th century. To get around the problem some traders replaced the soda with syrup and called the dessert an "Ice Cream Sunday." Today, we cherish them as "Sundaes".

In the late 19th Century, a woman named Nellie Bly became an investigative journalist, had herself committed to expose poor conditions at mental institutions, traveled the world in under 80 days, married a millionaire, and became an industrialist.

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 50 of the best facts about Late 19th I managed to collect.

1. In the late 19th century there was a dog, Bob, who would hitch rides all over the South Australian railway system. He had no owner but was widely known to railwaymen of the day. When he died he was eulogized around the world and was lauded as "the king of outcasts".

2. That, through most of western history, larger-than-average penises were considered embarrassing and barbaric; the modern idea that 'bigger is better', beginning in the late 19th century, was a side effect of pornography

3. While on an expedition into Africa during the late 19th century, James Jameson, heir to the Jameson Irish whiskey empire, bought a 10 yr old girl for six handkerchiefs and gave her to cannibals so he could witness and sketch her being eaten.

4. Originally, the classic banker's lamp had a green shade to lessen one's eyestrain due to early incandescent lights. The green eye visor commonly worn by accountants, telegraphers, and copy editors in the late-19th and mid-20th century were worn for similar reasons.

5. NY City used to use hollowed out trees as water mains in the early 19th Century. A working example was still connected to the city water lines as late as 2006

6. In the late 19th century, the Sears catalog used to offer a heroin kit, two vials of heroin included, for only $1.50 - slightly less than 50 2019 dollars.

7. When the deadliest tornado touched down in 1925 Missouri, people were taken by surprise. This was because the word 'tornado' was banned from US weather forecasts since the late 19th century due to hysteria. This mentality shifted after the tornado killed 675 ill-prepared residents

8. The arrow symbol (→) is a rather recent invention. The first arrow symbols were used sporadically in the 18th century and arrow symbols only became widely used in the late 19th century. Pointing hand symbols were used for centuries before the arrow symbol was invented.

9. The techniques employed by clickbait authors are derivative of the "yellow journalism" rampant in US newspapers in the late 19th century, which attempted to increase circulation by relying on eye-catching headlines that included exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism

10. Ice Cream sundaes were invented when it became illegal to sell ice-cream sodas on a Sunday in the American town of Evanston during the late 19th century. To get around the problem some traders replaced the soda with syrup and called the dessert an "Ice Cream Sunday."

What is true about late 19th?

You can easily fact check it by examining the linked well-known sources.

In the late 19th century the feminist movements in both Europe and America were decidedly anti-condom. Feminists wanted birth control to be exclusively in the hands of women, and disapproved of male-controlled methods such as the condom.

One of Seattle's wealthiest citizens in the late 19th century was a madame. Lou Graham's brothel made her so rich that she loaned money; her loans helped save other wealthy people after the Panic of 1893. After dying of syphilis, Graham's estate had no heirs so went to Seattle schools. - source

In the late 19th Century a plain, thin, red or black ribbon choker had ties to prostitution, as seen in Manet's painting Olympia - source

From the late 18th to mid-19th century, it was considered bad for women to read novels based on the belief that women were not "able to differentiate between fiction and life."

In the late 19th century Italian immigrants where referred to as a sub-human race and it was not uncommon for Italians to be hanged by mobs in southern states - source

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries telephone companies used existing barbed wire fences to transmit electrical phone signals to rural areas to save money due to the price of phone lines.

In the late 19th century, many Russian peasants in the Pskov region 'hibernated' for much of the winter, waking only once a day for some dry bread.

The paternoster or "Our Father": an elevator with no doors that never stops moving. Invented in the late 19th century and popular because they can carry more passengers—its construction was halted in the mid-1970s due to safety concerns. There are about 300 left, mostly found in Germany.

"Phossy Jaw", a disease that affected matchstick manufacturing workers in the late 19th and early 20th century. The vapor effused from white phosphorus would destroy the jaw bone, and generally led to jaw bone necrosis and eventual death by organ failure.

Champawat Tiger was a female Bengal tiger responsible for 436 documented deaths during the late 19th century

The vibrator was developed in the late 19th century to treat a debunked condition called female hysteria by inducing an orgasm.