Historical Scams that Should Have Been Obvious
Scams have always been easy ways to get money, but some of these scams should have been a bit more obvious
~Disclaimer: I am by no means a historical expert. I do not claim to be, nor do I have any degrees or formal education in the subject. I am simply a woman, sitting in front of a laptop, googling facts about random things, begging for you to love me— I mean, read me. Please take everything I post with a grain of salt as I can only find what the Google Machine chooses to show me. I try to dive as deep as I can and the following article is made up of about an hour’s worth of research coupled with my own beliefs. If you have any questions or inquiries about the subject, I include every link to every website I use for reference! While it won’t be a full-on source page, I will list the websites at which I found my information at the end of this, and every, article.~
To start, this was actually a really difficult subject to research. Mainly because I couldn’t quite figure out how to word what I was looking for. It’s hard to explain that I wasn’t looking for scams per se, but more that I was looking for products that were obviously fake but were being sold as real products that people needed. Not quite MLM scams, but legit products that people were convinced would save their lives. The easiest thing I could find that fit that explanation was “anti-comet pills.”
Halley’s Comet passes by Earth every 76 years. In 1910, French astronomer Camille Flammarion warned people that the comets tail could “penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere,” and subsequently end all life on Earth. Another scientist at the Royal observatory expressed worry that the comet may cause the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to completely switch basins, cause the rainforest of South America to be “swallowed up in a chasm,” and ocean-dwelling fishes and mammals to be bulled from the depths and brought to the deserts of Africa. How all of that would have been possible due to a comet passing by, I don’t know.
The majority of the scientific community denied these issues, and agreed that there was no danger, but the public was frightened by these other claims. The biggest fear was against “potentially deadly vapors.” In order to quell these worried, “opportunistic entrepreneurs” took advantage of the situation and sold things like anti-comet pills and anti-comet umbrellas. The anti-comet pills were just sugar pills and placebos and the umbrellas were regular umbrellas. They were meant to counteract the effects of vapors and ward off the vapors. These products were useless, but there was no threat anyway. A lot of people will take advantage of large amounts of fear in order to capitalize.
Another scam, in the 1860s, involved spiritualism. Williams H. Mumler had a photography business. He would promise people that he could take pictures of them with their deceased relatives spectral beings in the photos. However, while cathartic, these photos were scams. Mumler would use stock photos that resembled their deceased relatives. He would likely use two negatives to develop the photos which would give the impression that what was in one negative would also be present in the photo that was developed.
It’s no surprise that spiritualism would popularize this form of photography. Spiritualism was very popular at the time, as many people had lost loved ones in the Civil War and were desperate to regain some kind of relationship with those that were lost. Even Sarah Winchester was involved in spiritualism. Many people act as if she was crazy for believing that she could talk to spirits through seances, but what we must remember is that during that time, it was a popular thing to do.
More modern scams still happen, though, with things like Head-On migraine medicine, which was essentially a ChapStick for your forehead that was supposed to have helped with migraines, although it was never proven to help. Another scam in this was would be Power Balance Bracelets which were advertised to “improve athletic performance” by “responding to the natural energy field of the body.” Which is a bogus pseudoscience, but it was still backed by several well-known athletes.
I guess the point of this particular article would be to not always trust what advertisers are trying to tell you. In a capitalist society, most people are only trying to make money and it is important to research anything that claims to have scientific backing because in many cases, it’s not backed by any science and is only created by people trying to make an extra buck.
I’m going to try to be more regular about posting these. I know I say that a lot, but I really do like writing these articles, I just struggle to find the time to do it! That being said, the next article will be about the events of Chernobyl, what happened, and maybe even some strange theories about it as well! So please tune in to read that next!
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