Real ‘Girls Gone Wild’ in History and Their Fascinating Stories

When we woke up today, we didn’t know our world would expand to include the existence of an all-female rooftop fight club. Guess life’s full of surprises. Now, full disclosure – they’re probably pretend boxing rather than actually fighting, but it’s still radically candid. The photo’s from 1938, showing the roof of the Ball Building, on what today is the Paramount studio lot but back then was owned by RKO Pictures.

We almost hate to ruin this amazing photo by giving it context, but it’s a burden we’re going to have to bear. These lovely ladies are the Lusty sisters – yes, really. When this photo was taken – January, 1936 – the Lustys were pretty famous in English show jumping circles. Naturally, Diane and Zena usually rode horses rather than green sea turtles, but we guess this was too good to pass up.

If this photo wasn’t sepia toned, you could’ve fooled us into thinking it was taken sometime in the last few decades. We mean, a woman this inked is STILL not all that common a sight today – just imagine what it must’ve been like for Maud Wagner to walk around a century ago! This photo’s from around 1911, four years after Maud traded a date with a guy for tattoo lessons.

As the 19th century wound down, the Vanderbilt family was one of the richest in the U.S. Having made their fortune in shipping and railroads, they were nonetheless deemed low-class outsiders by the snobs in New York City’s high society. Well, in 1883 Alva Vanderbilt decided she would change all that – with a single costume ball. Vanderbilt spent $250,000 (nearly $6 million in today’s money) on it – but it worked.

If you’ve seen many Victorian-era photographs, you know almost all of them have one thing in common – the folks pictured look like they’re attending a funeral. The funny thing is that some of them WERE, technically, because taking photos with deceased relatives was pretty popular. Even when everyone in the photo had a pulse, though, smiles were rare. It might’ve had something to do with long exposure times, measured in minutes.

If you don’t know anything else about this photo, it seems like just a random old snapshot of a bygone era. Once you know, though, you can’t help but gasp. Allow us to set the stage, then. The photo was snapped at Marco’s Cafe in Dallas, somewhere around 1929. Just ignore the man – he’s not really important. Look at the woman. Even if you don’t recognize her, you’ve heard of her.

Ooh, is this photo from a rehearsal for a very, very, very early version of Dancing With the Stars? Oh Lord, it isn’t, right? Nope. Sure, the 1920s were known as the Roaring Twenties because they were a time of unprecedented progress and change that turned many things on their heads. They were, arguably, the first truly modern decade of the 20th century. Unfortunately, all that progress would skip women’s bodies.

There’s really no way to verify this one way or the other, but this photo was captioned, “Fanny Barker – kitchen maid, 1875.” This lady’s first name being “Fanny” is probably a little too good to be true, but you know what? We’re okay with not knowing the real story. Honestly, it’d probably only ruin it if we knew. We’d much rather Bosom Teacup Lady remain a mystery to us forever.

Considering everyone’s so obsessed with taking photographs, it’s a travesty that Margaret Bourke-White isn’t a household name. She really should be. The first American female war photojournalist, she was also the first foreign photographer allowed to take pictures in Soviet factories. Well, at least Bourke-White was famous in her day. In fact, she was so wealthy she could afford an apartment on the infamous 61st floor of Manhattan’s Chrysler Building.

No award for figuring out who this gym rat is. She is, after all, one of the 20th century’s biggest stars. Going by Norma Jeane Baker in childhood, you know her as Marilyn Monroe. This photo’s great, isn’t it? We’re used to seeing Monroe in dresses or really tight sweaters, but we don’t often see her in jeans and a terry cloth bikini top pumping iron. Nevertheless, there she is.

Are you a fan of the Tony Hawk’s video game series? Don’t be afraid admitting it makes you look old. While the first game was released in 1999, the latest one came out in 2020. Well, in an alternate timeline, you may have been able to spend childhood afternoons performing grinds and ollies in a game called Ellen O’Neal’s Pro Skater. She’s pictured here, effortlessly skating on two boards simultaneously.

Let’s just say there’s a reason for the old saying, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Back in the early 1950s, though, Sin City had a peculiar kind of tourist attraction that you got to take home with you – whether you wanted to or not! See, in 1951 the U.S. government detonated an atomic bomb in the Nevada desert – the first in a long series of nuclear bomb tests.

This girl’s a whole entire mood all by herself. It’s pretty obvious that she’s at a concert of some sort. By the looks of her – and the girl plugging her ears in the background – we might’ve guessed they were attending a Norwegian black metal concert. They, uh, aren’t. Actually, the performer those people are watching in this April, 1957, photo is Elvis Aaron Presley. You may have heard of him.

At first, we were convinced this was a still from some terrible ’70s movie about a female cop who finds a baby in her desk drawer one morning. It isn’t, but the real story behind the photo is actually slightly crazier. On July 8, 1971, that nine-month-old girl was abandoned in a downtown Los Angeles hotel room. The hotel manager called the police after receiving complaints she’d been crying for hours.

If it wasn’t for the fact that Wonder Woman’s first appearance in comic books came in October 1941, we would’ve told you that this had to be someone dressed up as her. In a spiritual sense, that might not actually be that far off the mark. This March, 1913, photo is of Inez Milholland. Though not very well-known today, she was one of the most famous women of her era.

There are two things you need to know about this 1949 photo. Number one: the ladies were all showgirls at New York’s Minsky Carnival. The Minsky family operated burlesque shows in the Big Apple before they were quite literally run out of town for being too scandalous. The second thing you need to know about this photo is that the girls are taking part in an exciting spaghetti swooshing contest.

Some of the world’s most successful athletes today are women. Seems something almost not worth mentioning, but it is – because that wasn’t always the case. This woman helped change that. The Boston marathon is one of the world’s most famous foot races. Until 1972, though, no woman officially ran it. Bobbi Gibb wanted to be the first in 1966, but when she asked the race director he refused, saying women were physiologically incapable of running marathons.

This photo makes the rounds online every so often, but do you know its backstory? Let’s start with the principal players. On the left is arguably Italy’s biggest film star, Sophia Loren. The woman she’s giving legendary side-eye to is Jayne Mansfield – less famous for her movies and more famous for being a Marilyn Monroe-esque blonde bombshell. In 1957, Loren was the guest of honor at a Beverly Hills event.

Let’s give some props to Mrs. E. N. Dickerson of New York City, who caught this giant sea bass off the coast of New York in 1901. That sucker weighed in at 363 pounds, and Mrs. Dickerson supposedly needed 55 minutes to bring it in using her bladed gaff stick. You might think that 363 pounds is quite a bit for a fish to weigh, and you wouldn’t be wrong.

World War II was hard all around. While most of the attention was focused on the brave G.I.s fighting on the frontlines, though, we shouldn’t forget the gals who stayed home. “Normal” life when the U.S. was at war overseas was actually far from normal, as their existence was impacted in many ways, great and small. One of the more serious disruptions had to do with a sudden pantyhose shortage.

It seems like the hottest thing for celebrities to do today is either own a vineyard or a winery. Seriously, if we listed every celeb involved in winemaking we’d be here all day, so let’s just list an eclectic Californian top four – Dan Marino, Drew Barrymore, the Black Eyed Peas’ Fergie, and Motley Crue’s Vince Neil. Despite all these famous Johnny-come-lately’s, wines actually have a long, proud history in Cali.

For the first quarter of the 20th century, the Grays Harbor region of Washington was the biggest hub of lumber production and shipping in the world. Wood wasn’t just big business – it was HUGE business. Well, as you might imagine, this situation led to all kinds of marketing ploys. Some may have been clever. Others may have been like New Coke. The “Spruce Girls” probably belong to the latter group.

Man, literally EVERYBODY lit up back in the day! Nah, we’re going to have to be the bearers of bad news here. These ladies were most likely not actual nuns. The photo, snapped in August, 1931, was taken during a pageant in Walmer Castle, which is in Kent, England. They’re probably just regular women dressed up as nuns, but that does bring up a fascinating question – can real nuns smoke?

If you’ve seen the movie Hidden Figures – and if you haven’t you should – you already know about computers. No, we’re not talking about the things you’re reading this on right now. We’re referring to the human kind – people whose job it was to make computations. The movie’s about the African-American ladies who crunched numbers in the ’60s to get astronaut John Glenn into Earth orbit, but computing’s been around since the 17th century.

Women, like men, Amelia Earhart once said, “should try to do the impossible.” In everything she did in her all too brief life, Earhart followed that example. Maybe that’s why she’s still remembered so well – and so fondly – today. Born decades before her time, she still managed to become the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She summed it up perfectly: “Adventure is worthwhile in itself.”

You may have seen a photoshopped version of this image making the rounds. Sorry to rain on anybody’s parade, but it’s fake. While the undergarment sported by actress Merry Anders was indeed a “bullet bra,” it wasn’t quite nearly as pointy, as you can see in the original image. Still, that doesn’t mean that the REALLY pointy numbers, popularized by starlets like Marilyn Monroe and Lana Turner, weren’t a thing.

History’s awesome. Real history – the kind you can touch and smell. We’re not talking about snoozefest school classes, but about the remnants left behind by the people who came before us. The most fascinating people aren’t the Thomas Jeffersons, though – they’re the complete “nobodies” who never made it anywhere near a history book. Take this woman, for example. The only information we have is that she was from Richmond, Virginia.

At a superficial glance, you might think men are the focal point of this photo. They actually aren’t – they’re just eye candy. Yes, despite the time being 1940 and the place being Dallas, Texas, those men are being seriously objectified by those three ladies. They were carhops – waiters bringing food to people’s cars. You might call them “Booters,” as there’s no hooting owl in sight. The backstory is pretty simple.

This photo just made us laugh – both because the job those two ladies are doing is so ancient it might as well be prehistoric, and because they look so bada** doing it. As you may already know if you listened in history class, women came into the workforce out of necessity rather than by design. During both world wars, there were simply not enough able-bodied men to work – because they were off fighting in a global conflict.

In this 1934 photo, Valaida Snow is conducting an orchestra at London’s The Coliseum. “Valaida who?” you might be asking. Well, Louis Armstrong certainly knew who she was – he called her the world’s second best jazz trumpet player, after himself. It’s a crime, then, that Snow – dubbed “Little Louis” – is almost lost to history. Besides singing and dancing, she could play ten different instruments by the time she was 15.

No, this isn’t a pretentious black-and-white photo from the set of an episode of The Big Bang Theory you can’t seem to remember. What it IS, though, is the woman all those dorks on Big Bang Theory wished they could be. Not only was Margaret Hamilton a software engineers – in the 1960s! – but she may have actually coined the phrase “software engineering.” We dare you to say that’s not cool.

There’s something about the way this woman’s looking at us that makes us know we don’t want to mess with her. In 1982, when she was 24, Englishwoman Elspeth Beard finished three years of her architectural studies. What’d you do on breaks between school years? Whatever it was, we can guarantee it wasn’t half as cool as what Elspeth did. You see, that beast of a BMW motorcycle is hers.

Say what you will, there is something to be said for this girl’s efficiency. If you need lung cancer, like, yesterday – this device is probably for you. Invented in 1955, it allows the frankly deranged individual who uses it to take in an entire pack all at once – that’s right, there are 20 of those bad boys on there. Yeah, we counted. It’s kind of crazy, thinking about it now.

We have no idea if anyone under the age of 60 even remembers it, but The Beverly Hillbillies used to be the biggest thing on TV. The show ran for nine seasons, and was so popular that it inspired two more shows set in the same universe – Petticoat Junction and Green Acres. It was also a classic example of something professional reviewers absolutely hated, but the people at home adored.

This photo conclusively proves there’s really no limit to what you can achieve when you don’t mind critically endangering people’s lives. Okay, we’re exaggerating – no one forced Marilyn Rich to perform this stunt. The 27-year-old was a circus trapeze artist whose specialty was dangling from helicopters and performing various routines. This photo is from August 1951, and shows Rich dangling over Manhattan’s skyscrapers, at a height of about 600 feet.