Watch the video to see the messed up things people believed 50 years ago!
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00:00Considering some of the insane things people believed 50 years ago,
00:04it's a wonder any of our parents or grandparents survived long enough to
00:07realize how stupid they all were. Here are some of the things people really believed back then.
00:12Pregnancy can cause all kinds of weird body problems, and that includes constipation.
00:17Today, you have to eat healthy or possibly take a fiber supplement to relieve discomfort. But 50
00:21years ago, doctors didn't bother with any of that healthy lifestyle mumbo-jumbo. Instead,
00:26they advised pregnant women to do the logical thing — smoke cigarettes. It's true. Alan F.
00:31Guttmacher, a legit gynecologist and obstetrician, said as much in his book Pregnancy and Birth.
00:36The biggest thing Guttmacher wanted moms to avoid was unsightly weight gain,
00:39which he suggested be limited to 20 pounds. And if an expected mom was starting to get heavy?
00:44Try skipping lunch and substitute skimmed milk with a few unsalted crackers.
00:49Nothing is more important than keeping your hot bod, right? Just another reason to keep up your
00:54smoking habits before your baby bump gets out of control. So if you know someone born in the late
00:5960s and they came out a little weird, you probably have this guy to blame.
01:03Even though video games are a multi-billion dollar industry today and heroic fat plumbers
01:08have become a global phenomenon, the seeds of the industry didn't even exist until 1967.
01:13That was when Ralph Baer assembled a prototype for the first home game system.
01:17Baer worked for a TV company, and even though he tried to sell them on the idea of including
01:21a game system with their televisions, nearly every one of his bosses was dismissive.
01:25Even though he got a little money to produce a prototype, overall, video games seemed pretty
01:29stupid to most of the executives he worked for. After all, who'd want to play some kind
01:33of electronic game on the TV when you had all the thrills of Monkey's Uncle?
01:37"...and you're a monkey's uncle! It's wild! Complete with stunt mats,
01:42cards, horns, clickers, tricks, spinner, and monkey timer!"
01:46Patents were filed by 1971, and the device was sold to Magnavox, who sold it as the Odyssey.
01:51Unfortunately, by the time their system debuted, Atari's Pong stole all their glory.
01:56If only the execs in charge had realized what they had on their hands with Baer's invention,
02:00we could have met this kid...
02:01"...my mission in life is to save all of mankind."
02:05...a few years sooner.
02:07After pumping your baby full of cigarettes, what else can you do to your kid to make them
02:11a good, healthy American? According to Dr. Walter W. Sackett, Jr., the very first thing
02:15you should worry about after giving birth was the spread of communism. Okay, let's back up a second.
02:21In his 1962 book, Bringing Up Babies, Dr. Sackett felt that neither breast milk nor
02:25formula were enough for a newborn. So he said babies should start eating cereal within two
02:30days of escaping the womb. Don't let your complete lack of tea stop you from chomping
02:34on those Cheerios, baby! By nine weeks, according to the good doctor, a baby should be able to chow
02:39down on whatever else the family would normally eat. Sackett wasn't completely crazy. He did
02:44recommend waiting until a baby was six months old before starting with black coffee. And when your
02:49baby cries at night because its blood is basically 90% coffee now? Don't even think about coddling it.
02:55Sackett insisted that a baby had to learn to suffer, and soothing a crying baby was very
02:59literally sowing the seeds of socialism. With just one lullaby, you might throw off
03:04the global balance of power. Way to go, you absolute monsters.
03:09Laser technology was only just developing 50 years ago, and a lot of what was predicted
03:13in the 1967 documentary The Laser Light Fantastic actually came true. We're now
03:18regularly using lasers for surgery and tattoo removal, just as predicted.
03:22Laser surgery is still highly experimental. By the 21st century,
03:26a searing beam of laser light may join the scalpel as an essential surgical tool.
03:32But they still got one thing very, very wrong. In the late 60s,
03:36inventors assumed that they'd need something to tackle the major epidemic of typewriter typos.
03:40The answer? That's right. Lasers.
03:43Like the world's most boring sci-fi ray gun, the functional laser eraser would kind of blast a
03:48single letter right off the face of a piece of paper without damaging the paper itself.
03:52Understandably, this seemed like it'd be a pretty big deal when people actually typed stuff with
03:57ink instead of pixels. Lasers work their magic, and before you know it, it's like your dumb,
04:02floppy fingers never even typed that extra E in the first place. Listen to how impressed this guy is.
04:07By golly, it works. It does. All we need to do is miniaturize it and get it into mass production.
04:15Your lowly secretarial job is saved, and it only took 10 minutes in harnessing
04:19the most advanced technology that the 60s had to offer. Thanks, lasers.
04:24History is full of crazy weight loss devices, but the craziest may be the
04:28Vibrating Belt Workout Machine, which was supposed to jiggle the fat off you while you just, like,
04:32stood there. According to the Orange County Register, the Vibrating Belt Machine was a
04:36must-have device in fitness centers for decades, although most health experts knew they were
04:41essentially useless. Still, people continued to find variations on this device rather irresistible
04:46over the years.
04:47"...introducing the revolutionary VibroAction Belt. Just turn it on, and it will literally
04:53vibrate the fat away from your abs!"
04:56It won't work, though. The most it'll do is vibrate your money right out of your wallet.
05:00One of the strangest trends of the 1960s was the obsession with all things gelatin,
05:05and putting as many weird things inside it as possible. Yes, back in the middle of the
05:0920th century, housewives seeking a creative, sadistic outlet put just about everything
05:14in jello — and other kinds of gelatin. Shaped jello molds solved this problem because just
05:19about any food could become an elegant presentation, including things like this savory
05:23olive cheese, celery, and tomato monstrosity. Or how about this delicious lime cheese salad,
05:28a delectable blend of fresh lime flavoring and a heaping pile of grated onion, cottage
05:33cheese, and mayonnaise? And don't forget the pile of unidentifiable seafood in the middle.
05:39Or how about this delightful shrimp and hard-boiled egg concoction recreated by the folks
05:43over at KOLR 10 News in Springfield, Missouri? Let's see how taking a big bite in the 1960s
05:49goes over with the gang.
05:50"...oh my gosh, I gotta get that out of my mouth. That was not happening."
05:54It's okay if you need to barf.
05:57"...if you're gonna spew, spew into this."
06:03Fifty years ago, people thought seatbelts were annoying and oppressive. In fact,
06:07most people didn't even want them in their cars. According to Second Chance Garage,
06:10customers were so fed up with seatbelts by 1949 that many people would actually
06:14cut them out of their cars with razor blades. By the early 1960s,
06:18seatbelts were offered as optional equipment on the vast majority of American cars,
06:22but that didn't really change anything. Most people simply didn't want them.
06:26And even people who had them in their cars tended not to use them. By 1966,
06:31only about 30 percent of cars on the road in America had seatbelts,
06:34and approximately 44 percent of the people driving those cars used them full-time.
06:39In 1968, the powers that be finally passed a law requiring seatbelts as standard equipment
06:44in all cars, but that still didn't really change anything. The first mandatory seatbelt law in the
06:49United States didn't hit the books until the mid-1980s, and that was only in New York at first.
06:54No matter how obvious the benefits of wearing a seatbelt were, the message just wasn't getting
06:58through.
06:59"...I'm just tired of trying to convince people to wear safety belts. No one's listening."
07:03For some reason, it took routinely and literally being called dummies for people to finally accept
07:07that they should maybe take a step or two to prevent themselves from being flung through
07:11their car's windshields.
07:12You could learn a lot from a dummy. Buckle your safety belt.