10. Strange entertainment
“Diving horse” The U.S., 1907.
There were a lot of really wild kinds of entertainment in the past. In the picture above, you can see one of them — the “diving horse.” William Carver was going over a half-destroyed bridge and his horse fell into the water. The image of a falling horse inspired Carver so much that he created a show where trained horses jumped into the water. The show became really popular, very quickly.
It took animal rights defenders until the 1970s to shut this show down, but even now horse diving exists in one place in New York. The owners claim that they don’t use brute force on the horses and they jump from only 3 meters high, so there is no danger to them.
Mr. Egbert taking his 5-year-old lion for a ride on the wall of death at Mitcham fair. January 1, 1935.
Another wild kind of entertainment from the recent past is the so-called Lion Drome. It appeared in the 20s when regular car racing was boring for viewers. Then, organizers started putting a real lion right next to the racer. The racer reached a very high speed and rode on the vertical “wall of death.”
But even this wasn’t enough for viewers. Then, a new extreme element appeared: trained lions were freed from their cages and chased moving motorcyclists trying to catch them. The last Lion Drome was closed in 1964 when a lion tore off a drunk trainer’s hand.