Let’s begin by acknowledging that a common trait of many fads is their inability to make sense. For example, fidget spinners were basically spinning objects. They peaked approximately a month ago and then began to decline. There was also the Pet Rock. You kept it in the house, and it was a real stone.

Putting that aside, fads come and go. It seems sense that a fidgety individual could find a fidget spinner handy. A pet rock also has a certain odd, kitsch appeal. However, there are other fads that defy rational thought as to how they came to be.

10. Using a limp when moving

Everyone has seen someone who appears to be forcing or faking their gait. Usually, it’s someone who has chosen to add an oddly dramatic swagger to their walk. Take a look at any video of LaVar Ball entering a space to get some context. Fake a limp is something that most individuals avoid doing unless they’re trying to win someone over. That wasn’t always the case, though.

In Victorian England, those with limps were popular. Known as the Alexandra Limp, this unsteady gait was adopted by stylish women of the era to pay tribute to Alexandra of Denmark, who had wed the Prince of Wales. She was already setting trends in fashion, and British women aspired to be fashionable and hip would imitate her style.

Alexandra suffered from a pronounced limp as a result of her rheumatic sickness. Naturally, then, those who were yearning to be like her also hobbled. To keep up with the craze, retailers even started offering shoes that weren’t quite right—one type had a significantly higher heel.

Like any good fad, it was detested by most. A newspaper called it ridiculous and stupid. The reason most people didn’t like it was that it was based on a real medical illness, although that didn’t last long.

9. Sitting on a flagpole

Harvey Danger’s single “Flagpole Sitta” was a one-hit wonder, but perhaps the song would have done better if it had been released in the 1920s, when flagpole sitting was a real thing.

The act of sitting atop a flagpole is known as flagpole sitting; no euphemisms are intended here. The taller and more dramatically positioned the pole, the better, and you would climb to the top and sit there. You would receive more attention the longer you could stand it. In 1924, Hollywood studios used Alvin Kelly, a professional stuntman, to draw attention to a film that may or may not have anything to do with flagpoles.

After he was featured in the media for his 13-hour stay atop a flagpole, Kelly received more invitations to sit atop them, which encouraged others around the nation to give it a shot.

Kelly advanced to incredible flagpole sitting endurance heights by 1927, when he sat on one pole for more than 23 days. He had a tube he used to relieve himself, and they sent up a pail on a rope with food and drink.

8. Eating live goldfish

There are many food fads that are still in vogue today. Both spicy food challenges and competitive eating contests are still very popular. However, the practice of ingesting live goldfish was thankfully abandoned in the 1930s.

Legend has it that the craze started at Harvard in 1939. As freshmen tend to do, a student boasted to some pals that he had once eaten a live fish. As a revered university, his pals wagered right away that he couldn’t pull off this brilliant and astounding deed.

If a reporter hadn’t also been there for, God knows why, he or she would have died there, along with the poor fish. After the kid finished the fish and made his $10, the reporter wrote a story about it that was published across the country.

The goldfish challenge gained popularity online, much like the Cinnamon Challenge did. By the end of April, 101 people had broken the record for ingesting live fish. Like many fish before it, the fad finally faded amid accusations of animal cruelty, threats of litigation, and warnings about parasites.

7. Stuffing Phone Booths

These days, coming across a phone booth in the outdoors is akin to encountering a dolphin when out on a boat. Because it’s a novelty that connects you to a secret world—in the case of the phone booth, the past—it’s incredibly thrilling and delightful.

There once were phone booths in every corner of the planet, ready to help those in need of calling a cab or transmuting into superheroes. They had doors, too. They were also employed for endurance tests akin to those of clown cars in the 1950s. How big of a space can a phone booth accommodate?

The majority of us have a single response to that query. They were designed to accommodate one person. However, the fad was started by a report of how 25 South African students crammed themselves into one phone booth in 1959. They set a world record when they submitted the photo of themselves to Guinness.

If you’re still not convinced, here are some still-existing images that demonstrate how a phone booth can accommodate a sizable group of fully grown adults—as long as comfort and deep breathing are not priorities. Worldwide colleges attempted to replicate the achievement, but mostly failed in the upper teens.

The US record appears to have been 22 pupils, and by 1959’s conclusion, not many individuals were still trying, therefore South Africa won all of their matches.

6. Beauty Marks and Fake Moles

One has heard it remarked that beauty is subjective. Standards of beauty have varied significantly throughout history depending on the location. But, you can be sure that some people will attempt to pass for authentic in some way, regardless of the standards of the society.

A mole is, of course, a beauty mark, and they were rather fashionable formerly. People in ancient Greece highly valued those with beauty marks on their cheeks, as it was believed that these marks portended fortune. Later on, it became customary to create faux beauty marks out of materials like velvet or even mouse fur.

Since they concealed unsightly features, women in England used them to cover up imperfections like scars, which is where the notion that they enhance attractiveness originated. By the sixteenth century, they served as attention-getters rather than merely cover-ups. To catch people’s attention, they would contrast with a fake pale complexion.

5. Coats for Raccoons

Because most people appreciate that you’re killing several animals for no other reason than to manufacture a coat, fur coats are no longer in style. They still have a market, but they are stigmatized.

Not only was fur once deemed acceptable, but there was also a vogue for full-length raccoon fur coats. College males adopted the 1920s fashion tradition of dressing to the nines in a long coat.

Since you had to pay some money for a fur coat even in those days, Ivy League institutions were the main places where this trend was seen. The notion of males wearing fur coats eventually lost favor, and by the 1970s, it was primarily connected to unsavoury guys who could be pimps.

4. Photography Taken After Death

Post mortem photography reaches eerie heights and depths that few fads ever manage to match. You may pay a photographer to come take a picture of the body if a loved one has passed away. However, it involved much than just that. The body would be positioned in your house, outdoors, or anyplace else in a way that would imply they were still living.

In the 1800s, photography was uncommon and infant mortality was high. A couple would have many children, and it was possible that some would not survive. However, if you missed the opportunity to take a family photo while they were still living, you could always take one after the fact and make it appear as though they were still present. In certain pictures, all the children are pictured together, one of them propped up against a wall as if they were corpses.

On closer inspection, it all makes gloomy sense. You would never again have the opportunity to snap a picture of that individual. This could explain why there were three times as many death images taken by photographers in the 1840s as wedding photos.

3. Sharp Sneakers

You may have observed that characters in some medieval artwork, such as jesters and bards, have extremely pointed shoes. This was a reflection of the era’s craze rather than merely an artistic decision made by the artist. Pointy shoes used to be highly fashionable.

Sharp shoes gained popularity in England in the 1380s and were dubbed crackows because they were attributed to Poland. They were worn by all sexes, and the longer your toes, the more aristocratic you were. To prevent them from becoming floppy, they would load them with debris like moss and hair.

Before the English even realized what was going on, the people of France were already tired of them. In 1368, Charles V outlawed them in Paris. King Edward IV of England did not forbid those who were not nobles from owning shoes with a point longer than two inches until 1463.

The pointed shoe was meant to be a showpiece. Since longer shoes cost more, wearing them implied greater wealth. However, it also represented your general laziness. Only the elite dared to wear ridiculously long shoes, not laborers. It represented how you were physically unable of performing manual labor, thus you didn’t need to. At least not in those shoes.

Pointy shoes were a smug way to declare to the world that you had money to burn, just like so many other things that have gained popularity over time.

2. The Panty Raids

You might remember a scene from the movie Revenge of the Nerds where the nerd fraternity goes on a panty raid. They take undergarments from the ladies living in a sorority home by breaking in. That’s practically unfathomable in the contemporary era, and let’s face it, even in the 1980s, it was a touch unrealistic. However, the writers didn’t come up with that concept on their own. The 1950s and 1960s saw a major craze known as the panty raid.

In 1952, 2,000 male students went on a panty raid rampage at the University of Missouri, forcing the National Guard to be called in. They stormed the halls, kicked open doors, and broke windows in dorms and sororities. A few of the women attempted to repel them by using water buckets and broom handles. As well as jewelry, cash, and other items, underwear was also taken.

Try to picture yourself in your dorm room when two thousand guys rip into your room, breaking into every opening in the building. What was once a craze in the 1950s is now effectively the beginning of a brand-new Blumhouse horror series. The Missouri governor at the time declared categorically that “boys will be boys.”

1. Whale Hats Made of Dead Fish

Although fads would appear to be among the most ridiculous ways for people to spend their time, it’s important to realize that this is untrue. The human aspect, that is. We weren’t the first to come up with this concept, and there is proof that orcas are participating in the most incredible craze you’ve ever heard of. They used to wear caps made of dead fish.

Scientists frequently research whales, and a large portion of that study is straightforward observation. Follow them, observe their actions, and try to find out anything useful about their way of life, communication, and other characteristics. Researchers were watching a group of orcas in 1987 when one of the whales started to wear a fish on her head. She clutched the dead salmon like a small fish cap, right above her snout.

Over the course of the following few weeks, other whales joined in on the whale’s fish hat wearing. It was initially initiated by whales in her pod, and it then spread to two additional pods that the first pod had established contact with. Everybody was wearing a fish hat and swimming around.

The novelty seemed to wear off on the whales, much like a human trend, and at the conclusion of the six-week period, it was over. Fish hats are out of style. At best, the explanations for why it happened have never been very convincing—nor are they any more so than their gut feelings.

SEE ALSO: There are 25 AMAZING things on Earth that we still don’t understand.