I've thought for a long time that if I ever moved out of movie posters, I would move on into historical propaganda. In high school history, my favorite thing was looking at samples of how countries built their image and tried to smear that of others. Sometimes it was patriotic, sometimes it was clever, most of the time it was outright lies, but it never failed to interest me.
I've loved the idea of having an original Rosie the Riveter or Uncle Sam recruitment for a long time, but never enough to seriously consider venturing into a surely difficult hobby. Then, today, I read an article about why people say that carrots are good for your eyes. It was a comedy article, but the information was solid with legitimate sources cited throughout.
"During the Battle of Britain, the Germans started noticing that a lot of their planes were getting shot down in instances where the British shouldn't have seen them coming. Britain had perfected the radar and didn't tell anyone about it. Obviously the Brits couldn't let the Germans know they had access to this new technology, otherwise they could bomb the shit out of it or, even worse, try to create their own Nazi version. With the Germans getting increasingly suspicious, something needed to be done fast.
British papers published a story about a RAF pilot called John "Cat Eyes" Cunningham who had shot down 20 enemy planes thanks to his superhuman night vision, an ability he achieved by eating lots of carrots. Other carrot-eating pilots followed, and soon the British government began publicizing the fact that carrots improve night vision -- which, of course, is complete bullshit. Carrots might help your vision not get worse, but they won't make it any better either. The pilots were winning the war thanks to radar technology, not by eating filthy plants."This campaign spawned characters such as Dr. Carrot:
And, my favorite, an image of a woman escaping into the night with her young daughter and a basket of carrots to protect them:
So, with my interest piqued, I'm curious if anybody here collects this kind of stuff. And, if so, how does one get into historical collection? It's not the kind of stuff you see on eBay.
