Every generation finds new ways to have fun. However, history proves that our definition of “family entertainment” has changed quite a bit. There was a time when a perfectly respectable day out might include watching someone get fired from a cannon, staring at strangers put on display or gathering the kids to witness something genuinely dangerous. Some of these attractions were thrilling. Others were exploitative. A few were surprisingly beneficial. And several make you wonder what on Earth our ancestors were thinking. So, grab your ticket, find a good seat and keep your hands inside the time machine. Here are 10 strange things that were once considered family entertainment.
1. The Diving Horses
For decades, visitors to Atlantic City’s famous Steel Pier gathered to watch something almost unimaginable today. A horse charged up a ramp with a rider on its back. Then, horse and rider plunged roughly 40 feet into a tank of water below. The attraction became one of Steel Pier’s signature spectacles.
The unusual act traced its roots to William “Doc” Carver, who reportedly got the idea after he and his horse fell from a collapsing bridge into Nebraska’s Platte River in 1881. Carver eventually transformed the accident into entertainment. By 1928, the diving horses had arrived at Steel Pier.
Perhaps the most famous rider was Sonora Webster Carver. In 1931, a bad landing caused Sonora to suffer detached retinas and lose her sight. Remarkably, she eventually returned to the tower and continued diving horses while blind. Her story later inspired the 1991 Disney film Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken.
The Steel Pier diving horses continued entertaining vacationing families until 1978. Today, sending a horse and rider sailing from a tower into a pool would spark a very different reaction. Back then, however, crowds lined up to watch. And that makes the Diving Horses an easy choice for our list of strange things once considered family entertainment.
2. Human Beings on Exhibit at the World’s Fair
The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair promised visitors a glimpse at wonders from around the globe. However, some of its most popular attractions weren’t machines, inventions or works of art. They were people.
The sprawling Philippine Reservation covered 47 acres and brought roughly 1,200 Filipinos to St. Louis. Organizers constructed villages and presented different Indigenous groups performing dances, crafts and daily routines before paying crowds. Other Indigenous peoples from around the world also appeared in what organizers presented as anthropological exhibits.
However, there was a troubling purpose behind the spectacle. The United States had recently taken control of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War and the bloody Philippine-American War. Fair organizers often portrayed Filipinos through a colonial lens, emphasizing supposed differences between “civilized” and “primitive” people. The exhibits helped present American expansion as progress while turning real human beings and their cultures into attractions.
Millions came to the fair looking for education and entertainment. Many stopped to stare at people whose lives had been placed on display. That combination of spectacle, exploitation and racial attitudes makes the human exhibits of the 1904 World’s Fair one of the most unsettling entries on our list.
3. Lilliputia: Dreamland’s Miniature City
When Dreamland opened at Coney Island in 1904, visitors could explore an attraction unlike almost anything around today. It was called Lilliputia, or “Midget City,” and roughly 300 people with dwarfism lived and performed inside a miniature European village.
Showman Samuel Gumpertz created the attraction to resemble 15th-century Nuremberg at roughly half scale. Lilliputia had its own theater, railway, beach and parliament. It even had a fire department that regularly raced through town to answer staged false alarms. Occasionally, Gumpertz brought very tall performers into the village to make its residents appear even smaller.
However, Lilliputia wasn’t simply a stage set. The performers actually lived there. Once Dreamland closed for the night, many residents returned to ordinary lives inside the same miniature community that tourists had paid to observe during the day.
At the time, Lilliputia ranked among Dreamland’s popular attractions. Today, the idea of building an entire amusement-park village around the physical characteristics of its residents feels deeply uncomfortable. Still, thousands of families once came to Coney Island specifically to see it. That makes Lilliputia one of the strangest—and most revealing—forms of family entertainment on our list.
4. The Crash at Crush
In 1896, railroad agent William George Crush had a wonderfully terrible idea. He would deliberately crash two locomotives into each other and invite thousands of people to watch.
The Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway built a temporary attraction north of Waco and called it Crush, Texas. Organizers added food stands, entertainment and even a temporary railroad depot. Then, on September 15, more than 40,000 spectators arrived. Families picnicked while they waited for two brightly painted steam locomotives to charge toward each other on the same track.
The collision itself went according to plan. What happened next did not. Both boilers exploded, sending chunks of metal flying into the crowd. Three spectators died, and others suffered serious injuries. Even the official photographer lost an eye to flying debris.
Somehow, staged train wrecks did not end with Crush. Similar spectacles appeared at fairs around the country for years afterward. Thousands of people willingly gathered to watch enormous machines destroy each other for fun.
Today, we have demolition derbies. In 1896, apparently, they just used locomotives.
That earns the Crash at Crush a very comfortable seat on our list.
5. The Wall of Death
By the early 1900s, motorcycles had already become exciting machines. Naturally, someone decided the next logical step was to ride one sideways around the inside of a giant wooden barrel.
Known as motordromes or the Wall of Death, these attractions became popular at fairs, amusement parks and traveling shows. Riders started at the bottom of a circular wooden arena. Then, they picked up speed until centrifugal force allowed them to race nearly horizontal along the vertical walls. Spectators watched from a platform just above their heads.
Of course, simply riding a motorcycle sideways eventually wasn’t exciting enough. Performers raced each other, performed stunts and drove cars around the walls. Some shows even added lions to the mix. Riders piloted small cars with the animals alongside them while families watched from above.
The Wall of Death offered speed, danger and the very real possibility that something could go terribly wrong. Yet parents brought their children, crowds packed the railings and promoters proudly advertised the danger.
Apparently, when an attraction actually has “Death” in its name, you know you’ve found your way onto this list.
6. Human Cannonballs
Apparently, walking a tightrope or swinging from a trapeze eventually became too tame. In the late 1800s, audiences discovered a new thrill: watching a human being get fired from a cannon.
The first famous human cannonball was a teenage performer known as Zazel. In 1877, she climbed into a cannon at London’s Royal Aquarium and shot through the air before landing in a net. Despite the explosive presentation, gunpowder did not actually launch the performer. Early versions used springs, while later cannons relied on compressed air. The smoke and blast simply made everything look more dangerous.
Soon, human cannonballs became major circus attractions. Performers flew farther and higher as promoters advertised increasingly spectacular feats. However, the danger was very real. A slightly misplaced cannon, mistimed launch or bad landing could cause catastrophic injuries. Zazel herself eventually suffered a serious accident that ended her career.
Yet generations of families packed circus tents to watch someone climb into a cannon and hope they came back down in the right place.
When being shot from a cannon becomes wholesome family fun, you’ve definitely earned a spot on this list.
7. Incubator Babies
At first glance, this may sound like one of the most disturbing attractions on our list. However, the story of the incubator babies comes with an unexpected twist. This strange form of entertainment actually saved lives.
Beginning in the early 1900s, Dr. Martin Couney operated infant incubator exhibits at amusement parks, including Coney Island’s Luna Park and Dreamland. Visitors paid admission to walk past rows of glass incubators containing premature babies. Nurses cared for the infants while attendants explained the relatively new technology to curious crowds.
Yet Couney wasn’t simply putting babies on display. Many hospitals offered little specialized care for premature infants at the time. Couney charged parents nothing. Instead, admission fees from sightseers paid for round-the-clock nurses, wet nurses, equipment and medical care. Over several decades, thousands of premature babies passed through his exhibits, and many survived.
Eventually, hospitals embraced specialized neonatal care, and Couney’s unusual attraction became unnecessary. Still, the idea remains extraordinary. Families once spent an afternoon at an amusement park riding attractions, eating treats and paying admission to see premature babies in incubators.
Strange? Absolutely. Exploitative by modern standards? Certainly debatable. But unlike many entries on this list, this bizarre attraction also gave some incredibly vulnerable children a fighting chance.
8. Atomic Bomb Watch Parties
In 1950s Las Vegas, visitors came for the casinos, bright lights and nightlife. However, the city soon gained another attraction: watching atomic bombs explode in the desert.
The United States began conducting nuclear tests at the Nevada Proving Ground in 1951, about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Mushroom clouds could rise thousands of feet into the sky and were sometimes visible from the city. Instead of hiding the tests, Las Vegas embraced them. Businesses advertised upcoming detonations, hotels hosted viewing parties and tourists gathered before dawn to watch the show.
Soon, “atomic tourism” became part of the Las Vegas experience. Visitors watched from rooftops, swimming pools and nearby vantage points. Casinos adopted atomic themes, while the famous “Miss Atomic Bomb” publicity photographs helped connect nuclear testing with the city’s glamorous image.
Of course, the spectacle hid a much darker reality. Nuclear fallout exposed communities downwind of the test site to radiation, and the health consequences became increasingly difficult to ignore.
Still, for a remarkable period in American history, families traveled to Nevada, found a good viewing spot and waited for a mushroom cloud to appear on the horizon.
Few things say 1950s family vacation quite like watching an atomic bomb go off before breakfast.
9. Lion and Tiger Trainers
For generations, one of the biggest thrills under the big top involved watching a trainer willingly step into a cage filled with lions and tigers. Armed with chairs, whips and an extraordinary amount of confidence, performers commanded enormous predators while families watched from just a few feet away.
These “big cat acts” became circus staples during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Famous trainers such as Captain Jack Bonavita and Mabel Stark built careers around working dangerously close to the animals. Stark became especially famous for her tiger acts and survived several serious maulings during her long career.
And those attacks were not rare publicity stunts. Bonavita survived a brutal lion attack at Coney Island in 1904, only to die years later after being attacked by a polar bear. Stark nearly died after a tiger mauled her in 1928. Still, trainers returned to the cages, audiences returned to their seats and the show went on.
Eventually, changing attitudes toward animal welfare helped push traditional big-cat performances out of the mainstream. Yet for decades, watching someone stand within clawing distance of several hundred pounds of irritated feline was considered perfectly acceptable entertainment for the whole family.
Lions and tigers and potentially catastrophic workplace injuries… oh my.
10. A Day Out at Bedlam
Long before amusement parks, thrill rides or atomic tourism, Londoners found another unsettling way to entertain themselves. They went to Bedlam to watch the patients.
Bethlem Royal Hospital had treated people with mental illness for centuries. By the 1600s and 1700s, however, visiting the institution had become a notorious London pastime. Members of the public could enter the hospital and wander its galleries. There, they stared at patients, mocked unusual behavior and sometimes deliberately provoked reactions.
For some visitors, Bedlam became less like a hospital and more like a human sideshow. Wealthier guests could treat a visit as morbid sightseeing, while holiday crowds reportedly made their way through the wards. The spectacle became so embedded in popular culture that artists such as William Hogarth used Bedlam to symbolize chaos, cruelty and society’s fascination with madness.
Public visitation was eventually restricted as attitudes slowly changed. Yet the legacy remained. Even the word “bedlam” entered everyday language as another word for chaos and disorder.
It is difficult to imagine anything farther from modern ideas of family entertainment. Still, centuries ago, people looking for an unusual afternoon in London could simply visit a psychiatric hospital and stare at its patients.
And somehow, that makes our oldest entry one of the darkest of them all.
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