TIJUANA CRASS

Mexicans got the blame, but only Americans could have done this.

We stumbled across a collection of Tijuana bibles and just had to share these things. For the uninitiated, Tijuana bibles are dirty booklets produced starting in the 1920s, but which reached their zenith during the Great Depression. The booklets depicted sex between well-known figures of the time—everyone from movie stars to cartoon characters, all rendered in low rent art, but with the gynecological precision of kama sutra diagrams.
 
Obviously, they were sold on the down-low, in drug stores, barber shops, speakeasies, or from the backs of cars. The time frame during which these were popular might seem to make their no-holes-barred explicitness amazing, but the Depression was an era of loosened morals, during which most Americans were actually hitting it before marriage.
 
Nobody can say why they were called Tijuana bibles. Perhaps the name was chosen because the pages showed perversions that were presumably available only south of the border, or, equally likely, some smartass simply thought it was funny to blame Mexicans for something they hadn’t done. In any case, Mexicans clearly didn’t make these, because Americans are the undisputed kings of manufacturing smut, and always have been. Yeah baby. U.S.A! U.S.A! More bible covers below, followed by a small selection of the tamest interior art we could find.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1933—Franklin Roosevelt Survives Assassination Attempt

In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but is restrained by a crowd and, in the course of firing five wild shots, hits five people, including Chicago, Illinois Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds three weeks later. Zangara is quickly tried and sentenced to eighty years in jail for attempted murder, but is later convicted of murder when Cermak dies. Zangara is sentenced to death and executed in Florida’s electric chair.

1929—Seven Men Shot Dead in Chicago

Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

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