The first image to stand out to me this morning: A furniture store ad promising to teach a toddler to walk in two days. And it turns out that's not even the cleverest part of the pitch.

The ad's claim is blunt: this device taught a little tot to walk in two days. But the real hook is what happens next. Once the child could walk on their own, a handle attached to the same frame turned it into a sulky, a small pull cart the child could ride in instead.

I went ahead and colorized the photo - simply because it’s so darn cute.

One product, two completely different jobs, depending on which side of a milestone the child was on.

Baby Bunny itself doesn't appear to have its own surviving patent record, it may have been a private-label product sold through this one furniture store rather than a nationally patented toy. But it wasn't an isolated idea. Patent filings from the same general era, like these two, show other inventors independently designing convertible children's vehicles, built to change function as a child grew rather than get thrown out and replaced.

Today marks 100 years since Mrs. Frances Stevens Hall was arrested and charged in the Hall-Mills double murder, one of the most notorious unsolved cases of the decade. We've already covered this one properly in a full-length video, real names, a real unsolved crime, and it deserves that kind of careful treatment rather than a quick recap here. If you haven't seen it yet, today's anniversary is a good excuse to go back to it.

The Beauty Doctor is back, this time for double chins. The prescribed fix involves throwing your head back and chewing as if you had to masticate ten sticks of gum at once, followed by massaging with ice wrapped in a towel. Three days into this column and it's fully earned its status as a running bit.

A perfectly timeless one-liner. A simple newspaper cartoon: a boy pushing a cart with a baby and a balloon, mistaken for twins. A hundred years hasn't touched this joke at all.

Manufactured need, shoe edition. An ad insists a well-dressed man needs four separate pairs of shoes, tan for before 6 o'clock, black for after, plus formal and sports pairs, and notes many men own even more. A very confident case for a very specific kind of overspending.

What a fun window into the world, exactly 100 years ago today!

See you tomorrow. – Chris

The Springfield Daily Republican, July 29, 1926
The Kentucky Post, July 29, 1926
The Oklahoma News, July 29, 1926
The Herald Mail, July 29, 1926
U.S. Patent 1,609,733, "Vehicle for Small Children," E.M. Mayer, granted December 7, 1926
U.S. Patent 1,872,216, "Child's Vehicle," W.H. Appleby, granted August 16, 1932