Hairy Gallery

Veet advertisement, 1926

Advertisement for Veet hair removal cream from 1926 - don't let disfiguring growths of superfluous hair destroy your charm and daintiness any longer. Hair removal became more commonplace in the 1920s with the arrival of more revealing clothes including sleeveless dance dresses and swimming costumes. Date: 1926

© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans

Fossils of extinct sea snails

Fossils of extinct sea snails. Proto maraschinii, Turritella, Potamides fragilis, Nerina tuberculosa. Proto del Maraschiini, Proto turritella, Potamide fragile, Nerina turbercolosa. Handcoloured copperplate stipple engraving from Antoine Laurent de Jussieu's Dizionario delle Scienze Naturali, Dictionary of Natural Science, Florence, Italy, 1837. Illustration engraved by Corsi, drawn by Jean Gabriel Pretre and directed by Pierre Jean-Francois Turpin, and published by Batelli e Figli. Turpin (1775-1840) is considered one of the greatest French botanical illustrators of the 19th century

© Florilegius

Julia Pastrana

Julia Pastrana (1834 - 1860), from Mexico, a hairy woman who married a showman, Theodor Lent, but died in childbirth at Moscow (the child also died). Both bodies were mummified for display purposes, her upper eye-teeth and incisors are missing. Photograph is of her embalmed, but now resides in a sealed coffin at the University of Oslo, Norway. Date:

© Mary Evans Picture Library