Maria and John Torp, newly weds and their traveling Flea Circus, prepare to hit the road and start life from scratch with the performing fleas. (via Sideshow World)
John Torp, Danish flea trainer, and his new bride, the former Maria Dina Gomez of Brazil...They will be one big happy family, John, Marie, and 24 performing fleas. Two of the fleas also wed the same day as did John and Maria.
In the 1960s imaginative creatives put a lot of thought and idealism into what they envisioned life would be like in the 21st century. This video, hosted by Walter Cronkite and produced by educational publishers McGraw-Hill, is a display of the most popular prototype concepts designed during the 1960s. It's all quite mod, with a great deal of energy and material conservation and efficiency in mind. Some concepts came fairly close to the actuality of 2001, but the variables that the designers, engineers, and other creatives had no control over - politics and economics - drastically affected much of their good-natured optimism.
Personally, I think the 2001 in 1967 was way cooler than the 2001 of 2001. Still, there's a lot of the 21st century left - it's hard to be as excited about the future as the folks were mid-twentieth century, but maybe down the line humans will rediscover that ability to imagine and create a fabulous future.
