A black-and-white photograph from a Canadian bridge ceremony in 1941 has convinced some social media users that time travel is real. The picture shows a man whose clothes and gear look strikingly modern next to the suited crowd around him, and it has been passed around online for years.
The image was taken at the reopening of the South Fork Bridge in Canada. It first reached the public in 2004, when it appeared in the Barlorne-Pioneer Museum’s exhibition "Their Past Lives Here". In 2010 the museum digitised the photo and put it online, and viewers quickly spotted the odd man out.
The man who looks out of place
Everyone around him is dressed in the tailored suits that were fashionable in the 1940s. He, by contrast, wears a dark T-shirt, sunglasses and a zip-up hooded sweatshirt, and he is holding a small portable camera. Under the hoodie, his T-shirt shows a graphic letter "M".
Debate flared up on Reddit, and the VMC website saw a huge jump in visitors as people rushed to look at the picture. In a thread called r/timetravellercaught, members argued over whether he had travelled back in time. One user wrote: "Logically, I know it’s not a time traveler, but it’s really hard to remember that when I see this picture."
The ordinary explanations
Others pointed to simpler answers. The letter M matches the logo of the Montreal Maroons, a hockey team that played in the National Hockey League from 1924 to 1938, and shirts like it were commonly worn by sports teams of the era. Protective eyewear was also easy to get at the time. One commenter noted a 1938 patent for such "sunshades" and called him "not time traveller, just a 1940s hipster."
The camera is the item that stands out most. Many people assume portable cameras did not arrive until the 1980s, but Kodak actually sold several handheld models that were on the market in 1941.
Not the first suspected traveller
The photo is not the only piece of historical media to prompt such theories. Film footage from roughly a decade earlier shows a group of women walking down a staircase. One of them seems to hold a small object to her ear, as if she were chatting on a mobile phone, years before such a device existed.
The clip first appeared on a conspiracy theory website and sent theorists into an intensive investigation. One person wrote: "There is no question that she is speaking as she descends the stairs while holding a small object next to her ear." They added: "We can only wonder who is she speaking to and what exactly is she speaking in!"
Today, the bridge photograph remains a popular talking point. The shirt, the sunglasses and the camera all have explanations from the period, yet the image still draws people in, and as one commenter admitted, logic is hard to hold on to when you look at it.
Image credit: Virtual Museum
Source: The Mirror US
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