From Cracked.com:
…it was apparently a law in the early 20th century that if you were a European with a camera you weren’t allowed to take photos unless they were glimpses into the mouth of insanity.
Of course, World War I will do that to a culture. Indeed, it’s kind of a central point to movies like Shadow of the Vampire; pretty much every male who lived through that period had seen sufficiently wrong things up close and personal that their definition of “messed up” had gotten pretty… flexible.
Or something.
Moe Lane
Given how much the First World War reverberated through every subsequent decade – we’re still picking up the pieces – it continues to amaze me how little the average man on the street knows about it.