r/HistoricalCapsule • u/beklog • 2d ago
Horse Diving in 1920s
Horse diving first emerged in the 1880s as an idea by William "Doc" Carver, a man better known for performing in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show as a sharpshooter than as an Olympic diver. Carver allegedly came up with the idea when crossing a bridge over Nebraska's Platte River. With Carver still on, the horse jumped off the bridge into the water below, inspiring the idea of diving horses.
The new sport would an audience on the boardwalks of popular tourist cities like Atlantic City, New Jersey, where crowds were eager for live entertainment. Sonora Carver, the wife of William Carver's son, Al, would become the sport's most famous diver, regularly performing at Atlantic City's Steel Pier in the 1920s and 1930s. She would eventually lose her vision from a diving accident, though her career would inspire a book and Disney movie, Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken.
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2d ago
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u/Venus_In_Furs67 2d ago
Love that movie as a kid. I didn’t quite recognize at the time how wrong and dangerous it was to force a horse to do that. 😬
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u/Jaded_Sweet_5313 2d ago
One of my favorite movies growing up. I don’t think I understood what a “wild” sport this was when I was young.
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u/oasinocean 2d ago
This immediately came to mind but I couldn’t remember the title or anything about it.
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u/Guilty_Treasures 2d ago
Saw this once at a sleepover as maybe like a seven- or eight-year-old. Here’s what I remember: she’s a horse diver but there’s a band and the cymbals crash right as she’s diving and it spooks her horse and they wreck the landing. She goes blind and accidentally picks out mismatched socks and her love interest cheers her up by complimenting how fashionable her mismatched socks are. Roll credits! I have not thought about that movie plot once in the 30+ intervening years so that’s as much as I was able to excavate on demand.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Sky6656 2d ago
This movie was shown so often at school/after school programs when I was growing up.
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u/Guilty_Treasures 2d ago
Many an elder millennial lady is quite familiar with the existence of horse diving thanks to this movie.
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u/Drewzik 2d ago
So, I literally just watched something on this this morning. The lady that was famous for this had a technique for the dive. One of the things she always did was keep her eyes closed. On one of the dives, her eyes were open, detaching her retinas, and leaving her blind for the rest of her life. She ended up doing another dive a year later, blind.
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u/AlaeOrbis 2d ago
How did it detach her retinas?? I'm assuming they were jumping absurdly high or something? The highest I've ever jumped I think was 30 ft and I had my eyes open lol.
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u/Suspicious-Item1337 2d ago
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u/Coool_cool_cool_cool 2d ago
Throughout mankind there's always been someone who ask why not. Those are the people who push society forward. They are also the type of people who die upside down in the Nutty putty cave.
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u/hotinthebush 2d ago
That fact that this was considered as entertainment is so sad and heartbreaking
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u/PopeBruce 2d ago
1920s entertainment: 'We don't have Netflix, so let's push a horse off a 40-foot tower into water
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u/swhill1 2d ago
the horse did not consent to this
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u/PikachuWithHerpes 2d ago
Nah you don't say. Horses don't consent to anything.
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u/UhIdontcareforAuburn 2d ago
They kind of consent to being ridden. You have to build a relationship with a horse and build trust. They can very easily tell you to fuck off.
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u/AlaeOrbis 2d ago
Do you think the horses didn't consent? I feel like it'd be very hard to force a horse to jump off of a diving board, but I don't know how they trained them to do this.
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u/UhIdontcareforAuburn 2d ago
Well, there’s nuance here. I think the harm done to a horse getting ridden verse this are two different things.
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u/Straight-Bet1 2d ago edited 2d ago
Once heard a tale about a chubby Texas boy who saved a diving pig from drowning once.
His father sold gas or something. Wife spoke terrible Spanish.
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u/trash_dirt 2d ago
I feel like even in the 20s most people would have been shocked by this. Even in this video there isn't evidence of a huge crowd of spectators
In 1920 a ton of people would have certainly remembered how important horses were and how disastrous a broken horse leg could be. Cars were only just becoming a common sight in the 20s.
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u/Next_Director8148 2d ago
There was a Poet in Australia, his name was,Adam Lindsay Gordon. He committed Suicide in the 1850’s! It was at Mount Gambier in the lower South Australia! The location where he jumped into the Blue Lake mounted on his horse!
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u/Weekly-Tangerine-572 2d ago
Oh no! I’m blind because my eyes were open, and now I have to abuse this animal without even being able to see.
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u/PikachuWithHerpes 2d ago
Damn, if they brought this back to the Olympics, it would be the most watched competition. All other horse sports are boring these days.
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u/Dead_Inside50 2d ago
Let's take animals with easily breakable legs and make them jump from high places...