May Day

May Day

May 1, or May Day, is a spring festival in many countries.  In Hawaii, where I live, May 1 is called Lei Day, celebrating Hawaiian culture with a gift of a lei.  Above, a guy who got lei'd.

But the University of St. Andrews in Scotland celebrates May Day in a very different way, with their annual May Day Dip.

The student tradition is to take a dip in the chilly North Sea at dawn on May 1.  Participation supposedly gives you good luck in the upcoming exams.

This guy is showing off on the beach with a back flip.

Not everyone skinny-dips, but some do, like these guys wading out.

A quick dip is enough, because the North Sea is still very cold on May 1.  St. Andrews, Scotland is farther north than Ketchikan, Alaska!

Then it's time to run back to shore.

Or casually wade back, pretending you're not freezing.  Good luck on your exams, guys!

Vintage Military - Part 20

World War II - Sicily

After the Allied reconquest of North Africa, the next step was to begin the recapture of Europe from the Nazis and Fascists.  The opening move was Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily from North Africa.

The video above, from Britain's Imperial War Museum, shows troops swimming from the ships that had gathered in the harbor at Sfax, Tunisia.  The video was taken on July 6, 1943, a few days before the invasion.  A couple of the troops had swimsuits, but the vast majority swam naked.  In wartime in those days, it was not a big deal.

American, British and Canadian troops landed on the night of July 9th, 1943 and quickly defeated the Italian resistance.  Above, Italian prisoners, some naked, on the beach.

(Photo by LIFE photographer Bob Landry, cropped to show detail)

This is why some of the Italian prisoners were naked.  They had to wade out to board a landing craft, presumably taking them to a POW camp.

(Photo by LIFE photographer Bob Landry)

I used this photo in a previous post about Australian photographer Laurence Le Guay.  Members of an Australian Royal Air Force fighter bomber squadron had provided air support for the invasion.  Here they are afterwards in Sicily enjoying a bucket shower.

Showers were in short supply in wartime, and the troops took every opportunity to shower that they could get.  This short clip from a newsreel shows an Operation Husky soldier taking an improvised shower.

Finally, this footage was taken for a British Pathé newsreel but was unused or not released.  It shows Canadian troops in Sicily taking advantage of another improvised shower opportunity, using water dripping from a railroad water tower.

College Athletes - part 1

 Swimmers

Until the 1960s, men swam naked when there were no women around, and this included high school and college men's swimming teams.  They practiced naked and only wore swimsuits for public competitions.

All these photos except the first are from the LIFE magazine photo archive.  None were published in the magazine.

Swim practice at Stanford's Encina Gym in 1930.  (Photo from the Stanford Libraries)

University of Michigan swimming coach Matt Mann talking to a swimmer.  Photo by William Vandivert, 1938.

University of Michigan swimmers.  Photo by William Vandivert, 1938.

These are not swim team members, just University of Michigan medical students playing naked in another pool during a break from studies.  Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1950.  An eagle-eyed follower of my friend's blog http://www.vintagemusclemen.com recognized the location as the pool in the Michigan Union building.

Yale swimmers hitting the showers.  This photo, which has been widely reproduced online but sometimes misidentified, was taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt in 1937.

The Yale gym had a curious spray facility to ensure cleanliness down there.  Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1937.

Here's Yale swim coach Bob Kiphuth.  No need for modesty.  Yale (and especially Yale's gym) was all-male.  Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1937.  Smile for the camera!

Vintage Swimming

 Vintage Swimming

In the old days, men swam naked as a matter of course.  Not just furtive skinny-dipping, but swimming at beaches and swimming pools.  Women wore swimsuits, but men didn't, as long as there were no women present.

A good example is this scene from the movie A room with a View, an adaptation of E.M. Forster's 1908 novel.  Forster, who was gay, wrote a scene where a young man, Freddy, invites George, a newcomer to town, for a "bathe" in the local pond.  The two young men swim and frolic naked around the pond, joined by the local vicar, of all people, which underscores that for men in the Edwardian era, swimming nude was completely normal and not at all scandalous.  This is definitely the best scene in the film.

The oldest reliably dated photo I have of naked men swimming (not counting the military, which is a whole 'nother story) is this one of "the new swimming baths at Collingwood," published in the Illustrated Australian News, March 1, 1895.  Note that not only did the men swim nude, but it was perfectly acceptable to publish a photo of it in the newspaper.  It wasn't scandalous; that's just what men did.

Swimming in Regents Canal during a British heatwave, Aug. 21, 1911.

Here's a group of guys in 1917 at the first swimming pool in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia.  Photo by J.J. Dwyer.  Swimsuits?  Don't be silly!

A man about to dive into the Yrjönkatu swimming pool in Helsinki, Finland.  Photo by Aarne Pietinen Oy, 1937.

Up until the 1960s, it was not only normal for men to swim naked in male-only environments, it was required in high-school and college gyms and in the YMCA.  We'll show you some unashamed college swimmers another time.