This will either be the best or worst news you hear all day.
Long before there was Kim Kardashian, there was her eerily similar late 1800s life-twin Clara Ward. And she was from Detroit.
Joe Grimm gives Michigan State radio station WKAR a Detroit history lesson, calling Clara Ward the Kim Kardashian of her time.
Clara was a socialite who was born in Detroit into a wealthy family and managed to stay wealthy by hanging out with other wealthy people and sometimes posing for risqué photos. She was loved, envied, loathed, lusted after and laughed at all at the same time, which is definitely the series of emotions I went through googling "Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, baby picture."
Clara married rich and powerful Marie Joseph Anatole Pierre Alphonse de Rique, Prince de Caraman-Chimay (yes, really), to become someone with a lot of repetitive letters in her name, Clara Ward, Princesse de Caraman-Chimay. She got bored quickly, flirted with other men, and fell in love with a musician. Kim always had the Kardashian clan keeping her k's in order. She married rich and powerful basketball player Kris Humphries, got bored quickly, flirted with other men, and fell in love with a musician.
Clara was diagnosed a "erotopath," according to Grimm, which is an unsexy word for someone who likes being sexy. Kim got famous with a sex tape.
Clara often posed for portraits and photos and on stages in something she called "poses plastiques," which is basically standing still while being sort of naked. Kim has done this sort of naked and totally naked, but now we call it modeling.
After leaving Detroit, Clara partied with painter Toulouse Lautrec in the absinth-infused impressionist days of Paris. Kim partied with Paris Hilton, probably also in Paris.
I could keep going, but why would I spare you the joy of googling Kim Kardashian while listening to public radio.
