Hawaiians used spears to fish in shallows or along rocky ledges, or underwater to catch rock fishes. Hard woods like kauila, o`a, koai`e, and uhiuhi were favored for spears. Finished spears were six or seven feet long, slim and sharply pointed at one en…
For six months in the summer and fall of 1969, Niagara’s American Falls were “de-watered”, as the Army Corps of Engineers conducted a geological survey of the falls’ rock face, concerned that it was becoming destabilized by erosion. These stark images r…
South African mineworkers being x-rayed before leaving the diamond mines. A trained radiologist like the one in the picture can easily identify even the smallest diamond, which a would-be thief might attempt to smuggle out of the mine in his stomach. Ea…
Mary was a five-ton Asian elephant, also known as Murderous Mary, who performed in the Sparks World Famous Shows circus. After killing a trainer in Kingsport, Tennessee, she was hanged in 1916. Her death is sometimes interpreted as a cautionary tale of cir…
Attendants from the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College Of Surgeons packing up some of the 3,000 human skulls stored in a shed in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, before their transfer to the Natural History Museum, July 1, 1948. The skulls include those of…
A workman reams holes to the proper size and alignment in the Space Shuttle Main Engine's main injector body, through which propellants will pass through on their way into the engine's combustion chamber. Rockwell International's Rocketdyne Division pla…
In 1933, Lina Medina was born in Ticrapo, Peru. At the age of five years, Lina was brought to the hospital by her parents who complained of abdominal extreme growth. The girl’s parents initially thought their daughter was suffering from a massive abdomi…
In the early 20th century, polio was one of the most feared diseases in industrialized countries, paralyzing hundreds of thousands of children every year. A highly infectious disease, polio attacks the nervous system and can lead to paralysis, disabilit…
The practice of reading aloud while others listen intently as they engage in manual labor has a long and distinguished tradition throughout the Caribbean in the practice of cigar manufacture. Because the job of rolling cigar after cigar could become mon…
These iconic photographs were taken in 1947 at Vienna’s Southern Railway Station, where photographer Ernst Haas witnessed the moving scenes of the return of the first 600 Austrian war prisoners from Eastern Europe. Haas’s images show the anticipation and g…
Nicolae Ceausescu ruled Romania for 21 years, earning a reputation as a brutal dictator. During his reign, he developed the largest network of spies in Eastern Europe, silenced his opposition with a secret police force known as the Securitate, and eventual…
On 6 October 1889, the Moulin Rouge (English: The Red Mill) opened in the Jardin de Paris, at the foot of the Montmartre hill. Its creator Spaniard Joseph Oller and his manager Charles Zidler were formidable businessmen who understood the public's tastes. …
This emotional picture shows a rather astonished little boy: he isn’t sure what’s happening, or how it’s happening. From a world of silence, he has suddenly been transported to a world of rich, vibrant sound. It is new, it is strange, and it’s also a li…
On November 13, 1985, the Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted. Pyroclastic flows exploding from the crater melted the mountain's icecap, forming lahars (volcanic mudflows and debris flows) which cascaded into river valleys below. One lahar, consisting of th…
By the time of this photograph, AIDS might have been more widely understood, but people were still wary about how it was transmitted because it wasn't widely understood by the general public at the time. Princess Diana was a very important figurehead in…
The fearless ‘Three Jacksons,’ acrobats, Jarley Smith, Jewell Waddek, and Jimmy Kerrigan perform a balancing act on a ledge on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building in Manhattan on August 21, 1934. The act took place 1,050 feet (320m) above the pavem…
On Wednesday, May 13, 1981, Mehmet Ali Agca pulled a gun and shot Pope John Paul II during a procession in St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City, Italy. Though critically wounded, the Pope survived four gunshot wounds to his abdomen. Following the shooting, …
Leonid Rogozov was a Soviet general practitioner who took part in the sixth Soviet Antarctic Expedition in 1960–1961. He was the only doctor stationed at the Novolazarevskaya Station and, while there, developed appendicitis, which meant he had to perform a…
Cars are supposed to carry people, but in Nepal people carried cars on the rocky, hilly trail from Kathmandu. Automobiles, stripped of wheels and bumpers, were shoulder-borne to and from the capital, the only Nepalese city with modern roads. This old Ge…
This picture is widely considered the photo that changed the face of AIDS. It showed AIDS victims as humans and people with families. The biggest opponents of doing anything about AIDS, anything at all, were conservatives trumpeting family values. This …