This picture might look like marketing material based on the way she's holding the gun, but that’s a common shotgun technique. In the 1970s this was considered the proper way to shoot a shotgun at close range. As we can see in the picture, the stock goe…
On 8 March 1979, more than 100,000 women gathered on the streets of the Iranian capital to protest against the new Islamic government’s compulsory hijab ruling, which meant that women would henceforth be required to wear a headscarf when away from home. …
Open air schools were purpose-built educational institutions for children, that were designed to prevent and combat the widespread rise of tuberculosis that occurred in the period leading up to the Second World War. The schools were built on the concept…
By the end of his brilliant and tortured life, the famous physicist, engineer, and inventor Nikola Tesla was penniless and living in a small New York City hotel room. He had become a vegetarian at that point in his life and lived on only milk, bread, ho…
The shot was taken on Einstein’s 72nd birthday right after an event in his honor was finished at Princeton on March 14, 1951. While walking with Dr. Frank Aydelotte, the former head of the Institute for Advanced Study, and Mrs. Aydelotte back to their c…
Major-General Horatio Gordon Robley was a British army officer and artist who served in New Zealand during the New Zealand land wars in the 1860s. He was interested in ethnology and fascinated by the art of tattooing as well as being a talented illustra…
The assassination of Alexander, first King of Yugoslavians, by Vlado Chernozemski, an experienced marksman in the employ of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) would have been forgotten had it not been for the multitudes of still and …
If it seems like today’s kids have gotten “softer” compared to the kids decades ago, perhaps it’s because playgrounds have gotten softer as well. Thanks to state laws and personal injury lawyers, the landscape of the typical playground has changed a lot…
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 …
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…
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 an…
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 taste…