The Panama Canal idea goes back to the 16th century. After understanding the riches of Peru, Ecuador, and Asia, and evaluating the time it took the gold to reach the ports of Spain, it was suggested in 1524 to Charles V, that by cutting out a piece of land…
Situated halfway between the city of Medellin and Bogota, the Colombian capital, Hacienda Napoles was the vast ranch owned by the drugs baron Pablo Escobar. In the early 1980s, after Escobar had become rich but before he had started the campaign of assassi…
Before the war Argentina hosted a strong, very-well-organized pro-Nazi element that was controlled by the German ambassador. In the spring of 1938, some 20,000 Nazi supporters attended a "Day of Unity" rally held at the Luna Park stadium in Buenos Aires to…
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 three p…
Serra Pelada was a large gold mine in Brazil 430 kilometres (270 mi) south of the mouth of the Amazon River. In 1979 a local child swimming on the banks of a local river found a 6 grams (0.21 oz) nugget of gold. Soon word leaked out and by the end of the w…
Thatcher is surrounded by troops on a visit to Goose Green in January 1983, where the Parachute Regiment had secured a crucial victory seven months earlier. The war was a turning point in her premiership. The Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges called the…
Navy chaplain Luis Padilla gives last rites to a soldier wounded by sniper fire during a revolt in Venezuela. Braving the streets amid sniper fire, to offer last rites to the dying, the priest encountered a wounded soldier, who pulled himself up by clingin…
These two men are manumitted slaves. Manumission is the act of a slave owner freeing his or her slaves. They borrowed the clothes and the hats just for the picture. It's a posed photograph and a statement about being manumitted rather than a picture of a w…