On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright piloted the first powered airplane 20 feet above a wind-swept beach in North Carolina. The flight lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 feet. Three more flights were made that day with Orville's brother Wilbur piloting the re…
In 1973, the US Army started testing possible designs for an anti-tank grenade. Commanders in Europe had asked for some sort of ordnance for destroying tanks in close quarters. If Warsaw Pact troops had invaded, NATO soldiers could have found themselves taki…
Thirty vivid, oversize black-and-white photos from the Library of Congress show the Detroit in the 1940s. Full-screen scenes show vintage vehicles, fashions, hairstyles, the Crowley-Milner department store, Cunningham's drugs, a streetcar, Chrysler's tank as…
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict. The crisis was unique in a numb…
World War II brought momentous change to America's Chinese community. For decades, Chinese were vilified in America, especially in California, the center of the U.S.'s anti-Chinese feelings. The Chinese had initially come to California for the Gold Rush and …
These vintage photographs capture a timeless energy and diversity that is characteristic of the sleepless streets of New York City. The recently discovered antique portraits showcase the city in the midst of the 1950s, as seen through the Rolleiflex lens of …
The most fascinating part about this picture is how it conveys the rapid social evolution from the era of the old west to incredible technological advancement of the 20th century. You have to remember, this picture was taken only four years prior to World Wa…
In a photo that somehow comprises both tenderness and horror, an American Marine cradles a near-dead infant pulled from under a rock while troops cleared Japanese fighters and civilians from caves on Saipan in the summer of 1944. The child was the only perso…
The internment of Japanese-Americans into camps during World War II was one of the most flagrant violations of civil liberties in American history. According to the census of 1940, 127,000 persons of Japanese ancestry lived in the United States, the majority…
Hoover Dam is as tall as a 60-story building. It was the highest dam in the world when it was completed in 1935. Its base is as thick as two football fields are long. Each spillway, designed to let floodwaters pass without harming the dam itself, can handle …
Women bootleggers enjoyed many advantages over men. Many states had laws specifically prohibiting women from being searched. Sometimes they would hide flasks, even cases, on their persons and taunt male police officers. “A painted-up doll was sitting in a …
On November 24, 1963, two days after Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, he was brought to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters on his way to a more secure county jail. A crowd of police and press wi…
Dorothea Lange took this photograph in 1936, while employed by the U.S. government’s Farm Security Administration (FSA) program, formed during the Great Depression to raise awareness of and provide aid to impoverished farmers. In Nipomo, California, Lange …
President Lyndon B. Johnson takes the oath of office aboard Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas, Texas, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Jackie is angled in such a way as to hide the blood on her coat. It’s the perfect image reflec…
On March 30, 1981, Ronald Reagan was 69 days into his presidency. As he exited the Washington Hilton Hotel after giving a speech, the president was struck by a bullet fired by John Hinckley, Jr. Three others were also shot - Press Secretary James Brady, Wash…
A number of firsthand accounts, including those of American servicemen, attest to the taking of "trophies" from the corpses of Imperial Japanese troops in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Historians have attributed the phenomenon to a campaign of deh…
The astronauts were trapped inside a NASA trailer as part of a quarantine effort just in case they brought back any germs or disease from the moon. In the picture: (left to right) Neil A. Armstrong, commander; Michael Collins, command module pilot; and Edw…
In early January 1937, the swollen banks of the Ohio River flooded more than seventy percent of Louisville, Kentucky, and its surrounding areas. With one hour’s notice, photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White caught the next plane to Louisville. She photograph…