Prohibition was the attempt to outlaw the production and consumption of alcohol in the United States. The call for prohibition began primarily as a religious movement in the early 19th century – the state of Maine passed the first state prohibition law in …
Since the early 1900s Bell Telephone Laboratories, or Bell Labs, has been a major source of technological experimentation and change. Bell Labs has sponsored research far beyond the limits of its original focus, the telephone. From telephones to radar to c…
Every war combatant highly appreciated the need for an unbreakable code that would help them communicate while protecting their operational plans. The U.S. Army knew where to find one: the Navajo Nation. Philip Johnston, a civil engineer for the city of Lo…
When President Truman moved into the executive mansion in 1945, they found the White House badly in need of repair after twelve years of neglect during the Depression and war. Floors groaned and creaked, winds blew in and out, strange sounds echoed in unus…
Disneyland was dedicated at an "International Press Preview" event held on Sunday, July 17, 1955, which was open only to invited guests and the media. Although 28,000 people attended the event, only about half of those were invitees, the rest having purcha…
The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy fractured the nation just two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and five years after his brother John F. Kennedy was killed. But RFK’s funeral, particularly the train that took his body from Ne…
DeLorean DMC-12, an innovative sports car, produced from 1981–1983, with gull-wing doors and stainless-steel body panels. It should have been the commercial coup of the century, leading to massive worldwide sales. For this was the car chosen to star in the…
On July 23, 1967, a police raid on an unlicensed bar resulted in the arrest of 82 black residents, sparking outrage across the community and resulting in one of the largest riots in Detroit and in US history. For five straight days rioting and looting enve…
On Aug. 24, 1995, Microsoft—at that time a tech company with around $6 billion in sales and 17,800 employees—introduced their newest operating system, a product the New York Times at that time called “the splashiest, most frenzied, most expensive introduct…
Apollo 11 was the climax of the Apollo program, which pushed human spaceflight forward faster than ever before. In October 1968, the first crewed flight of the Apollo program lifted off; less than a year later, Apollo 11 launched. Within just a few short y…
These photos picture the overflow filling facility that the FBI’s Identification Division started using during World War II for the purposes of clearance needs of the armed services. The building is the DC Armory, a multi-use arena facility — and sometimes…
These photographs, taken for LIFE magazine in the fall of 1969, explored the "freaky new freedoms" of fashion seen on high school students across the United States. Some of the women show the strong influence of the “hippie” movement—long hair, beads, frin…
This interesting picture shows a supposed Civil War veteran from Florida enjoying himself next to a fighter jet. Claiming to be a member of the Confederate Army, William Lundy was 107 when this photo was snapped for an article in the Boston Traveller in 19…
A rare and disturbing picture, so much about this it's still a mystery. We don't know what became of the skull—or, indeed, what became of the young woman herself, or the man who sent it to her as a "gift" from the Pacific in the midst of World War II. T…
A lone African-American boy, left foreground, stands in a sparse crowd that turned out to hear Dr. Lycurgus Spinks, imperial emperor of one of the several Ku Klux Klan groups active in the South, speak to 56 members of his Invisible Empire, Jackson, Miss. …
In 1908, the National Child Labor Committee hired Lewis Hine, a New York sociologist and photographer, to document the exploitative working conditions of child laborers in dozens of occupations, from mining and manufacturing to farming and newspaper sellin…
During the late 70’s and early 80’s, New York City’s subway system was one of the most dangerous places a person could be. Lucky for those of us who never had the chance to see it, Swiss photographer Willy Spiller was there, and the dark and atmospheric se…
The United States entered World War I in 1917 as an associated power on the allied side of Britain and France. By the time that World War I came around, the United States was a leader in the recently discovered art of movie making and the new profession of…
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, many Americans were distrusting and fearful of Japanese-Americans living in the U.S. The Federal government took the unprecedented step of ordering some 110,000 Japanese aliens and American citizens…
Built in 1874 on the site reserved for an opera house, the Old Cincinnati Library was a thing of wonder. With five levels of cast iron shelving, a fabulous foyer, checker board marble floors and an atrium lit by a skylight ceiling, the place was breathtaki…