During World War II, America’s railroads were an important part of the war effort and it’s estimated that from 1941 to 1945 trains transported close to 44 million American troops. Between the war years of 1942 and 1944, trains carried 98 percent of mili…
At the dawn of the 20th century, automobiles were an infant technology with none of the infrastructure we take for granted today: road maps, traffic signals, pavement, gas stations, fast food, parking lots, expressways, or motels. Most people in the wor…
Early on the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States seemed to be just about the safest place in the world to live. The nation hadn’t been attacked on its own soil since the bombing of Pearl Harbor six decades before. War seemed like something that…
Umbrella Rock on top of Lookout Mountain was one of the more iconic tourist spots from the 1880s through the 1940s. These images, assembled by Chattanooga’s local historical organization Picnooga, capture almost 60 years of photo opportunities on Umbrella …
Dorothy Counts made national news in September 1957, when at the age of 15, she became one of the first and, at the time, the only black student to enroll in the newly desegregated Harry Harding High School in Charlotte (North Carolina). This came nearly t…
On the last two days in April 1975, Operation Frequent Wind, the evacuation of Vietnam, ended a twenty-year agony for the United States. A trial for America was done. The last 45 days of her presence in South Vietnam may seem almost insignificant compared to t…
Local historians routinely disagree on how many Cliff Houses have been built in the wind-beaten northwestern edge of San Francisco. Three is the most common answer, some argue that four is correct, and even fice has its partisans. But everyone does agre…
No one expected the 1969 Woodstock concert and festival to draw a crowd estimated at half-million — nor that the gathering would become a legendary touchstone for the counterculture of the 1960s and a unique event in the history of music. Held in the open a…
Nobody could tell exactly when it began and nobody could predict when it would end. At the outset, they didn’t even call it a depression. At worst it was a recession, a brief slump, a “correction” in the market, a glitch in the rising curve of prosperity. …
In the 1970s, New York City was a broken, ungovernable metropolis barreling into anarchy. New Yorkers remember this decade as the bleakest, most crime-ridden, and most uncertain time the city has ever faced. It was a time of economic, criminal, and cultura…
This collection of photos from Naval Air Station Corpus Christi during World War II shows the American war effort at full speed and the air cadets in training. The facility covered 20,000 acres (81 km2) and had 997 hangars, shops, barracks, warehouses, …
In the recorded history of Washington, DC the Knickerbocker storm remains unsurpassed, both for the amount of snow it produced and for its devastating toll on human life. The collapse of the roof at the Knickerbocker Theater, which took 98 lives (many of th…
All NASA craft must undergo complete testing through one of the administration’s 42 major wind tunnels and it’s cleared for liftoff once all the parameters are reached. These wind tunnels range from just a few inches wide to cavernous enough to test ful…
In 1907, Joseph “Alligator Joe” Campbell and Francis Victor Earnest Sr. relocated an alligator farm in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to a Los Angeles location adjacent to the Selig Zoo and Motion Picture Studio in Los Angeles. The Alligator farm rented reptiles to th…
More so than any war in history, World War II was a woman’s war. Women, motivated by patriotism, the opportunity for new experiences, and the desire to serve, participated widely in the global conflict. Within the Allied countries, women of all ages pro…
The Golden State got its nickname from the Sierra Nevada gold that lured so many miners and settlers to the West, but California has earned much more wealth from so-called “black gold” than from metallic gold. When Europeans finally arrived in Californi…
These vintage photographs show the airship Graf Zeppelin LZ 127 flying over Chicago in August 1929, on the American leg of its round-the-world trip. The crew flew the airship low over the city and the crowds were mesmerized by the sight. This is how the…
The Hellfighters, the infantry regiment of the New York Army National Guard, was the most celebrated African American regiment in World War I. The regiment was nicknamed the Black Rattlers. The nickname Men of Bronze (French: Hommes de Bronze) was given to…
William Patrick Stuart-Houston (né Hitler), son of Alois Hitler Jr, was the half-nephew of Adolf Hitler. He was born in the Toxteth area of Liverpool, England, in 1911, in a house that was, ironically, later destroyed in a German air raid. Alois Hitler …
On the evening of October 8, 1871, more than 300,000 weary residents of the great city of Chicago went to bed expecting nothing more than a quiet night’s sleep followed by an ordinary Monday of going to work or tending family. Instead, these unprepared citizen…