On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, was declared between the Allied nations and Germany in the First World War, then known as “the Great War.” Though the Treaty of Versailles, sig…
There are few words more closely associated with 20th-century South African history than apartheid, the Afrikaan word for "apartness" that describes the nation's official system of racial segregation. And though the discriminatory divide between whites of …
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…
In jails and prisons around the world, tattoos can become a significant part of an inmate's uniform, not only marking the crime they're in for but also serving as a way to communicate with others. Arkady Bronnikov, regarded as Russia's leading expert on ta…
In 1966, Italy was rocked by one woman’s courageous efforts to challenge the country’s treatment of rape victims — the lessons of which are sadly still relevant. Franca Viola became the first Italian woman to refuse a "rehabilitating marriage" ("matrimonio…
At the beginning of the 20th century the shipping route across the Atlantic was extremely popular, driven by waves of European emigrants from all parts of Europe to the United States. Travel on these liners was not a recreational cruise but merely a means …
From January 1918 to December 1920, a deadly influenza outbreak infected 500 million people across the world. Estimates suggest between 50 and 100 million people died from the virus, in other words, up to 5% of the planet's population. It killed more peopl…
Amidst a tangle of wires Dr. Zbigniew Religa anxiously watches a monitor to see how his patient responds after a heart transplant. In the lower right corner, you can see one of his colleagues who helped him with the surgery fallen asleep. The surgery laste…
On April 26, 1986, a series of explosions destroyed Chernobyl’s reactor No. 4, and several hundred staff and firefighters tackled a blaze that burned for 10 days and sent a plume of radiation around the world. More than 50 reactor and emergency workers wer…
At the end of 1950s a real sensation happened in Moscow: Christian Dior models came to visit the capital of the Soviet Union. Muscovites who wandered into GUM, the USSR’s premier department store, were treated to an extraordinary scene: a trio of willowy F…
It is a well-known fact that a cat which is falling upside down, has the ability to turn its body mid-air so that it lands on its feet. In past, many scientists such as George Gabriel Stokes, James Clerk Maxwell, and Étienne-Jules Marey had shown great int…
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…
You would think that dueling was an outdated ritual consigned to the 19th century, something that no longer had a place in modern world. However, well into the 20th century official duels were taking place, one of the last between French politicians Gaston…
In the late 19th century, the miracle device called the telephone had been invented but the simple concept of undergrounding telephone cables had eluded engineers. Due to technical limitations of the earliest phone lines, every telephone required its own p…
Some 250,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia overnight from August 20 to 21, 1968, to halt a blossoming political and cultural liberalization, bringing an abrupt end to the Prague Spring and tightening the Kremlin's grip. The first mon…
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. The…
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. …