In 1950, Coca Cola decided to start a big marketing campaign targeting the drink to the people of France. The LIFE magazine photographer Mark Kauffman was there to photograph the genuine reactions of French people trying the drink for the first time. Un…
The South Fork Dam was built between 1838 and 1853 by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to provide water for the operation of the Western Division of the Pennsylvania Mainline Canal between Johnstown and Pittsburgh. Though the dam had been built according t…
Throughout the 1950s, dead rotting whales toured around Europe to promote the declining whaling industry after World War 2. The story began in Trondheim, Norway, in 1952. A mysterious and as yet unidentified organisation harpooned three fin whales off the …
In 1914, German photographer August Sander captured a now famous photo titled “Young Farmers” which is also known as "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance”. Upon first glance, it may look like a simple snapshot of three nicely dressed young men walking al…
In 1902, a French manufacturer released a set of trading cards designed by artist Albert Bergeret that imagined the "women of the future" (original: Les Femmes de l’Avenir). These cards depict various, imagined occupations that would have seemed fantastica…
These photographs of Belle Époque Venice were processed and colored using the Photochrom process. The Library of Congress' page on the photochrom process explains it: "Photochrom prints are ink-based images produced through 'the direct photographic transfe…
In May 1915, Italy attacked Austria-Hungary along the Isonzo River and in the Trentino, hoping to conquer territory which it believed to be rightfully Italian. Unlike the larger-scale battles, this battle was dictated by the landscape of the sizable mounta…
In response to the Great Depression during which unemployment, poverty and the effects of the Dust Bowl ravaged the States in the 1930s, Farm Security Administration (FSA) was established by government to provide loans to farmers, facilitate the removal of…
In this infamous photograph we see the notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar standing in front of the White House in Washington, DC. The boy standing beside Escobar is his only son. He also took his family on a first class trip to Disneyland at about…
From the earliest recognition that a more deadly form of influenza was spreading quickly in fall 1918, US public health authorities recommended masks for doctors, nurses, and anyone taking care of influenza patients. Newspapers provided instructions on …
These incredible color photographs of the German battlefront during the First World War, 1914-1918, were taken by Hans Hildenbrand. Although color photography has existed since at least 1879, it didn't become popular until many decades later. The overwhelm…
An unauthorized photo of Stalin inside of the Kremlin shows the very moment he was informed that the German armies had advanced in Kiev (August, 1941). What you see here is a man who up until few weeks before had absolute confidence in Plan A, and who now …
On the morning of April 2, 1954, Los Angeles Times photographer John Gaunt was lounging in the front yard of his beachfront home in Hermosa Beach when he heard a neighbor shout, “Something’s happening on the beach!” Instinctively, Gaunt grabbed his Rolleif…
The idea of creating a monumental sculpture in the Black Hills was first suggested in 1923 by South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson, who had envisioned creating likenesses of famous Native American and American Old West personalities on a needlelike …
On September 16, 1920, as hundreds of Wall Street workers headed out for lunch, a horse-drawn wagon parked in front of J. P. Morgan Bank — the world’s most powerful banking institution. Inside the wagon, 100 pounds (45 kg) of dynamite with 500 pounds (230 …
Genevieve Naylor was born in 1915 in Springfield, Massachusetts. She attended Miss Hall's School and later, at age 16, the Music Box, an arts school, where she studied painting. It was at the Music Box that Genevieve met Misha Reznikoff, her teacher. Two …
Alice Liddell was the middle daughter of Henry George Liddell, Dean of Christ Church at Oxford. Alice, along with her sisters Edith and Lorina, first met Lewis Carroll on April 25, 1856, as he and a friend were setting up to photograph Christ Church Cathed…
The 1977 blackout that hit New York was a crisis that came amidst a sweltering heat wave, a financial downturn, rising poverty and inequality and an atmosphere of gloom that had already settled on the city. The 25 hour outage began around 9:30 p.m. on J…
These two pictures are shown side by side in the Andrei Pozdeev museum. The museum caption reads: "(Left) The artist Eugen Stepanovich Kobytev the day he went to the front in 1941. (Right) In 1945 when he returned”. This the human face after four years of …
The first flamethrower, in the modern sense, is usually credited to Richard Fiedler. He submitted evaluation models of his Flammenwerfer to the German Army in 1901. The most significant model submitted was a portable device, consisting of a vertical single…