In 1919 Chicago was in the throes of an exhausting heat wave. Thousands flocked to the beaches lining Lake Michigan for some relief. Among them: a group of black boys that included 17-year-old Eugene Williams. Eugene, who was on a raft, inadvertently drift…
These pictures show what was acceptable in the 1980s at Spring Break. Mostly from Daytona beach and Fort Lauderdale, these show a party scene that seems alien, the kind of en masse binge-drinking you could have before the intervention of social media. Take…
These propaganda paintings show how North Korea views America and by association the West. They depict the alleged mass murder of Sinchon civilians between October and December 1950. The regime claims that around 35,000 people were brutally tortured and ki…
Blow dryers were invented in the late 19th century. The first model was created by Alexander F. “Beau” Godefroy in his salon in France in 1890. His invention was a large, seated version that consisted of a bonnet that attached to the chimney pipe of a gas …
Born in Wisconsin in 1868, Edward Sheriff Curtis took to photography at an early age. In 1895 he photographed Princess Angeline, the daughter of the Duwamish chief Seattle, for whom the city was named. That encounter sparked Curtis' lifelong fascination with…
Football, or “American football” as the rest of the world calls it, can be traced to early versions of rugby football and association football. Both games have their origin in multiple varieties of football played in Britain in the mid-19th century, in whi…
The events of 1942 were crucial in the way that World War Two played out. The first Americans arrived in England in January - 'Overpaid, over sexed and over here' as the gripe went - and in North Africa Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps began their…
The once-impoverished region of Landes in southwestern France consisted of very flat and marshy terrain and barely even had any roads to speak of, which made moving around somewhat problematic. To navigate the soft and unsteady heathlands, shepherds develo…
In the 19th century, there were no real institutions to regulate the advertising claims of health products. In such a climate, a popular so-called “patent medicine” market flourished. Manufacturers of these medical products often made misleading claims and…
These rare color views of the capital (then known as Constantinople) of the Ottoman Empire at the close of the 19th century were produced using the Photochrom process. The technique applies layers of artificial color to a black and white image with surpris…
After the Second World War, America's love affair with the automobile was in full swing. You could drive through about anything – movie theaters, car washes, restaurants, banks and...even churches. That’s a very American way to attend the church. These rar…
It was June 1980, just six months after the Soviet Union had invaded its southern neighbor to forestall the collapse of a pro-Soviet government in Kabul. Condemned by an Islamic war tribunal for denouncing nine families to the Russians, the man in the phot…
The pattern of Influenza Outbreak of 1957 is sickeningly similar to COVID-19. A new and deadly strain of flu emerges in Asia, then spreads across the world and comes to the United States. A pandemic is declared. In 1957 the new virus was first reported in …
At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, many close to the British royal family wanted the Queen Mother and her daughters, princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, then 13 and 9 years old respectively, to evacuate to Canada. But the Queen Mother refused. She rod…
When planning the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, NASA had thought about every possible detail including a gloomy scenario: What if the astronaut returning home unleashed upon Earth something dangerous and foreign to science — moon germs? Before Apollo 1…
Keedoozle was the first fully automated grocery store in the United States; a most futuristic shopping experience that the world just wasn’t ready for. The story begins with Clarence Saunders who revolutionized grocery shopping, in a way that defines the m…
The Italian Campaign of World War II was the name of the Allied operations in and around Italy from 1943 to the end of the war. Following victory in the North African Campaign, there was disagreement among the Allies on the next step they should take. The …
On March 27, 1964, at 5:36 PM, a megathrust earthquake occurred in the Prince William Sound region of Alaska. The epicenter was about 10 km east of the mouth of College Fiord, approximately 90 km west of Valdez and 120 km east of Anchorage. Lasting four mi…